Summary
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's landslide re- election, many commentators and government officials offered scathing indictments of electoral irregularities, and some even pronounced Russian democracy dead. While no doubt well-deserved, these criticisms deflected our attention from the results of the election, which were entirely consistent with the tremendous public support for Mr. Putin reflected in numerous polls throughout the past two years. Mr. Putin's sustained approval rating of 70 percent may not point to a mandate for every policy the Russian president has enacted, but we owe it to Russia's voters to try and make sense of Mr. Putin's landslide victory. What follows is not intended in any way as a defense of Mr. Putin or the tactics used by the Kremlin to ensure his landslide victory. It is, however, intended as a defense of the sentiments and voices of the most important actors in Russian politics: the Russian people.
For starters, it is worth noting that many of the irregularities that marred the elections were geared not toward ensuring Mr. Putin's victory, but toward ensuring sufficient turnout to make the election results valid. This reflected a very real fear that voters may not bother to cast their ballots given that Mr. Putin held such a commanding lead in pre-election polls. This was hardly an unreasonable fear given that lower turnout tends to be the rule in established democracies where the likely victor is already known. In the 1996 U.S. presidential elections, with Bill Clinton poised to win a significant victory, voter turnout was the lowest it had been over the past two decades, with less than 50 percent of the voting- age population turning out to vote in as many as 25 states.See the full content of this document
Extract
Putin's Big Win ; What It Does and Doesn't Say
In the 2004 Russian elections, even as we criticize the Kremlin's heavy-handed tactics and administrative bullying, we need to direct at least part of the blame at the requirement, stipulated by the Russian Constit...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
