Russian legislative election, 2007

The parliamentary election in Russia in 2007 was held on 2 December 2007. It was over the 450 available seats in the Duma ( Gossudarstwennaja Duma ), the lower house of the Russian parliament, the matched.

Strongest force was by far the president near Russia party. The turnout was reported to be 63%. To a place in the Parliament who applied eleven parties. Three smaller parties did not receive the approval of the Central Election Commission because it did not meet the formal requirements.

In Chechnya, also a constitutional referendum was held on the same day.

• 3.1 President fidelity parties
• 3.2 Opposition forces

Election result

On 8 December, the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation published the official results:

Represented in the Duma are therefore:

• ER: 315
• CPRF: 57
• LDPR: 40
• GR: 38

Election law changes ahead

Between the parliamentary election in 2003 and 2007 a ​​number of legislative changes have been made, which had the goal after presentation of Russian governance to consolidate the party system. The formation of political parties was complicated, and the conditions for entry into the Duma were more difficult.

Changes to the electoral law

For the 2007 election, the electoral system was changed to an exclusive system of proportional representation. Until the election of 2003, half of the seats in the Duma was a direct constituencies (Russian одномандатные округи ) forgiven.

The hurdle for representation in parliament was raised from five to seven percent. The electoral law provides, however, that the second largest party feeds in each case to the parliament, even if they should reach less than 7% of the vote.

Another change was the abolition of the minimum turnout, which had until then located at 25 %. Furthermore, the possibility was abolished to vote " against all " - a highlight of the Russian electoral law.

Amendment to the Law on Political Parties

In addition to the election law and the party law was changed in the previous legislature. This amendment included, among other things, to increase the minimum number of members from 10,000 to 50,000. The new rules led to the dissolution of a number of smaller parties, including the Republican Party of the State Duma member Vladimir Ryzhkov. However Ryzhkov challenged the legality of the resolution and contrast, brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Electioneering

President fidelity parties

As loyal to Putin apply in addition to United Russia, the right-wing populist LDPR, the Just Russia party, founded in the fall of 2006 and the party also newly established civil power.

The survey results indicated from the beginning to the fact that United Russia would retain its dominant position in the Duma. By September 2007, the election predictions of the quasi-state polling institute VTsIOM for United Russia gave a vote share between 45 and 50 %. During the months of October and November, the poll numbers of United Russia increased even further. On 1 October 2007, President Putin announced to compete as a top candidate for United Russia and to face in case of a clear election victory, possibly as prime minister available. In the following weeks, Putin spoke out repeatedly for the United Russia party. This in turn campaigned intensively with the support of the President and declared the election a " referendum in support of Putin ". The poll ratings of the party then went to over 60%.

The second president explicitly loyal Just Russia party brought this development in a difficult position, as they could not advertise with the support of the President, and they had now brought any criticism of their opponents, United Russia in opposition to their declared support for the president. The survey results of Just Russia, which had still been in September fell 14% until November to 7%

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDPR party made ​​inter alia by attention to himself that she had received the suspected by the British prosecutor Andrei Lugovoi of murdering businessman on the second place of their party list. The forecasts for the vote share of the party fluctuated constantly between 7 and 9 %.

Opposition forces

The only opposition party that, according to the poll projections could hope to skip the 7- percent threshold was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Your poll numbers were first at almost 16 %, but fell in November to about 12%

The liberal parties Yabloko and SPS remained in all forecasts well below the 7 percent threshold. The highest approval ratings reached the PLC, in the meantime an election result of 5.2 % has been forecast by the pollster VTsIOM. In the course of the election campaign, they intensified their criticism of governance. Thus, for example, the PLC party decided to participate in the activities organized by more radical opposition forces marches Nichteinverstandenen. Critics accused the PLC before populism because they made ​​a strong shift to the left with its election manifesto. Because of holding the party in leading figure Nemzows some regional leaders of the party have boycotted the election campaign.

In the context of some demonstrations there were short-term arrests of several opposition politicians. Garry Kasparov, one of the organizers of the protests was subsequently convicted of organizing an unsanctioned demonstration to five days in prison. But he himself did not personally participate in the election. The Russian Foreign Ministry justified the arrests so that the protesters had tried after a rally allowed to perform an unauthorized street parade.

Criticism of the conduct of the electoral

The opposition parties KPRF, Yabloko and SPS, all recorded heavy losses compared to the last election, nor announced on election night that they would challenge the election result by judicial process. The PLC refused to repay what they would be required because of the officially lower than three percent of the vote outcome, the state election campaign support. Representatives of the KPRF declared that it would contemplated within the party, not to stand officially reached mandates so as to force new elections. The Communists suspect about half of their votes to have been cheated.

Prior to the election, there was also come to a conflict between the OSCE and the Russian authorities, as a result, the OSCE decided to cancel the planned deployment of election observers. The Co- delegated by the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization observer could not detect any irregularities. The OSCE and the Council of Europe EUR, however designated the election as unfair and not in accordance with the European standards. Member of the Bundestag Christian Kleiminger (SPD ), who observed as a member of the delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE PA ), the Parliamentary Assembly of the choice of this designated subsequently having regard to the economic and human superiority of "United Russia" as unfair. The opposition had no real opportunities.

As an example of the adopted in different regions of electoral fraud, the result is usually called in Chechnya, where with a voter turnout of 99%, a remarkable 99% of the vote went to the United Russia party, which, according to Chechen NGO activists the influence of the Putin - impaired President Kadyrov would have to owe.

Internet news services reported, striking changes in voter lists. So it was in July 2007, officially 107.062 million eligible voters, just before the general election, this number rose to 109.146 million, while it was officially back to the 2008 presidential election with 106.999 million less voters. While the Central Election Commission declared these differences with an update of voter lists, critics suspect that before the parliamentary elections, the official number of electors was increased, as the absolute number of votes a decision on the allocation of seats. In order for the presidential elections in which, in contrast, the percentage share of votes decides to achieve a high turnout, the number of electors had been reduced again.