Social media monitoring report for week twelve (1–7 September) of the election campaign for the elections of deputies to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the ninth convocation, scheduled for 20 September 2026
The “Atlas of Elections” project continues its weekly social media monitoring programme during the State Duma election period. We track the online activity of election participants.
The results of the social media monitoring are published weekly.
During the week of 1–7 September, 136,921 posts were analysed. The main topic of the week was the fate of CPRF candidate Nikolai Bondarenko: his appearance in the TV debates on 1 September and the annulment of his registration on 7 September. Other notable events this past week included Vladimir Putin’s meeting with the five leaders of the United Russia federal list, the death in the combat zone of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s former aide known for the “Safonov, pay up!” meme, and continuing reports of public-sector employees being coerced into participating in remote electronic voting.
Key findings
The week was defined by the Nikolai Bondarenko case: on 1 September his sharp performance in the debates hosted by Solovyov was shared in dozens of clips on YouTube and MAX, and on 7 September the CEC annulled his registration — the formal grounds being a fine that had come into force for the public display of extremist symbols. The news of the annulment became the most-viewed post of the week (2.83 million views), while the clip of the debates themselves drew even more — 2.89 million.
Interest in the election topic continues to decline: the number of posts fell by 18.7%, views by 6.1%, and engagement by 4.9%. The drop in posts significantly outpaces the drop in views and engagement — meaning there is less content, but what remains attracts more attention on average than a week earlier, thanks to several genuinely resonant storylines.
United Russia’s number of posts fell sharply, while engagement, conversely, rose by 14.1% — a rare combination for the party. The reason is not campaigning but the fact that on 5 September Vladimir Putin met with the five leaders of the party’s list and backed several specific proposals — from subsidised mortgages for large families to allowing volunteers with a non-conscription health category to take part in defending regions against drones.
The LDPR’s views and engagement fell more markedly than the party’s other indicators, and a significant portion of its reach continues to rest not on organic interest but on a network of nearly two hundred regional VKontakte pages that reproduce verbatim a single address by Leonid Slutsky about management companies — with a reach of 8.6 million views, the network garnered only around 11,000 reactions and comments across all pages.
New People grew the fastest — largely due to the resonance generated by party candidate Alexander Zitser’s remarks during the debates that leadership positions should not be handed out to participants in the special military operation under quotas without regard to qualifications: the statement spread through third-party channels and drew noticeably more reactions than the party’s own posts on other topics.
The smaller parties show divergent dynamics: the Party of Direct Democracy and the Greens continued to grow, albeit from a very low base, while Rodina, Communists of Russia and the Pensioners’ Party declined on almost all indicators. Taken together, the five smaller parties still account for no more than 4% of the weekly volume of posts.
Number of mentions
In the twelfth week of the campaign (1–7 September), 136,921 mentions of parties were recorded, almost 19% fewer than a week earlier. Most parties showed a decline: United Russia — down 30.6% (from 49,770 to 34,528), A Just Russia — down 19.3% (from 71,768 to 57,883), Rodina — down 28.9% (from 2,415 to 1,718), Communists of Russia — down 23.9% (from 1,366 to 1,039), the Pensioners’ Party — down 25.5% (from 1,026 to 764), the CPRF — down 10.2% (from 16,628 to 14,940), the LDPR — down 8.8% (from 19,611 to 17,881); only New People (+38.6%, from 4,874 to 6,754), the Greens (+25.0%, from 925 to 1,156) and the Party of Direct Democracy (+155.4%, from 101 to 258) grew.
A Just Russia leads in the number of mentions (57,883, 42.3% of all posts for the week) — almost exclusively due to the network of regional VKontakte pages (more detail in the “Distribution of posts by platform” section). In second place is United Russia (34,528), followed by the LDPR (17,881), the CPRF (14,940) and New People (6,754). The remaining five smaller parties together produced 4,935 posts, accounting for 3.6% of the total volume.
For the LDPR, Leonid Slutsky’s own channel produced at least 10 posts over the week with a reach ranging from 82,300 to 645,500 views: the greatest resonance was generated by the address “Four years living under a leaking roof is an outrage” about a specific case in Tver Oblast (645,500 views, 1,760 reactions), while the call to equate rights in “Gosuslugi Avto” to the original document also gained notable reach (398,700 views).
Views
Total views amounted to 211.27 million — this figure is 6.1% lower than a week earlier. Views rose for the Party of Direct Democracy (+600.5%, from 107,500 to 753,200), New People (+80.2%, from 11.02 to 19.86 million), the CPRF (+7.9%, from 35.97 to 38.80 million) and the Greens (+14.5%, from 2.11 to 2.41 million); they fell for the LDPR (-18.4%, from 75.48 to 61.57 million), Rodina (-42.6%, from 9.96 to 5.72 million), A Just Russia (-19.3%, from 23.88 to 19.28 million), Communists of Russia (-23.3%, from 7.17 to 5.50 million) and United Russia (-3.4%, from 57.75 to 55.80 million); the Pensioners’ Party’s figure remained almost unchanged (-3.8%, to 1.58 million).
