Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections^*

Volatility in Electoral Support for United Russia: Cross-Regional Variations in Putin’s Electoral Authoritarian Regime

“…[ Table 1 about As has been demonstrated by many scholars, regions with a larger share of non-Russians and a larger share of rural inhabitants will exhibit higher levels of support for UR which, is a result of the more effective administrative mobilization of the electorate in these regions (Panov and Ross 2016, see also Moraski and Reisinger 2003;Frye, Reuter and Szakonyi 2016;Golosov 2013;White 2016).…”

“…Whilst the Russian party system was highly fragmented and volatile during the Yeltsin era (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000), by the middle of the 2000s an electoral authoritarian regime had been established under Putin, and the Kremlin's "party of power", United Russia (UR) had emerged as the dominant party (see Gel'man 2006, Reuter 2010, Reuter and Remington 2009, Ross 2011a. In 2003In , 2007 and 2016 UR won over two thirds of the seats in the Duma (a constitutional majority), and it gained a majority of the seats in 2011. Likewise, UR gained control over almost all of the regional assemblies, and the vast majority of regional governors are members of the party.…”

The range and limitation of sub-national regime variations under electoral authoritarianism: The case of Russia

“…Moreover, 'because no other party, except the ruling one, is allowed to effectively compete … the dominant candidate or party wins overwhelmingly, leading to a de facto one-party state' (ibid). In Russia, electoral authoritarian regimes have been instigated at both the centre and in the regions but there are important variations in the levels of support for United Russia, and in the degrees of contestation in regional assemblies (see Golosov 2012;Panov and Ross 2013;Reisinger and Moraski 2010;White 2016).…”

The dynamic nationalisation of voting for United Russia: the stability / instability of regional deviations from national results

“…The current 85 federal subjects vary widely in the size of their territories and populations, and their socio-economic status and ethnic composition (Ross 2011a). The regional dimension of voting for United Russia has been examined by many scholars (Marsh, Albert, and Warhola 2004;Clem 2006;Moraski 2009, 2010;Panov and Ross 2013;White 2015White , 2016. There are also important regional variations in electoral and party politics and in the types of political regimes which operate in the regions, which range from "competitive" to "hegemonic" authoritarian (Panov and Ross 2013).…”

“…A review of the most recent literature on regional voting in Russia demonstrates that regions with a larger share of non-Russians and a larger share of rural inhabitants exhibit higher levels of support for UR (Golosov 2013;Frye, Reuter, and Szakonyi 2014;Panov and Ross 2016;White 2016). Thus, for example, in her study of the impact of ethnicity and voting for UR, White has demonstrated that districts with greater proportions of non-Russians were "robust sources of support" for UR in the Duma elections of 2003-2011.…”