No Yardstick

A week ago, I looked at regional electoral data to find out what these suggest about the electoral chances of United Russia in this year’s legislative election. I concluded that even with a popularity of under 30 percent nation-wide the party can preserve its two-thirds constitutional supermajority due to single-mandate districts with a first-past-the-post system and widespread election rigging. I added, however, that Alexey Navalny’s “smart voting” scheme risked upsetting this strategy, by forcing the authorities either to make concessions towards the parties of the “systemic” opposition or to commit significantly more egregious rigging, which in turn raises the risk of protests. Below I am taking a deeper dive into single-mandate districts and recount three stories from the past week that I think illustrate very well the concerns of the Kremlin. Bear with me, at the end of it Navalny will get another mention.