‘A well-designed simulation’

Kremlin insiders on how they think Russia’s upcoming presidential election will unfold

This weekend, Russians will head to the polls for yet another presidential vote with a practically predetermined outcome. Incumbent Vladimir Putin is expected to win by a record landslide — by more than 80 percent, to be exact. Kremlin officials have set this specific goal for themselves and believe they’re on course to achieve it, even in the face of war fatigue and backlash over the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. To find out more about the plans the Putin administration has laid for this weekend’s vote, Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke to sources on the inside. Here’s what they said.

The Kremlin believes Vladimir Putin’s reelection campaign has gone “more or less smoothly,” despite the ongoing war in Ukraine and recent protests in response to Alexey Navalny’s death. Two sources close to the Putin administration’s political bloc, which is responsible for running the elections, are confident that officials will be able to “hit their KPIs for the president.”

The Kremlin plans for Putin to achieve a “record result” of 80 percent of the vote. According to official figures, Putin took home 76 percent in the last election in 2018. The latest poll from the independent research group Russian Field shows that the results this weekend are indeed expected to be higher: more than 81 percent of respondents intending to vote said they’ll support Putin.

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The runners-up

Sources close to Putin’s administration say that New People candidate Vladislav Davankov may come in second in the elections. After Russia’s Central Election Commission refused to register Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova as candidates, many Russian opposition figures called for people to vote for Davankov. Meduza’s sources say that initially, the administration had “some concerns” Davankov might “try to get additional votes [from the protest electorate],” but that in the end, everything turned out well and he didn’t “step out of line.”

Unlike Nadezhdin and Duntsova, who openly oppose the war, Davankov has been very careful with his words. “Would I like peace at any cost? No, I don’t align with that position,” he said at a campaign event in St. Petersburg in January. “It’s important to me that we settle the matter of the ‘special military operation’ and don’t pass it on to our children. As someone who’s worked in many countries, I don’t wish to fully disclose my position on the ‘special military operation.’”

The Kremlin isn’t “concerned” by Davankov’s current rating, sources told Meduza. The state-owned Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) puts him at six percent, and Russian Field at 7.4 percent. Putin’s administration is confident the final figures won’t differ significantly and finds these numbers acceptable.

A close acquaintance of Davankov’s, who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity, said that internal data from the politician’s campaign headquarters also showed him in second place, but there are concerns voters may not remember the name of a candidate who, until recently, was relatively unknown. However, the acquaintance confirmed that closed focus groups show many Russians view Davankov as a “candidate for peace.”

As Meduza previously reported, the Kremlin initially planned for Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of Russia’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), to win second place in the upcoming presidential election. The Putin administration’s political bloc has long hoped the LDPR will overtake the Communist Party as the informal “second-place” party in the country.

Slutsky himself was eager to come in second in the election so as to strengthen his own position within the LDPR. However, despite the best efforts of his campaign headquarters, his rating never rose: according to VTsIOM’s polls, Slutsky’s rating dipped from four percent to two percent in February, before rising to three percent at the beginning of March.

“Second place already seems unattainable,” a source close to Putin’s administration admitted to Meduza. A source in the LDPR concurred. This doesn’t come as a surprise, however. Kremlin insiders expressed their doubts about Slutsky’s potential as a charismatic figure early on.

Slutsky already understands that second place, and possibly even third, is out of reach for him, said a source close to the Putin administration. According to Russian Field’s latest poll, Communist Party candidate Nikolai Kharitonov is likely to come in third. Kremlin insiders admit that Kharitonov can count on four to seven percent of the vote but say this is only due to the party’s core base, which has voted for the Communists for years, regardless of the candidate. The Putin administration views Kharitonov’s personal campaign as “very weak.” Indeed, over the last few months, Kharitonov has only garnered attention for his very strange interviews and even stranger campaign videos.

The opposition

As Meduza previously reported, officials in the Kremlin’s political bloc viewed Alexey Navalny’s death as “a very negative development” for Putin’s reelection campaign. Sources among the “Russian elites” called the lines of thousands waiting to pay their respects at the politician’s grave a “necessary evil.” However, the Kremlin doesn’t think all this will have a significant impact on the elections. Referencing a Levada Center poll, a source close to Putin’s administration said that fewer than 20 percent of Russians experienced “negative emotions” over Navalny’s death.

According to Meduza’s sources, the Kremlin also doesn’t consider the “Noon Against Putin” initiative to be a serious problem. Russian opposition figures are calling on everyone who opposes Putin to go to the polls at exactly 12:00 p.m. on March 17, and vote for any other candidate. However, the Kremlin doesn’t think this will lead to large-scale protests. “Maybe there will be something noticeable at some polling stations in Moscow, or in some other city with a population of millions, but across Russia as a whole — no,” said one source. “And anyway, would it surprise anyone that there are a few hundred, or even thousands, of opposition supporters in a city [of that size]?”

The Kremlin remains confident that the initiative won’t have any noticeable impact on the election’s key indicator: Putin’s percentage of the vote. According to the Putin administration’s plans, any of the opposition’s efforts should be offset by votes from civil servants and employees of large state-affiliated companies, as well as by remote electronic voting (the results of which, as Meduza has reported, are easy to falsify and nearly impossible to verify).

A political strategist working with Putin’s administration characterized the election campaign as a “well-designed simulation” which, in his opinion, will lead to voting results that roughly “correspond to the general mood of Russians.”

A source close to the Kremlin agrees with him: “So far everything is going calmly — maybe even boringly. But thank God for that. We’ll get the numbers, and both those involved and those not involved in getting them will receive rewards. Many [Russians] will be satisfied, many will feel indifferent, and a few will feel disappointed.”

Reporting by Andrey Pertsev