Statistical analysis of elections in Kuban

Author: David Kankia, Member of the 'Golos' Movement Council, Chairperson of Krasnodar Krai regional branch

Sergey Shpilkin, an electoral analyst, has analyzed the 2021 voting results in the majority of cities and towns of the country. His analysis has covered 27 towns and stanitsas (villages) in Krasnodar Krai. This is a large and important array for reflection.

It is worth recalling that Mr. Shpilkin believes 889 thousand votes out of 1.7 million votes for United Russia in Kuban, in general, are anomalous, i.e., over half of the votes. On the one hand, the figures are terrible, but on the other hand, it was even worse in all previous elections in recent years.

'Anomalous votes' are those that do not fall into the normal mathematical distribution. This can result from direct falsifications, pressurized voting of the employees of state-owned enterprises, public institutions, and local authorities, and the use of an administrative resource. One may easily find a detailed description of Mr. Shpilkin's methodology online. ¹

Novorossiysk was expectedly the leader of made-up voting: 26 thousand normal votes against 81 thousand anomalous ones. For many years, Novorossiysk has been the conservation area for an administrative resource and criminality. Territorial election commissions blatantly make up voting results, and criminal cases are launched against those who oppose such actions.

Here and further - Chart on the left:
Vertical axis – number of votes in polling 
stations by 1% turnout intervals;
Horizontal axis – turnout.

Chart on the right:
Vertical axis – candidate result;
Horizontal axis – turnout.

The situation was slightly better in Sochi, where several dozen polling stations were rigorously observed by the local community. United Russia had 47 thousand genuine votes and 57 thousand made-up votes. Sochi also used criminal methods against observers: they were simply beaten in front of cameras and thrown out of the polling stations on September 19.

The Krai's (region’s) capital had the highest number of independent observers, and as a consequence, [only] 51,000 made-up votes were added to 103,000 genuine votes for United Russia. Most of the anomalous votes were due to pressurized voting of state employees in the morning of September 17 when there were hours-long queues at polling stations and due to home voting, which was also characterized by massive irregularities. Overall, the result of United Russia in Krasnodar was overestimated by 10% only, which is not much by Kuban standards.

And, of course, Yeisk, the 'democratic capital' of Kuban, stands out: 9 thousand genuine votes and only 1 thousand anomalous ones. Practically fair voting and 34% for the ruling party. Bravo, Yeisk citizens!

In most of the other rayons, the situation was rather awful: made-up votes constituted more than half of the result of United Russia. Details for each locality² can be found in the Shpilkin's charts (RU).

References:

¹ See, for example, description of the methods of electoral data analysis here (EN) - REM

² Analysis of data for the whole country may be found here (EN) - REM