The Kremlin has been hoping that most Russians will take no interest in the election. The opposite may be happening
On the surface, the political field is entirely Mr Putin’s. The only parties allowed to run, including the Communists and Yabloko, an innocuous liberal outfit, have been sanitised by the Kremlin. With the media muzzled and repression and censorship the main tools of campaigning, the Kremlin-backed United Russia’s win is a given.
At the same time, the Kremlin is urging people, especially in Moscow where United Russia is particularly weak, to vote online, making it easier for the authorities to snoop on them and to control the process. It even appears to have hacked into the database of an online liberal media organisation, sending its readers a message telling them to boycott the elections.
The other half of the seats are first-past-the-post, so here the smart-voting team, using its own polling data and analysis, has endorsed the likeliest candidate to beat the United Russia one, regardless of their views. Its main aim is to deprive United Russia of a big majority, and so weaken its control over electoral commissions across Russia. That would allow more leeway to the opposition in places where it is relatively strong, such as Khabarovsk, in the far east.
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