December 04, 2019, 00:00 / Politics

Only three parties can enter the next State Duma

Experts assessed the party's potential based on the regional elections of the last two years Elena Mukhametshina

United Russia may have only two opponents left in the next Duma / Ruslan Shamukov / TASS

If elections to the State Duma were held now, then United Russia could claim 42–45% of the votes in the party list voting. This is stated in the report “The Long Road to the Duma. Russian parties at the start of the double electoral cycle 2020–2021”, prepared by the Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Research (ISEPR) Foundation. Experts give their forecast based on an analysis of the results of voting on party lists during the regional and municipal elections of 2018–2019.

In total, during this period, 272 campaigns with mixed or purely proportional voting took place, which affected 53 regions with 39.34 million voters - this is 36.3% of the total number in Russia, the report says. Experts derived the average indicator of support for each party based on the absolute number of voters who participated in the elections and the absolute number of votes received by the party. This method of calculating the “average unique percentage” is the best tool for analyzing the state of the party system and the prospects for federal elections compared to the “average percentage per party” or ordinary electoral ratings, ISEPI head Dmitry Badovsky is sure.

According to these calculations, United Russia members in 2018–2019. took part in all 272 campaigns and received more than 8.3 million unique votes, or 51.42% of the number of voters (in the 2016 State Duma elections, the party received 54.2% of the votes according to party lists). But if we extrapolate these results to the federal district, then the United Russia figure would be slightly lower and amount to 42–45%, experts point out. This is due to the fact that in 2018–2019. elections based on party lists were more often held in regions favorable to United Russia, rather than in protest voting zones. The regional elections of 2020 will be indicative in this sense, Badovsky points out: “In 2019, United Russia performed better than in the crisis year of 2018, but next year it will have many difficult territories, and it is important to see how it will show itself there." Secretary of the General Council of United Russia Andrei Turchak previously said that the party intends to receive 40-45% of the votes from the lists in the 2021 State Duma elections.

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The top three included the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (18.02%) and the Liberal Democratic Party (12.53%). The communists’ result is almost 5 percentage points higher than in the 2016 elections, but if in 2018 the Communist Party of the Russian Federation lists won in 20 regional and municipal campaigns, then in 2019 – only in four. The LDPR, on the contrary, has a total result of 2018–2019. worse than in 2016 (13.14%), however, in federal elections, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s party, as a rule, performs better than in regional elections, Badovsky notes. United Russia usually has better results in regional elections than in federal ones, while the results of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are approximately the same.

The “unique percentage” of the fourth parliamentary party, A Just Russia, amounted to 7.68% (more than 1.2 million votes), which is slightly higher than in the Duma elections (6.22%). But this result was mainly achieved thanks to the federal protest wave of 2018, which helped the Right Russia party to enter 15 of 16 regional parliaments and improve results in most municipalities, the report says.

In addition, A Just Russia has seen a clear decline over the past two years, which is confirmed by opinion polls, experts say. Therefore, in their opinion, Sergei Mironov’s party is in a problem area in terms of overcoming the 5% barrier in 2021.

The authors of the report consider the Communists of Russia and the Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice, which received more than 4% of the votes according to the ISEPI method, to be the first contenders for entry into the Duma among non-parliamentary parties. Of the liberal parties, only Yabloko (2.9%) can compete for at least 3%, which gives the right to receive state funding, according to experts. And for the “Greens” (2.82%) the 2020 campaign will be important, when elections will be held in several regions with an environmental and waste agenda, such as the Komi Republic and the Chelyabinsk region.

“The ISEPI methodology is interesting, although its reliability can only be tested by time and the electoral statistics of 2021,” says the head of the Civil Society Development Foundation, Konstantin Kostin: “We must proceed from the fact that the turnout in the 2021 elections will be much higher than in local and regional in 2018–2019 The level of politicization on various issues will also increase even more.” It is also necessary to understand how victories in municipal and regional elections contributed to these indicators, the expert points out: United Russia performs most successfully in municipal elections. The people who vote for it are formed from the base and situational electorate of the party. But the question arises how higher turnout and its structure, as well as a high level of politicization, will correct these figures.” Kostin agrees with the forecast of 42–45% of votes on the lists, but stipulates that “such good indicators should not reassure anyone.” “A Just Russia,” in his opinion, if it does not reboot before the Duma elections, it will continue to be “in an existential situation,” because “they either have 5% or don’t.” “Pensioners” can be helped by the name of the party and the negativity from the pension reform; they clearly fall into the electoral group that suffered the most from the pension reform, the expert adds. As for the “Communists of Russia”, they were all teased with spoilers for a long time, but in conditions when the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are trying to be Eurosocialists and use less radical anti-capitalist and Stalinist rhetoric, the “Communists of Russia” receive additional votes at the expense of the electorate for whom this is important, Kostin summarizes.

In order to make comparisons with the same 2016, it is necessary to compare the results in the same regions that were taken in this study, political scientist Alexander Kynev believes: “That is, compare not generally with the results on a national scale, but take the same regions in 2016, then the dynamics will be clear.” United Russia has seen a decline in results in all regions over the past two years, the expert notes: “How much lower its result in the Duma elections will be than in 2016 will also depend on turnout. In 2016, there was the highest differentiation of regions in terms of turnout: it was ultra-low in large cities and regions of Siberia, the Urals, and the Far East, and in the regions that are base for the government it was traditionally ultra-high. Therefore, there was a big disproportion.” But in 2021, in anomalous regions there will be no place to increase turnout, so it will grow at the expense of protest regions, which voted inactively in 2016, and this will mean a general decrease in the result of United Russia, explains Kynev. The situation is not very good for “A Just Russia”, which in many regions was inferior to both “pensioners” and “Rodina”: “For the Socialist-Revolutionaries, everything is not as bad as in 2014, when they fell the most. But if the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has good growth compared to the same 2014, then the Socialist Revolutionaries have minimal growth.”