Putin’s party is expected to win yet lose support

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party is expected to win legislative polls tomorrow, but with a reduced majority, as signs grow of an emerging discontent over its domination of Russian politics.

United Russia, which critics compare to the Communist Party in the one-party Soviet Union, should easily win the most seats in the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma.

This is in the face of a relatively weak opposition for the third election in a row. But with Russia’s economic outlook uncertain and the internet increasingly used as a means to criticise the authorities, the picture for United Russia is far less rosy than in the last elections in 2007.

Then, it won 315 seats in the 450-deputy Duma, giving it more than the two-thirds “Constitutional majority” that is required if the Russians Constitution needs to be changed. But surveys from the independent Levada Centre and state-controlled VTsIOM pollsters respectively predict that United Russia will win between 253 and 262 seats in the Duma, losing its Constitutional majority although retaining a simple majority.

“The change has been substantial, compared with what happened four years ago,” said the deputy director of the Levada Centre Alexei Grazhdankin.

Both Levada Centre and VTsIOM expect United Russia to win just over half the vote, well down on its rating of 64.3 per cent from 2007 when the Russian economy was riding high on the back of record oil prices.

The last four years have also seen an explosion in the use of internet to criticise excesses by the elite, a massive development in a country where newspapers and television generally toe the Kremlin line.

Meanwhile, according to think tank the Centre for Strategic Analysis, the demographic of Russian society is “completely changing” due to the emergence of a growing urban middle class more prepared to criticise the authorities.

It said that the changes pose a major challenge for the elite, who believe they have fixed Russia’s medium-term political future with the announcement that Mr Putin will return as President in polls next March.

Analysts said the elections could be a fiasco for United Russia in certain regions where the protest mood is strongest.

These could include St Petersburg and the Siberian region of Irkutsk – which share a tradition of counter-thinking going back decades – as well as far-flung regions like the western exclave of Kaliningrad and the region around the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, whose voters feel betrayed by the federal authorities in distant Moscow.

One of the main anti-Kremlin liberal parties, the grouping Parnas based around ex-minister Boris Nemtsov and former chess champion Garry Kasparov, cannot take part after being denied registration by the authorities.

Post-Soviet Russia’s route to one-party domination

Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, provided a rough ride for late President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and it is only in the last years under Vladimir Putin that United Russia has been able to enjoy a domination comparable to the Soviet-era Communist Party.

History: The State Duma goes back to its first sitting in 1906 under tsar Nicholas II, who allowed the creation of a Parliament as a concession to liberals led by then Prime Minister Sergei Witte.

However, millions of people were deprived of the right to vote and it was dissolved after the February revolution that deposed the tsar.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the State Duma was reactivated by Boris Yeltsin in 1993 after an armed confrontation with the leaders of the Supreme Soviet. The first elections took place in December that year.

Elections December 1993: The chaotic world of Russia’s politics in the 1990s resulted in a Duma that was a complete contrast to the domination of United Russia today.

To the horror of the reform-inclined authorities, the most votes were won by the ultra-nationalist party of firebrand populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The pro-Yeltsin Russia’s Choice struggled to impose itself and lost support amid growing economic difficulties.

Elections December 1995: Amid growing dissatisfaction with Yeltsin’s economic reforms, the Communist Party emerged as by far the largest party followed by Zhirinovsky’s nationalists.

The pro-government Our House (nicknamed Our House is Gazprom for its links to the energy giant) came third with the liberal Yabloko (Apple) squeezing into fourth.

Elections December 1999: These were the last parliamentary elections of the Yeltsin Presidency which was shortly to end with the shock handover of power to his little-known Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The Communists were again the largest party but this time they were challenged by the pro-government Yedinstvo (Unity) and Fatherland – All Russia parties who would later merge to create United Russia. Liberal forces again polled weakly.

Elections December 2003: The first elections contested by United Russia with Putin as President saw the party smash the grip of opposition parties on parliament.

It polled over 37.5 per cent of the vote compared to 11.5 percent for Zhirinovsky and 12.6 per cent for the Communists.

Elections December 2007: With Mr Putin’s popularity soaring and the economy performing well, United Russia won a massive 64.3 per cent of the vote, followed by the Communists with 11.5 per cent.

Its landslide victory saw it win it 315 out of the 450 seats in the Duma. The Yabloko party was wiped out of Parliament.

The outgoing Duma: With United Russia controlling three-quarters of the seats in the Duma, the Parliament has turned into a rubber-stamp for government legislation.

Even the three opposition parties represented – the Communist Party, Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democrats and the newly created A Just Russia – have rarely strayed away from the Kremlin line.

The future: The State Duma elected on Sunday will sit for five years instead of the previous four in line with Constitutional changes pushed by President Dmitry Medvedev. He has also lowered the minimum threshold for winning seats in the Duma to five per cent from the current seven per cent but this will not come into force in these elections. Mr Medvedev has raised concern about United Russia’s domination but is nonetheless heading its list for the polls.