06 July 2011, 12:35 Opinions

Front curtain

The volume of electoral distortions in the 2011 elections will be significantly higher than in 2007

Alexander Kynev The only way the party in power can repeat the results of 2007 is through total falsification, which will mean complete discredit and delegitimation of the system in the eyes of the population.

Although there are still about two months before the official start of the election campaign, its contours are gradually emerging. It can already be said with absolute certainty that not a single new party will be allowed to participate in the elections, despite the fact that “A Just Russia” (sharply strengthening its protest image) and “Right Cause” (trying to get away from the approvals paralyzing their activities) are experiencing a certain “reset” for various reasons between the co-chairs and introduce unity of command under the strict leadership of the famous billionaire). Meanwhile, “United Russia” is actively draping itself in the togas of the so-called “Popular Front”, around it from its own ranks, as well as the most diverse pro-government nomenklatura formed.

About trends and the “war of interpretations”

How have public sentiments changed recently? On the one hand, there are polling data, on the other hand, election data. Both say that there is a growing demand for change in society.

But, although the growth of protest sentiments and the need for change are clearly visible in the PR campaigns of the “party in power” itself, the public position of its propagandists remains unchanged - “everything is fine, beautiful marquise.”

The kind of resources thrown into creating the appearance of “national unity” around Putin and in what caricatured ways this is done clearly indicates that there are big problems with trust in the system. Otherwise, there would simply be no point in creating any “fronts” and enrolling citizens in them with entire railways and postal services . If the government’s PR people are willing to do this, it means they are definitely not laughing.

A recent phenomenon has become a real “information war of interpretations” regarding even electoral statistics. Just a couple of years ago, no one even hesitated about the criteria for comparing election results. However, after the trends in the results of the party in power in regional elections became increasingly alarming, its PR staff became sharply excited and began to look for options for such comparisons so that all changes for an inexperienced observer would look like victories rather than defeats. Thus, the percentage of votes in official data began to be replaced by the percentage of mandates received; regional elections tend to be compared not with the nearest elections, which coincide in the political situation and composition of the players, but with elections more distant, held in a completely different political environment, etc. One of the key questions, in particular, relate to comparisons with past federal or regional elections.

At the same time, the question of what, how and with whom to compare is, in a certain sense, a question of a “thermometer”. Here, regardless of the choice of model and scale, one thing is important: if you want to have comparable results of changes, you must use a single methodology for them. The most important methodological principle states: even if there are complaints about the methodology, but it is applied consistently and regularly, the method allows us to note existing trends.

We are offered to constantly change the methodology “to taste and color” depending on the situation, but then we are generally deprived of the opportunity to compare and project anything.

At the same time, the situation in Russia is unique. Firstly, there are significant discrepancies in the length of electoral cycles: some regions hold elections once every 5 years, some - once every 4 years, and some (Sverdlovsk region) have so far had a cycle length of only 2 years. In addition, the discrepancies between the cycles are associated with the different “starting point” of the beginning of the first convocations of regional legislative assemblies under the new Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993, since the dissolution of the previous councils was not carried out everywhere at that time, and not everywhere it was possible to elect new Legislative Assembly of the first convocation in the authorized composition on the first attempt . The terms of office of the first convocations of regional legislative assemblies in 1993–1994 were also different. Finally, the cycles are further disrupted by the fact that at the end of 2007–2008, five regions (Ivanovo and Amur regions, Kalmykia, Mordovia and the Chechen Republic) held early elections in the context of the self-dissolution of previous legislative assemblies, clearly initiated by supporters of the governors. As a result of the overlap of these desynchronization factors after the 2007 State Duma elections, a number of regions held their elections using party lists for the first time (for example, Bashkortostan, Rostov, Kemerovo regions), while in other regions these were the second, and in some places already the third elections . That is, for a number of regions, if you try to compare the results with past regional elections, then there is simply nothing to compare them with. And since (at least until October 2008, when the last region introduced a mixed electoral system) there was simply no other point of comparison other than the last federal elections, in which all regions voted at the same time, it is logical to maintain this indicator of comparison in the future.

