Translated material
Erast grew stronger
Experts are at a loss about the real consequences of the election campaign
Russian political scientists are still trying to predict both the course of the campaign for elections to the State Duma and its results. This was the subject of yesterday's round table “New Intrigues of the 2007-2008 Election Cycle.” Experts were unable to reach a consensus on a key issue: how the inclusion of the popularly beloved President Vladimir Putin in the electoral list of the United Russia party will affect the course of the elections.The head of the Institute of Political Studies, Sergei Markov, noted that due to Mr. Putin’s appearance on the list of candidates, the December vote will acquire the status of a referendum on support for the president and his course. “He is young, sober, athletic,” Mr. Markov listed the reasons for people’s love for the guarantor. - And lucky: oil prices rose under him, we got the Olympics in Sochi. This luck has something of Akunin’s Erast Petrovich Fandorin!”
With such a powerful “locomotive”, United Russia is doomed to success , said Igor Bunin, General Director of the Center for Political Technologies. “Before Putin appeared in the stratosphere, they could count on 55% of the votes, but now their result can be more than 60%,” he believes. According to Mr. Bunin, no more than 10-12% of Russians will vote for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party only have a chance of crossing the seven percent barrier, “but nothing more.”
These figures generally correspond to the latest opinion polls, but experts have taken issue with the statistics. “I don’t really share the euphoria regarding United Russia’s rating,” noted Vartan Sarkisov, general director of IMA-Consulting. And he reminded those gathered that in 2003, the mayor of the capital, Yuri Luzhkov, was re-elected to his post with a record result of 75% “for”, but two years later, in the elections to the Moscow City Duma, only 47% of voters.
“The comparison is unfair; trust rating and electoral rating are far from the same thing!” - First Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technologies Boris Makarenko corrected his colleague. But there was another parallel: the Fatherland - All Russia bloc, which did not win the parliamentary elections in 1999, although it was led by the popular ex-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.
The low result of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation cannot be considered a foregone conclusion: the head of the analytics department of the PRopaganda company, Irina Tsurina, said that the rating of the communists is now increasing. “This is ensured by a keen understanding of the lack of alternative elections,” the expert believes. -- Similar protest sentiments are strong among the urban population and young people. And if the Communist Party of the Russian Federation competently builds an election campaign, relying not on the ideology of socialism, but on positioning itself as an alternative party, they have a chance to gain even more than 20%.”
Finally, the topic of turnout has not been exhausted. The general confidence in the victory of United Russia “could lead to apathy in the elections,” believes Vladimir Romanenko, first deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries. After all, when the result is known in advance, people lose interest in the process of expressing their will and turnout naturally decreases. True, under the new legislation this will not prevent the elections from being recognized as valid. But the government, according to Mikhail Vinogradov, general director of the Russian Center for Political Current Affairs, “will continue to work to increase turnout in order to give parliament greater legitimacy and at the same time somewhat reduce the legitimacy of the future president,” so that the head of state elected in March will have less political weight, than the current one.
It is too early to guess in which direction the scales of the “system of checks and balances” will swing in this case. But the idea of increasing the legitimacy of the Duma elections through turnout is consistent with the fact that the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, publicly predicts a fairly high turnout percentage on December 2 - 60%.
Thus, the parliamentary campaign may yet delight us with unexpected twists in the scenario, and their author will most likely be President Putin himself. In this regard, the main expert commentary from yesterday's round table belonged to the cloakroom attendant, who handed out coats to the guests at the end of the meeting. “Everyone is wondering, but is it in vain that Putin graduated from the KGB Higher School? - she said with a hint of pride for the head of state in her voice. “No one will ever predict what he will do!”