Why does Vladimir Putin even bother with elections? It’s a fair question to ask as Russia goes to the polls this weekend for nationwide local and parliamentary votes in which the outcome is certain.
The ruling United Russia party, closely associated with Putin himself, polls at nearly 40%. Its closest competitors, a small handful of occasionally cantankerous but thoroughly co-opted opposition parties, trail far behind at 10% to13%.
A recent study by VTsIOM, a government-affiliated pollster, showed that some four-fifths of Russians expect United Russia to win – a reasonable assumption given that the government has outright banned or otherwise forced out any truly independent parties or voices. Meanwhile, the only non-state election monitoring outfit was shut down last year, and no credible foreign observers will be invited in.
In fact, the outcome is such a foregone conclusion that recently, the candidates in one region near Moscow didn’t even bother to show up for a debate – twice.
“This is not an election in the strict sense,” said Lev Gudkov of the Levada Center, Russia's last independent pollster. “It’s a ritual.”
But like all rituals, there are still good reasons to go through the democratic motions even – in fact, especially – in a system as overtly undemocratic as Russia’s.
First, because it’s important to show domestic and foreign audiences that things are fine. This is especially true at a time when things are, in fact, looking less than fine. Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has left at least 250,000 Russians dead and as many as 1 million wounded. A rush of military spending, coupled with tighter Western sanctions, has stoked inflation and stifled the civilian economy. Although the Kremlin war machine continues to hold vast swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine – where the polls for this election will be held, illegally – it is running so low on drone fodder that there are rumors, which Putin has publicly denied, of a broader conscription drive coming later this fall.
What’s more, over the past year the conflict has come home in new ways, as Ukrainian drone strikes penetrate ever deeper into Russian territory, taking out not only military targets and oil refineries, but even major Moscow-area warehouses of Russia’s top e-commerce company, Wildberries, which Kyiv accuses of helping the war effort.
Polls confirm that Russians themselves are souring on the situation, if only gently. Levada’s latest numbers show that popular approval of Putin and optimism about the country’s direction remain strong, if heavily conditioned, at 74% and 52%, respectively. But those are among the lowest levels since before the invasion of Ukraine. The change in mood is palpable, Gudkov said – drone strikes and possible wider conscription are among Russians’ top recent concerns.
Against that backdrop, holding an election in which the party of power still clobbers the competition projects the message: despite all of this, things are fine.
The second, related reason to hold the election is to test the system of “managed democracy” that Putin has built and refined over nearly three decades. In Russia, where corruption is rife and meaningful political competition is extinct, officials work more strenuously for their bosses than for their constituents. Every five years, those bosses have a nationwide chance to test the system: can the local bureaucrats, governors, school teachers, and state company bosses in X-region deliver an acceptable electoral result – say, 65% turnout with a decisive victory for United Russia – that isn’t too overtly manipulated? If not, it’s time for a reshuffle – something experts will be watching closely in the coming weeks.
And third, perhaps the best reason of all to hold elections is simple: not holding them for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history would raise extreme alarm about the system's stability. Remember: things are fine. See #1 above.
Still, although Russia’s parliament is a rubber-stamp body that hasn’t independently passed meaningful legislation in decades, there are at least two reasons to care about who goes into the Duma, said Alexander Kolyandr, a Russia expert at Eurasia Group.
One reason is that dozens of veterans of the Ukraine war are running for office. While veterans are totems of patriotism who can get out the vote, they can also – as Russians still remember from Moscow’s failed wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya – be an unpredictable bunch with a strong populist appeal that isn’t always aligned with the Kremlin. The number of veterans who are permitted to “win” in the elections could be a proxy for the regime’s risk tolerance.
The other, Kolyandr said, is that one scenario could make even the enfeebled Duma take on real importance again. If anything were to suddenly incapacitate Putin, now 73, Duma lawmakers would, under Russia’s succession rules, suddenly have a major role to play in the transition.
But for now, the main intrigue, if any, is less about what the electoral result is than about how effectively the authorities get there.
“This election is a bit like binge drinking,” Kolyandr said, “the process is both less predictable and more important than the result.”
