Russia goes lower

In a world that’s now more conscious – although still less so than it should be – of the problem of democratic backsliding, Russia is pretty much a textbook case. And that perhaps is the only thing that justifies paying any attention to its presidential “election”, held last weekend to confirm Vladimir Putin in the job for another six years. (We had a preliminary look at this a few weeks ago.)

This was the eighth presidential election to be held in Russia (although the first, in 1991, was held when it was still part of the Soviet Union). The first two, both won by Boris Yeltsin, were far from perfect, but were still basically democratic exercises. The second of them even went to a second round, Yeltsin winning with 54.4% in the runoff. The third election, held in 2000 after Yeltsin’s resignation, also had some doubtful features; it was won on the first round by the then acting president, Putin, with 53.4%.

From there things went downhill badly. Putin was re-elected in 2004 with 71.9%, and in 2008 his proxy, Dimitry Medvedev, won with 71.2%. Putin returned to the job in 2012 with 64.4%. Taken in isolation those numbers were possibly believable, particularly since Russia’s economy was still in reasonable shape at the time, but they concealed the fact that genuine opposition had pretty much disappeared. None of Putin’s four opponents in 2012 offered a real alternative; all were complicit in his system.

With terms having been increased to six years, Putin’s re-election in 2018 was a mere formality. He was credited with 77.5% of the vote against seven opponents, among whom Communist Pavel Grudinin led with 11.9%. His most dangerous rival, Alexei Navalny, had been prevented on a technicality from standing; he was subsequently imprisoned and ultimately murdered.

There is no single figure that you can specify as the point at which an election loses any credibility; circumstances are too varied. But if you had to pick one, 75% would be about right. In all but the most unusual cases, you be confident that a candidate who records a total greater than that has not been democratically elected.

Which brings us, somewhat reluctantly, to last weekend. With actual opposition candidate Boris Nadezhdin having been ruled ineligible, Putin faced only three tame opponents. Official figures credit Communist Nikolay Kharitonov with 4.4%, Vladislav Davankov of New People (the closest thing to a genuine non-Putinist) with 3.9% and neo-fascist Leonid Slutsky with 3.2%. Putin’s 88.5% exceeded their combined total by some 65 million votes. Turnout, padded by widespread intimidation, was said to be 74.2%, up 6.7 points on 2018.

Of course these numbers are meaningless in terms of revealing anything about the state of Russian public opinion. But they do point to a government that has stopped caring about the impression that it might be giving to the rest of the world, and a president who is increasingly isolated from the real feelings of the population. As Eva Hartog puts it, “it is Putin himself who might be the biggest dupe of his own rigged vote.”