Secondly, during the first cycle of the main array of regional elections of 2003–2007, there was a constant change in the rules of the game, which changed not just every year, but every few months. There was a period of electoral blocs, when they won the elections of 2004-2005, then there was a period of renaissance of various left-wing parties, when blocs were banned (Motherland, the Party of Pensioners, APR), until 2006 there was a column “against all”. Until February 2005, direct elections of governors were held (by the way, the massive participation of governors in the elections of regional parliaments began precisely in the fall of 2005). As a result, the current regional elections overlap with elections from completely different eras. Thus, the last time before the regional elections on March 13, 2011, some of the subjects voted in 2005, some in 2006, and some in 2007. The current political practice of using the image of Putin as the head of United Russia in regional elections has developed since the fall of 2007. At the same time, the number of parties admitted to elections was constantly decreasing: if at the dawn of the electoral reform (end of 2003) there were 44 parties in the country, then by the elections In the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2007, there were only 15 parties left, and now there are only 7. By the way, the party “A Just Russia” under its current name has been participating in elections only since March 2007 (that is, in 2005-2006 it simply did not exist).

Thus, if, taking into account our political reality, we compare regional elections only with past regional ones, then we will have to introduce so many reservations and correction factors for each region that it will become almost impossible to compare them with each other. The result is simply a chaotic jumble of comparisons that does not allow one to draw any conclusions. That is why

As a common time point of comparison for all, as a general and most similar indicator, the federal elections of December 2007 are most convenient.

By the way, in the last electoral cycle, the results of the regional elections of 2003-2007 combined well with the results of the federal elections in terms of the state of the parties' electoral bases.

Based on a single point of reference, it is possible to draw conclusions about how the position of parties in different regions has changed in relation to this specific date. This ratio is also very convenient from the point of view of comparing different waves of regional elections. How, for example, can we compare the regional elections of March 2010, autumn 2010 and March 2011, when elections took place in different regions? Only a comparison of regional elections with federal ones allows one to compare the results of elections in different regions and see the general dynamics of changes in the position of a particular party in the country.

Party in power in 2008–2011: corrugated board tilted down

What happens to the dynamics of the results of the party in power in the regional elections of 2008-2011 in comparison with the federal elections of December 2007?

In the regional elections on March 2, 2008, held in 11 regions, changes in the results of the party in power compared to the State Duma 2007 were small - minus a few percent (with the exception of Kalmykia, Ingushetia, Yakutia, the Amur region, which clearly returned to “more plausible” results after excessive excess with summing up the results of the federal elections). The only region where United Russia then received a slight increase (85.8% instead of 83.1%) was Bashkortostan. In the Ivanovo, Rostov and Ulyanovsk regions, the percentage of ER surprisingly coincided with the December one. In the Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl regions, the results of the party in power then decreased by only 4%, in the Altai Territory by 1%.

At the end of the summer of 2008, a global economic crisis gradually began to be felt in the country (ordinary citizens noticed it with the crisis in air travel in the Far East), and in October 2008, in the elections in three (Irkutsk, Sakhalin regions, Trans-Baikal Territory) of the five regions, “United Russia” “began to fall compared to the State Duma vote by 8–10%. At the same time, the traditionally electorally deviant Kemerovo region even showed an increase in votes for United Russia (from 76.9% to 84.8%), and the Chechen Republic, just like Ingushetia earlier, showed slightly more plausible results (88.4% instead of 99.4%).

The elections of March 2009 confirmed these trends. Moreover, 9 regions where legislative assemblies were elected at that time showed growing opposition, primarily among urban voters. The minimum losses compared to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2007 were shown by Tatarstan (79.3% instead of 81.03%), and the maximum were shown by Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, which returned to more plausible results. The successes of the opposition in municipal elections were especially striking (the elections for the mayors of Smolensk and Murmansk were lost by the authorities, the elections for the Tver City Duma, won by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , etc.).

