According to an exit poll conducted by the Vesna and Progress groups, support for United Russia at overseas polling stations was several times lower than the party’s preliminary result inside Russia. Volunteers collected more than 8,000 questionnaires at polling stations in 17 countries.
This was reported by The Moscow Times.
In Belgrade, 0.4% of respondents said they had voted for United Russia, compared with 0.7% in the Netherlands, 1.5% in Warsaw, 2.2% in Germany and 4.3% in France. The party’s highest result among the published figures was in Oslo, where it received 6.75%.
At every overseas polling station where exit poll results were published, New People came first.
Around 63% of respondents in Belgrade said they had voted for the party, compared with 57% in The Hague, 49% in Prague, 39% in France and 37% in Berlin. New People’s lowest result among these countries was recorded in Oslo at 28.8%.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation came second in most countries. It received 23% in Belgrade and 17% in Berlin.
Results abroad differ sharply from Russia’s official figures
According to preliminary data from Russia’s Central Election Commission, after 96.95% of protocols had been processed, United Russia had 57.83% of the vote. The Communist Party had 13.76%, the Liberal Democratic Party 9.01%, New People 7.96% and A Just Russia 5%.
The overseas exit poll figures therefore differ significantly from the preliminary official results reported inside Russia.
The composition of exit poll respondents also varied from country to country. In Belgrade, for example, 63% of those surveyed had been living abroad for between two and four and a half years, while 93% said they did not trust the official election results in Russia.
In the United States, a larger share of respondents had been living abroad for more than five years. There, 23% said they trusted the official results.
EU says democracy in Russia is continuing to erode
The European Union said the State Duma elections held on September 18–20 took place amid a “deepening erosion of democracy” and an increasingly authoritarian political environment.
The EU statement also referred to the exclusion of Yabloko’s federal party list and the absence of OSCE observers. The bloc said sanctions could be imposed on those responsible for undermining the possibility of holding free and fair elections in Russia.
The EU also condemned Russia’s holding of so-called “elections” in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories and said it would recognize neither the vote nor its results.
