Russian Parliament elections: Alternative results

Usually the small “mistakes” during elections have little influence on overall standing, nearly within normal statistical error. Like 4 years ago, the just passed elections in Russia had all sorts of those small breaches: at some voting sites lights turned off, some mixed exit polls with enter polls, some voters were given ballots with comments (“This one is for “United Russia”, and this one is for Luzhkov”), etc etc.

But this time it is probable that such small things deprived two parties: “Yabloko” and “Union of Right Forces” (SPS in Russian acronym) of participation in parliament.

Russian communist party KPRF has been developing its own, alternative system of ballots processing from spring. The party’s observers had to report the election protocols data straight to the federal center right after it is finalized. Before the actual elections, KPRF was joined by observers from “Yabloko” and SPS. Below is the data gathered with this alternative system in comparison to official information. It is different from the official version a little, but not on KPRF’s part, as could be expected, but on SPS and “Yabloko” side. And as this data shows, these two parties did make it to Russian Duma, what changes the lower house of parliament completely. But will it be recognized? "United Russia" - 33.28% (final official results: 37.09%) Communist party of Russia - 12.65% (official: 12.7%) Liberal Democrats - 11.36% (official: 11.6%) "Homeland" - 10.75% (official: 9.1%) "Yabloko" - 5.97% (official: 4.3%) SPS - 5.11% (official: 3.9%) Against all - 5.27% (official: 4.74%)

International observing mission, which features delegates from COE and ODIHR, published the following statement in reaction to the elections in Russia:

“Election campaign was marked with wide use of administrative resources and favoritism of mass media to agitate for the biggest pro-presidential party, what lead to apathy between the voters”.

The head of parliamentary assembly Bruce George made the following statement: “Candidates’ use of administrative resources has lead to a great distortion of the elections results” (Reuters)

On the other hand, there was still no serious errors reported by international observers working all over Russia. The commission will give its final official response tomorrow.