Paradoxical against this background were the elections of the next “single election day” - October 11, 2009, when regional parliaments were elected in only three regions, but among them was the Moscow City Duma .

What was surprising was that municipal elections generally showed the same trends. And in Moscow, anomalous election results were announced, putting the region on a par with Bashkortostan and Kuzbass as a territory where, in times of crisis, the result of United Russia for some reason is growing (from 54.9% to 66.3%).

In Mari El the decrease was only 3%, in the Tula region about 8% (as in the fall of 2008 - spring of 2009 in other regions). This dissonance led to a scandal, accusations of numerous falsifications (in addition to Moscow, elections in Astrakhan, Derbent and Voskresensk were especially noted) and a demarche of the Duma opposition, which left the meeting room of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. At the same time, according to calculations by specialists in electoral geography (S. Shpilkin, A. Kireev and others), “cleansing” the data of static anomalies allowed us to say that the real percentage for the party in power could not exceed 45–46% of the votes. provided similar data . A Levada Center survey conducted October 22–27, 2009

The result of the demarche was a somewhat more decent conduct of the elections on March 14, 2010: this time the regional parliaments elected 8 regions. And the results showed an even stronger drop in the results of United Russia than in the spring of 2009.

The most catastrophic situation for United Russia was in the Sverdlovsk region during the regional Duma elections: 39.8% (in 2007 it was 62%, that is, minus 22%; in the regional Duma elections on March 2, 2008 - 58.43% of the vote, that is, even compared to the regional Duma two years ago, a drop of about 20%). The decline was close in the Altai Republic (minus 25%), Kurgan region (minus 23%), Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (minus 15%), Khabarovsk Territory (minus 13%). The decline was significantly smaller in the Kaluga and Ryazan regions (8% and 6%, respectively). The only region where in March 2010, compared to 2007, United Russia showed an increase, this time was the Voronezh region (62.55% instead of 57.5%). There, on the one hand, the extremely unpopular governor V. Kulakov was replaced by the much more popular A. Gordeev , and on the other hand, there are big questions about the conduct of voting and counting.

The end of 2010 looked much more optimistic for the party in power: on October 10, 2010, the decline dropped to 5–6% (Kostroma, Magadan, and Chelyabinsk regions). At the same time, the results of the “elections” to the Supreme Khural of Tuva looked strange, where United Russia was awarded 77.4% of the votes (which is still less than the supposed 89% in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2007). The percentage of United Russia in the Belgorod region is suspiciously similar to the results of the State Duma elections of the Russian Federation - 66.2% (in 2007 it was 65.4%). The worst of the Legislative Assembly elections were the results of United Russia in the Novosibirsk region (a drop of approximately 14% - from 59% to 44.8%).

However, the optimistic end of 2010 was followed by March 2011, which showed a further deterioration in the situation for United Russia. The main area of deterioration was the regions of Central Russia, which in 2008–2010 reduced the results of the party in power much less significantly than the regions of Siberia, the Urals and the Far East. This is reminiscent of other cases when the central Russian hinterland reacted to all-Russian electoral trends with some delay (for example, the triumph of regional blocs at one time began with the Urals and Siberia, but then reached the central zone of Russia). It is possible that the elections of March 13, 2011 became an example of an “electoral wave” that reached Central Russia from the east.

In these last 12 elections of regional parliaments before the federal elections, the results of United Russia fell in all regions, except for the openly falsified results in the Tambov region (where United Russia even increased from 59.8% to 65.1%).

At the same time, in six regions the decrease was 16–20%, and in two even more than 20%.

Thus, in 2008–2011, regional elections took place in a sense in waves, resembling a corrugated board tilted downward. The spring elections for the party in power were always worse than the autumn ones, but at the same time, each subsequent spring was worse than the previous one.

