Statement on the Russian election 2026
21.09.2026
The elections to Russia’s State Duma (ninth convocation, 2026–2031), held from 18 to 20 September 2026, were the first parliamentary elections since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Although the 2021 parliamentary vote could hardly be described as free and fair, this year’s elections took place under fundamentally different conditions.
First, political competition had narrowed dramatically. This applied both to the number of parties taking part and to the number of candidates willing to run for office, amid the high risk of political persecution. Over the last five years, the number of party lists nominated has fallen by 27%, the number of candidates running in single-member constituencies by 25%, while the number of self-nominated candidates has more than halved. In 2026, for the first time, not a single party without the exemption from the signature-collection requirement even attempted to submit a candidate list.
Many of the candidates who nevertheless dared to challenge United Russia in single-member districts in 2026 were removed from the race during the campaign itself, mainly through administrative fines under “extremism” provisions and criminal cases over “fake news” and “discrediting the army”.
Second, the public sphere had contracted significantly compared to 2021. Wartime censorship has severely restricted the freedom of expression, while access to independent information has also narrowed. Virtually all independent media now operate from exile, their websites are blocked inside Russia and are generally accessible only via VPNs, whose use is itself increasingly restricted.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM 2026 CAMPAIGN
1. YABLOKO: THE ONLY SHORT-LIVED INTRIGUE
The episode with the Yabloko party, which unfolded in July-August, illustrated a common problem of authoritarian rule: the authorities’ declining ability to gauge public sentiment.
When the CEC authorised Yabloko’s participation in the election, it presumably expected the party to remain marginal. Over the previous two decades, Yabloko had been steadily losing support at the federal level, becoming a largely harmless force on the political periphery that operated within tightly prescribed boundaries. Yabloko last entered the State Duma in 1999, with just under 6% of the vote. In the 2018 presidential vote, party co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky won just over 1%. In the 2021 parliamentary election, Yabloko received 1.34% and lost state funding. In the 2024 presidential vote, the party did not nominate a candidate.
The non-systemic opposition accused Yabloko of being cosy with the Kremlin. At the same time, especially since 2025, Yabloko has faced mounting repression, with criminal and administrative cases effectively removing parts of its federal and regional leadership from electoral politics.
By registering Yabloko, the Kremlin appears to have underestimated the potential of anti-war sentiment in society. Public interest in Yabloko surged after its registration, reflected in sharply rising website traffic, internet searches and polling figures. Opposition politicians in exile also publicly backed the party.
Yabloko’s election programme, notably, contained just 40 words and no radical demands. Its entire text is “For peace and freedom! For a life without fear! For a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and peace! Our aim is to prevent a nuclear war! For a Russia free from fear and political repression! For the protection of human life, for respect, dignity and well-being! Our goal is a thriving, democratic Russia!”.
Yet in today’s Russia, even these slogans made Yabloko the only political force on the federal ballot openly opposing the war. Faced with the prospect of allowing the party several weeks of nationwide campaigning, and increasingly concerned about losing control over the campaign, the authorities disqualified Yabloko from running. A week later, Lev Shlosberg, Yabloko deputy chair, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
After the Supreme Court struck off its federal list on 10 August, Yabloko's only remaining chance was regional legislatures, where it had nominated lists in eight regions. The party managed to secure a seat in the Novgorod Regional Duma, surpassing the 5% threshold.
The story of Yabloko showed that Russian society contains a substantial group of voters capable of self-mobilising around virtually any political force that operates within the law and carries even the slightest charge of opposition — as was also seen in the 2024 presidential election.
2. MECHANISMS OF MASSIVE ELECTORAL MANIPULATION IN 2026 CAMPAIGN
2.1. VOTER COERCION
Administrative pressure and mobilization of public-sector employees remained the primary tool for inflating early turnout and securing predictable results. Through systematic monitoring and appeals, dozens of cases of coercion to vote were identified across state, educational and cultural institutions, as well as commercial enterprises. According to monitoring project Na Ravnykh, on the morning of the first voting day both the federal and the Moscow remote electronic voting systems switched to a "virtual queue" mode. Experts attribute this to the large number of public-sector employees pushed to vote and report the result back by midday. Na Ravnykh alone counted 74 such cases. The map of violations has reported about 217 cases of coercion and administrative abuse.
Coercion to vote was reported at major universities such as Sechenov University and Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, the Ural Federal University, as well as industrial and energy companies such as Lukoil, Rosseti and Unipro. Reports also came from employees of supermarket chains Magnit and Pyaterochka, hospitals and clinics, and cultural institutions, including the Hermitage Museum.
Compliance with pressure to vote at the workplace appears to be a deeply rooted pattern among the voters, and it is often driven less by political conviction than by everyday social mechanics. Fear of losing a job or facing informal penalties tends to outweigh any consideration of who ultimately receives the vote. Personal loyalty also seems to matter. Supervisors are themselves under pressure to deliver turnout figures upward, and employees often do not want to put them in trouble. Voting thus becomes a favour to a specific person rather than an expression of loyalty to the state. Many also assume that one vote changes nothing and that resistance would only create problems. As a result, coercion helps to deliver ballots for United Russia even without persuading voters to cast their votes for this party.
