Trick 2020

Will the Kremlin hold early parliamentary elections this year?

Let me ask an unexpected question: is Russia waiting for early parliamentary elections, for example, already in 2020, or at the beginning of 2021? The Kremlin has three arguments in favor of this scenario and one against.

The first argument is that September 2021 is too close to March 2024.

If everything goes “according to schedule”, the end of the parliamentary campaign from the beginning of the presidential one is separated in the best case by 24 months. Even for our rigid political system, which has completely lost its flexibility, this is an infinitely short time.

The parliamentary campaign will be tough. This is obvious to everyone. It will require a lot of resources. It will certainly raise a new wave of politicization, and as a result, protest activity. How it will look like in miniature, in the mode of a training race, everyone watched last summer at the elections to the Moscow City Duma.

It was only about 45 constituencies in the body, the existence of which the lion's share of voters only suspected. Authority within the same city. Cities, by Russian standards, super-prosperous. The average salary in which is twice higher than the national figure. Per capita budget expenditures exceed the closest pursuer - St. Petersburg - one and a half times. Cities with unified political management. Where all the attention of the federal leadership. Finally, there are the fantastic “gifts” for citizens that are possible only in Moscow: an extraordinary increase in the minimum pension by 2,000 rubles a week before the vote.

Such sacrifices (more than 3 billion rubles of additional expenses monthly) were not even made for the mayoral elections in 2018 - the last time they were required before the presidential elections.

Taking into account the greenhouse conditions, almost unlimited budgets, the deaf non-admission of the opposition, the complete rejection of the party brand, the result of the authorities is a conditional victory with the loss of 20 constituencies in favor of the Smart Voting candidates, some of whom literally hid from voters and the media and did not conduct any campaign .

At such a price, victory at the federal level, where there are 225 majoritarian districts and a list, is not scalable. And not because there is not so much money and fighters of the National Guard physically. And because there are 85 subjects of the federation, each of which has its own regional interest groups, each of which will rush to be a bride at this wedding.

Elections in the State Duma are a huge stress for the system as a whole. Both in terms of the very course of the campaign, and the results, and the public reaction to them. Leaving yourself an extra year, getting a full three years without big electoral campaigns, without federal elections, without sources of turbulence and protests, with a parliament already formed - that sounds like a good plan.

The second argument is that it won't get any better.

In the three years between 2016 and 2019, a lot has changed. Let me remind you that in 2016, in the elections to the State Duma, United Russia takes almost 38% of the party list in Moscow, 13 out of 15 single-mandate constituencies. In 2019, from a formal point of view, the party does not participate in the elections to the Moscow City Duma at all.

The Kremlin's electoral managers must understand that time is now playing in a foreign team, it is not their ally. Citizens' incomes are not growing, foreign policy, which until recently acted as cheap doping, is now annoying. Local protests from excesses become the background of the whole life of the country. May decrees, national projects do not help and will not help in the short term to solve the problems of either social injustice, or the continued plundering of the country, or the lack of economic growth and incentives, or the renewal of the political class and the admission of new people to power, or the growing inequality and despair as a consequence. From the current point of view, other things being equal, the election result in September 2021 will be worse than in 2020.

The third argument is that no one is ready.

To come to an agreement, develop common strategies, each to spin his own car: who is "Smart Voting", who is "Political Uber" - all this takes time. None of the significant opposition forces is ready for a big federal campaign in a few months.

Even by September 2021, it would be necessary to prepare yesterday. To build some kind of functioning structure in a year is a task on the verge of fantasy.

The opposition here will face the same challenge: the usual mechanics of local campaigns are not scalable to the federal level. We need to re-invent everything. Build a qualitatively different infrastructure. And one office for two dozen students, which could win the Moscow and St. Petersburg municipalities, is not enough to get into the State Duma.

The only argument "against" comes from the same introductory as all the arguments "for".

The parliamentary campaign will be very difficult and it will not be easy to prepare it in a year or even less. In addition, the postponement of the elections is a violation of the desired, comfortable, sacred for political systems of the Russian type, the status quo. It would probably be better to break this political band-aid sharply and right now. But who will dare?

One and a half years ahead. One and a half years you can not make any decisions. Just live day by day.

The argument, against the background of the rest, does not look very significant, but it does not lose value from this.