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| 29 октября, 2012

Kostin’s Foundation dispels rumours of a ‘falling electoral turnout’

'Izvestia' daily publication

The Foundation for the Development of Civil Society has revealed the secret of winning elections. It has also predicted the fall of the Socialists - and explains why the Liberal Democratic Party and Communist Party will retain their positions.

The Foundation was created by Konstantin Kostin, the former head of internal policy in the administration of the President. Their report offers their interpretation of ‘United Russia’s’ victory in the October elections in the regions and why the opposition was so weak.

Revenge of ‘United Russia’.

Experts from the Foundation unanimously found that ‘United Russia’ won the local elections and formed majorities in all the local offices. Its’ candidates for governor and mayor (Oleg Kozhemyako in the Amur region, Yevgeny Savchenko in Belgorod, Bryansk Nicholas Deneen, Sergey Mitin in Novgorod, Oleg Kovalev in the Ryazan region) won in the first round. Experts believe that such a good result contributed to Vladimir Putin declaring in March that he would stand for the presidential elections. These results, say the authors of the report ‘consolidated public opinion and restored trust in government institutions.

The opposition parties – the Communist Party, Fair Russia and the Liberal Democrat Party did not do so well. Foundation experts criticized them for their weak performance and their lack of drive to win. The report showed the Socialists came out worst with only 5.24% of the vote. (In the previous local elections in December, the Socialist Party received 17.03%.) The authors of the report blame conflicting internal factions: ‘the enthusiasm of some of the activists for pseudo-political activity and self styled PR stunts on Bolotnaya Square. This pushes both voters and sponsors away.’

The Foundation’s experts believe that The Communist Party and the Liberal Democrat Party will lose supporters under the onslaught of new parties but their position will hold fast. But for the Socialists the forecasts are not so encouraging; in fact the experts do not rule out complete collapse of the party.

Those parties who are not able to offer a new electoral platform (real slogans, initiatives and programmes) will not see success. Experts advise new parties to position themselves as the fair and sane alternative to the old parties.

At the same time the authors of the document noted the decline in protests during the October elections- even in those cities where the protest movement was steadily growing. And the success of leaders of the Bolotnaya movement was not nearly as great as expected because most of them chose to participate in the local elections for the Coordination Council.

Among non-parliamentary parties, Foundation experts considered the Patriots of Russia alone to have been successful in North Ossetia with 26.6% and RPR-Parnassus in Barnaul - with 5.44%. In some regions, the results of non-parliamentary parties come close to the result of the party heavyweights. For example, in the Penza region the Socialist Party gained 2.87%, and the "Communists of Russia" - 2.69%. In Yaroslavl the Green Party had a lot of support - 4.79% - more than the Liberal Democratic Party which had 3.73%.

Summarising the results of the elections for Governors, the Foundation concluded that the best option for incumbent governors would be to unite all important political powers in the region in a sort of ‘referendum of trust.’ This ‘referendum’ scenario has proved successful for the governors in the Amur and Bryansk regions.

Turnout.

Voter interest in regional and local political campaigns is certainly not high. Some politicians expect a surge in this area of politics because of the return to direct elections of governors and Foundation experts believe it is a mistake to think there will be a radical fall in turnout in regional elections.

One can only talk about a fall in turnout in those regions where previous elections – for governors, mayors and deputies – were held simultaneously with the elections to the State Duma and the presidential elections. Since the federal elections attract more voters, this contributes to the turnout at local elections held in parallel.

As the Foundation points out, the turnout is affected by the political weariness of the people - in less than one year the country has held both parliamentary and presidential elections.

This argument is confirmed by the Central Election Commission who say that the average turnout on October 14^th of this year was 42.02%. Three years ago the turnout in the regions was 40.25%. The peak in turnout in local elections in March 2011 was 47.07% so it seems there was no fall in turnout.

The Deputy Director of ‘The Voice’ Association, Gregory Melkonyants, partly agrees with the arguments of the Foundation experts on the average turnout. But they also claim that there is no reason to predict its increase on the second Sunday of September 2012 – the day of the vote.

The Head of the Institute of Contemporary Development, Igor Jurgens, insists that turnout is definitely falling.

He believes that the passive electorate – supporters of United Russia’ were ‘hammered’ in regional elections, and the active electorate don’t see any reason to vote because even before the elections all the ineffective governors were withdrawn and the Socialist and Yablokо parties had come to some sort of an agreement.