2.2. TURNOUT FALSIFICATION
Statistical analysis of election data revealed widespread anomalous patterns indicating the artificial inflation of turnout metrics. Electoral analyst Ivan Shukshin published charts showing artificially inflated turnout figures in election commission records across many regions. This method creates room on the final day of voting to add extra votes to selected candidates and parties. Shukshin identified abnormally high turnout in more than a dozen regions, from St. Petersburg to Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.
Applying statistical analysis to already existing data, electoral analysts seem to agree on two main findings: actual nationwide turnout was under 50%, which is below the CEC’s claimed figure of 59.3%, while United Russia’s real support on party lists stands at 35–42%, meaning the CEC’s reported 58% was inflated up to twofold.
2.3. BALLOT STUFFING AND MANIPULATIONS WITH OFF-SITE VOTING
Even in a political environment stripped of genuine competition, with turnout managed through unprecedented pressure on voters and manipulations with e-voting, election commissions in many regions still resort to ballot fraud. This ranges from straightforward ballot stuffing to more sophisticated “carousel voting” schemes.
At a polling station in Komi, observers discovered 48 ballots that had been pre-filled for United Russia. The scheme might have gone unnoticed had those responsible not made a sloppy mistake: one of the pre-filled ballots was handed to an actual voter, who reported the unexpected “find” to CPRF observers.
In Mari El, an election commission member stuffed two bundles of ballots into the ballot box directly in front of cameras broadcasting live from the polling station. A voter at a polling station in Voronezh stuffed a dozen ballots into the box, which was caught on a hidden camera. There can be little doubt that he had accomplices among commission members — as was also the case in a “carousel voting” scheme uncovered in Moscow.
Abnormal "home voting" was exposed in Leningrad region. At precinct election commission No. 967 in Kudrovo, election observers documented severe irregularities during portable box inspections: the voting boxes used to collect individual votes at home from elderly or immobile citizens were found stuffed with massive, perfectly neatly stacked piles of ballots. This illustrates a typical misuse of “home voting” procedures to inflate turnout and artificially boost regime vote totals in suburban districts.
In addition, election commissions were caught committing a range of smaller procedural violations, including opening safes containing ballots and failing to seal ballot boxes. Against the backdrop of large-scale manipulation, these violations look more like minor misconduct — or simply the result of incompetence. The map of violations reported about 1043 such irregularities.
It is important to note that the limited number of documented violations does not reflect their actual scale. Most likely, election commissions in many regions continued to engage in manipulation and procedural violations, but only a fraction of those made it into monitoring reports — largely because independent election observation has been systematically dismantled by the authorities over many years.
2.4. PRESSURE ON OBSERVERS AND FAKE OBSERVATION
As in previous elections, independent election monitoring was impeded. Authorities and local commissions systematically limited observers' access, restricted their line of sight, or removed them from polling stations using police and court orders.
On the first day alone, nearly 1,527 observers from the Communist Party (CPRF) and Yabloko were denied access to polling stations in Altai Region, Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Leningrad and Tyumen regions, as well as St. Petersburg and Moscow. Multiple observers were removed from polling stations by police or under court orders during all three days of voting. Election commissions restricted observers’ rights, primarily by placing them where they could not clearly see the ballot boxes. Such cases have been recorded in Perm, the Moscow Region and Saratov.
2.5. RESULTS OF ILLEGAL VOTING IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES CANNOT BE ASSESSED
As part of this campaign, Russia also staged “voting” in the occupied territories of Ukraine, in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The Russian Central Election Commission does not publish analysable data on the occupied territories of Ukraine, in particular on the so-called "DNR" and "LNR" and the occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. There will be no breakdown by polling station and, most likely, none by district either. This means that virtually any figures can be presented as the "result" of the vote, both for turnout and for the votes received by parties and candidates.
Most of the "votes" in the occupied territories were generated even before the official main voting days began. Early voting was conducted over several days (in some districts of the "DNR", from the end of August) by so-called "mobile teams". Election commission members went door to door, accompanied by armed Russian servicemen. “Voting” took place without up-to-date, verified voter lists. Passport data were entered into working sheets on the spot, which created conditions for mass repeat voting and for artificially inflated turnout, including through the unregistered local population and Russian military personnel. According to the CEC data, out of about 4.7 million “early voters” across the country, more than 4.4 million came from the front-line and occupied regions under martial law. Compared with the 2021 State Duma elections, this figure has increased many times over: about 225,000 people voted early then.
The occupied territories will be “represented” in the Russian State Duma by at least 11 single-district deputies: 3 from Donetsk, 3 from Crimea, 2 from Luhansk, and one each from Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Sevastopol.