Federal and regional: general and different

The comparison criteria described above are important primarily as a diagnosis of the state of parties in the regions, the capabilities and desire of regional authorities to influence the election results and an indicator of changes in public sentiment.

However, is this enough to make any forecasts for the 2011 federal elections? On the one hand, changing public sentiment undoubtedly determines the general background against which the campaign takes place. But in addition to this, when making forecasts, it is important to take into account the factor of the “rules of the game”, which stimulates regional authorities to make larger or smaller electoral deviations.

And here the situation has certain differences. In regional elections, regional authorities (even those where massive fraud is the norm) are largely interested in having a balanced composition of the legislative assembly. In addition, for reasons of political image, they are forced to allow parties other than United Russia into regional parliaments. However, in federal elections it is not so much parties that compete with each other, but regions: first, mandates are divided between parties, and then, within the party list, between territorial groups. And how many mandates a region receives depends on the absolute number of votes cast for the party on its territory. As a result, a situation arises when a region does not know in advance the exact number of mandates it will receive: the one who “organizes” maximum turnout by all available means receives more mandates than the region that held more competitive elections and ultimately received a lower turnout. A similar purely Russian effect has already been written about in Gazeta.Ru. . With such an electoral system, an additional incentive for the authorities of small regions to achieve “super-results” in terms of turnout and voting for “United Russia” is the fact that if the result is different, they may not get their own deputy within the territorial group. This mechanism for distributing mandates actually additionally stimulates the organization of falsifications.

It is for this reason that a number of republics of the Volga region and the North Caucasus received “strange” results for United Russia in 2007, and in the federal parliament they received a share of deputies that exceeded the natural share of the country’s population. And, conversely, the representation in the State Duma of the Russian Federation of large industrial centers - Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions of the North-Western Federal District, regions of the Volga region (Samara, Nizhny Novgorod regions) turned out to be underestimated.

For the same reason, there is an extremely high risk that a number of national regions and other regions of “traditional electoral anomalies” will return to the 2007 model of electoral behavior in the 2011 State Duma elections. Accordingly, in these regions the legal opposition can hardly seriously count on any increase, and everything that concerns the general analysis of changes in public sentiment described above will concern only the remaining regions in the federal elections.

What will happen in other regions? It has already been noted that

United Russia began to dramatically improve its results in the regions after two events. The first turning point was the end of 2005, when for the first time governors began to head lists in regional elections en masse. The second was the end of 2007, when Putin headed United Russia.

Initially, United Russia was an alliance of the federal - "Unity" - and regional - "Fatherland - All Russia" - bureaucracy. And, when the votes of Putin’s supporters and specific governors, administrative resources at different levels, the party in power began to achieve super results.

What is the reason for the deteriorating results of United Russia in 2008-2011? Firstly, the influence of the so-called "Putin factor". One can argue about the reasons (crisis, image fatigue, the system has ceased to meet the challenges of the time, etc.), but the decline in ratings of both the prime minister and the tandem is obvious. It is especially worth noting that during the spring elections of 2011, Putin actively visited the election regions, but if you look at the geography of his trips, it is obvious that his visits did not have any impact on the voting results. Secondly, the federal center itself destroyed the previous regional electoral machines, uprooting “heavyweight governors.” No matter how you look at them, they were charismatic leaders who combined tight control over regions with the ability to interact with the population and elites. They were characterized by a predominantly consolidatory style of leadership: they often did not like the opposition, but tried to incorporate it rather than push it out of the system (by creating “warm places” for those displaced, etc.). The current governors are mostly non-public, and, as a rule, find it difficult to find a common language with the population and elites. Even those governors who were previously elected and then reappointed by the president retained their positions not because of popularity, but because they “fit in” and are often comfortable precisely because of their weakness. Today, 57 out of 83 governors have never been elected by the population; a few of them have high personal ratings, turning into exceptions that prove the rule.

