Oksana Goncharenko, leading expert with the Center for Current Politics in Russia.
The main feature of the legislature elections held March 11 was the open opposition between the two “administrative parties” - United Russia and Just Russia. Results showed that United Russia sustained dominating status on the regional level, whereas Just Russia achieved the top-priority goal – advertise and boost awareness of its brand. On the other hand, Mironov’s followers so far failed to accomplish the mission to position the party in the leftist wing during this campaign. The Just Russia’s core voters are still few, I believe not more than 10%. The votes that the party got over this percentage may be attributed to specific situation in each separate region, namely, outflow of communist voters.
As for SPS, this party looked well against the background of Yabloko. Due to specific features of this election campaign, the parties had different strategies. SPS was trying to tune cooperation with local governments, refraining from heavy criticizing. This party’s campaign was expensive and did help SPS’s candidates to get into legislatures in five regions. However, the general picture is not too good: average percentage was 6.86%, below the 7% minimum that is.
The content of the rightists’ campaign was typical and filled with “social slogans.” In theory, candidates of SPS repeated what United Russia, Just Russia, and party KPRF had claimed, showing that all liberalism had evaporated. It is far too early to guess whether SPS gets into the State Duma. There is still enough time before the general election and it is still unclear, how well will the Union balance on the edge of the 7% barrier. In case the Civil Force, for instance, stirs up, it ma spoil things for SPS, as a result of which none of the two will get into the parliament. As for Yabloko, this organization shows tendency toward radicalization and movement to the periphery. The party’s chances to get into the Duma are minimal. Although at the same time, the Yabloko’s efforts may mobilize liberal electors, potential voters for the rightists, which may have a negative effect for the SPS’s outlook. From this standpoint, odds are for no rightists in the next State Duma.
United Russia dot good results in the election. In the future, regional administrative resource will be used to calm competition between United Russia and Just Russia. The recent race showed that hot fight of the two parties results in third forces winning. These traditionally opposition players stay away from the fighting and thus get a chance to enjoy better support. In this case, these third forces are the communists and LDPR. Elections in St. Petersburg demonstrated this clearly. The communists, who had kept clear of the competition between the two parties, got 16% of votes, which is a very high result for St. Petersburg. KPRF had estimated that they would get from 10 to 12%, whereas the result was better exactly because the party had stayed out of the conflict, hadn’t interfered or discredited its image resorting to scandalous stunts. That is why the administrative resource in the regions will be used to calm the opposition between the two parties to prevent repeating of the mistakes.
Mass media reported several times that elections to legislatures had been the general rehearsal before the general election. I would refrain from such speculations. In several cases, influence of the regional peculiarities was more serious than that of general federal trends. That is why I would not take the job of using the recent elections’ results to predict the federal campaign. Several key regions with significant resources were not involved in these elections. Besides, the federal mass media did not take a full part in the race. Many results of the voting, including the United Russia’s results, were determined by how strong the regional administration was, how consolidated the regional administrative resource was, and how split the elites were. The thing is, relatively bad performance of United Russia in some regions are attributed to the fact that governors’ resources were not strong enough. That is why one should not project results of these elections on the general election.
Source: Kreml.ORG, March 15, 2007
