Results of the year: “United Russia” retained the constitutional majority in the State Duma
Voting in the elections to the State Duma turned out to be not as intriguing as new items and preparations for the election campaign in 2021. The goal of the ruling party, Secretary of the General Council of United Russia, Andrei Turchak, said back in November 2019: “We can be called a party of the Putin community only on one condition – if we set ourselves ambitious goals for 2021, our goal is 301 [мандат из 450] a plus “. United Russia received 324 mandates.
Neither Putin nor party chairman Dmitry Medvedev topped this list. It was led by five leaders: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, chief physician of the Kommunarka hospital Denis Protsenko, head of the Sirius center Yelena Shmeleva and children’s ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova. Only Kuznetsova took the mandate, and another United Russia member, Vyacheslav Volodin, remained the speaker of the State Duma.
There is only one Duma novelty in 2021 – the New People party, which received 13 mandates. She was in the system in 2020. Alexey Nechaev, the owner of the cosmetics company Faberlic, became its leader, and he also headed the faction in the State Duma. Representatives of the non-systemic opposition did not participate in the elections. Under the new law, people involved in extremist organizations do not have the right to participate in elections – and this is how all structures of Alexei Navalny were recognized (and banned).
This was the first federal election in a pandemic. It was she who motivated changes to the legislation. For the first time, during a major campaign, remote electronic voting (DEG) was used – it took place in seven regions. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation did not recognize the results of the online elections in the capital, since in the “traditional” voting the result of the party’s candidates was higher. In December, the deputies submitted to the State Duma a bill on the procedure for conducting a DEG, which will allow it to be preserved in Moscow as well.
Another innovation in the Duma campaign was the holding of elections within three days. The introduction of this norm is also justified by the unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological situation. On the other hand, the observers complained about the lack of resources for the work during the entire period.
Now the time interval between the presidential and presidential elections has increased. Because of this role, this campaign election declined.
Among the unexpected results of the elections, one can name the success of the “New People” and the low results of the Liberal Democratic Party, which for the first time in many years yielded third place. “In the last electoral cycle, she tried to compete with the communists for second place,” recalls Makarenko. The positions of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia are becoming more and more vague, says political scientist Rostislav Turovsky. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, according to him, “was able to improve its position not at the expense of ideology, but used the status of the only major opposition party.”
The Kremlin managed to successfully solve a two-pronged task, Turovsky believes: “To keep the constitutional majority behind United Russia and to outline a trend towards renewing the party system – at the personal level, like renewal in factions, and at the party level, as the fifth parliamentary party appeared.”