Something similar happened with the resource of mayors: out of 79 regions with regional capitals, 42 have already abolished elections of mayors by the population. Mayors and public politicians are increasingly being replaced by gray and little-known city managers who cannot add anything to the authority’s authority through their personal qualities. Nizhny Novgorod is indicative, where in the name of Vadim Bulavinov, United Russia won the elections to the city duma in October 2010 under the slogan “Choose a mayor - choose a party”, gaining 58.43%, which is an extremely unusual result for a large city (namely a city - the most oppositional electorate of United Russia). But the direct elections of the mayor were cancelled, the deputies did not elect Bulavinov as the new head of the city, and in March 2011, in the elections of the regional legislative assembly, the same Nizhny Novgorod showed an official result for “United Russia” of only 35.6%.

What remains? Administrative resources and falsifications in their purest form – it is on them that the load increases to the maximum extent in such a situation.

It is not surprising that there are attempts by all means to increase voting “at home”, the use of absentee ballots, “carousels”, “cruise voting”, various lotteries and other technologies of actual bribery, the desire to organize voting of citizens with temporary registration, etc. The logic of the development of the situation is pushing the authorities to increasingly widespread use of these mechanisms. Thus, everything is heading towards the fact that the volume of electoral distortions as a whole will be significantly higher than in 2007, and in a number of regions will be higher than it was in the regional elections.

However, given the current trends (in the Tver region, despite the fact that on March 13, 2011, 16.7% of voters voted at home, United Russia still gained only 39.8%), the increase in the volume of distortions cannot compensate for the drop in real ratings of the party in power.

We, of course, will not see a 20% drop in the results of United Russia compared to 2007, but it is also not able to repeat the results of 2007. Simply put, the announced result of the party in power should be somewhere in the middle between the results of the regional elections and the results of 2007. The only way to repeat the results of 2007 is not just a significant increase in the volume of falsifications (this only reduces the amount of formal deterioration in results), but total falsifications, which will mean complete discredit and delegitimation of the system in the eyes of the population.

Illusions and realities of the “popular front”

Based on the above, it is worth looking for an answer to the question of why the “People’s Front” was needed at all. These words themselves do not carry any electoral significance; unification around Putin’s personality also does not add anything, since “United Russia” is, first of all, a project to support Putin. It is naive to distance Putin from the power vertical he himself has built: sociology clearly shows that citizens are well aware of whose hands hold the real power in the country.

Initially, the scope of the “popular front” was infinitely broad: let me remind you that Putin, speaking with this initiative, said that it could include “representatives of United Russia and other political parties, trade unions, youth organizations and others, united by the desire to strengthen the country.” The breadth of the scope then gave two options for the development of events: either the de facto establishment of an imitation of one-party system in the form of the reproduction of “popular fronts” a la the former socialist countries or Francoist Spain, or an attempt in this way to escape the association of “United Russia” with the term “party of swindlers and thieves” "

Subsequent events showed that no parties, even pro-Kremlin ones, wanted to dissolve into the “front”. And in practice, the “People's Front” has come down to two things: a demonstrative and unscrupulous deception about supposedly mass participation (it is not possible to call it a more decent word “entry” of entire enterprises without the consent of workers) and a pretext for new governors appointed en masse in recent years under the guise of “updates” to replace the henchmen of the previous leaders with their own confidants. One of the illustrative examples is the Sverdlovsk region: the “renewal” resulted in the replacement of “Rossel’s people” with “Misharin’s people.”

It is already quite obvious that the so-called “People's Front” does not solve any of United Russia’s image problems, turning into a pure imitation. Why is it needed then?

Taking into account the conclusions about the inevitable increase in the volume of electoral distortions for the vertical of power, only one explanation remains: the creation of a camouflage curtain explaining to citizens and the rest of the world how miraculously, against the backdrop of general electoral trends and sentiments, the announced result was achieved.

There is no doubt that traditional power propagandists with a smart look will then explain that it was the members and employees of the enterprises and organizations united in the “front” who unanimously decided to support it.