The main storyline of the week is the Nikolai Bondarenko case. On 1 September, during the debates on the Rossiya 1 television channel, his exchange of remarks with State Duma Deputy Speaker and United Russia member Pyotr Tolstoy was shared in dozens of clips regardless of how the posts were tagged by party: the recording of the debates on the “Krasny Temnik” channel garnered 2.89 million views.
A week later, on 7 September, the CEC annulled Bondarenko’s registration as a candidate for the State Duma. The grounds were a ruling of the Oktyabrsky District Court of Saratov that had come into force, under which Bondarenko was found guilty on 21 August under Part 1 of Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation (propaganda or public display of extremist symbols) and fined 1,000 roubles. The decision to annul was voted for by 12 CEC members, with one voting against (the CEC member from the CPRF). The news of the annulment became the most-viewed post of the week: on the PostNews channel — 2.83 million views, on “Topor Live” — 487,000.
For United Russia, the main source of views was not its own campaigning but Vladimir Putin’s meeting on 5 September with the five leaders of the party’s federal list: Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Sobyanin, Yevgeny Poddubny, Maria Lvova-Belova and Vladislav Golovin. At the meeting, war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny asked the president to allow volunteers with a non-conscription health category “D” (not subject to conscription, including due to severe chronic illnesses: schizophrenia, late-stage HIV infection, metastatic cancer, etc.) to be engaged in defending regions against drones — Putin supported the initiative.
Maria Lvova-Belova proposed lowering the rate on subsidised mortgages for large families and introducing a benefit for them on the purchase of large vehicles — this proposal also received the president’s support.
Vladislav Golovin, Chief of the Main Staff of the All-Russian Children’s and Youth Military-Patriotic Public Movement “Yunarmiya” and a United Russia candidate in the federal top five on the list, made the top news this past week with his statement about narrowing the gap in teachers’ salaries between regions.
For the LDPR, the main contribution to the decline in views came from a network of roughly 199 near-identical posts on regional VKontakte pages featuring Leonid Slutsky’s address “Fed up with management companies? Turn to the LDPR” — 8.58 million views in total, but only around 11,000 reactions and comments across the entire network (more detail in the section on leaders’ statements).
For Rodina, the drop in views is linked to fewer resonant personal quotes from party leader Alexei Zhuravlev compared to the previous week, although the rhetoric about Ukraine’s capitulation and strikes on Germany’s military infrastructure continues. In the wording of his quotes circulated by third-party channels: “no ceasefires in negotiations, pound them to the last, only Ukraine’s capitulation” (“Bloknot Rossiya 18+”). After the nighttime drone strikes on Perm and Sevastopol: “Zelensky must be destroyed, we will find someone to negotiate with” (“Bloknot Rossiya 18+”). Zhuravlev’s own channel gained almost no direct reach — his statements spread almost exclusively through reprints by third-party news channels.
A separate topic of the week is the death in the combat zone of Alexander Safonov, a former aide to LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, known from the viral video “Safonov, pay up!”. Safonov had been serving under contract since 2022, spent four years in the special military operation zone, took part in the battles for Konstantinovka, sustained a severe shrapnel wound and died in hospital on 28 August at the age of 35. His death was reported by former State Duma deputy from the LDPR Vasily Vlasov.
For New People, the main reach was generated by State Duma candidate Alexander Zitser’s appearance in the debates: he stated that the party opposes mandatory quotas under which participants in the special military operation would be appointed to leadership positions without regard to their qualifications. In his words, these positions should primarily be held by professionals. The post by “Pryamoy Efir” garnered 333,300 views, Readovka — 441,400.
Engagement
Aggregate engagement fell to 3.67 million — almost 5% compared to the previous week. On average, each remaining post began to attract more reactions than a week earlier. United Russia grew (+14.1%, from 1.12 to 1.27 million), New People (+128.4%, from 180,500 to 412,100), Communists of Russia (+59.8%, from 114,700 to 183,300), the Greens (+54.3%, from 23,500 to 36,300) and the Party of Direct Democracy (+630.1%, from 2,600 to 19,100); the LDPR fell (-40.3%, from 1.02 million to 607,000), A Just Russia (-37.5%, from 266,000 to 166,300), Rodina (-44.0%, from 223,300 to 125,100), the Pensioners’ Party (-38.1%, from 32,800 to 20,300) and the CPRF slightly (-6.1%, from 875,500 to 821,800).
United Russia’s engagement also grew thanks to candidate Vladislav Golovin, who is part of the common portion of the party’s federal list and who put forward an initiative to improve the accessibility of cultural, creative and sports institutions for young people, including those with health limitations. The post garnered 19,300 reactions with 465,700 views — a markedly higher engagement-to-reach ratio than a typical news item about the party.
The LDPR’s drop in engagement is explained by the structure of its reach: a significant portion of the party’s 61.57 million views came from the template network of pages with Slutsky’s address about management companies, which elicits almost no reactions, as mentioned above. However, the party’s top posts also include posts in the official Yabloko public page, which mentions that a series of single-mandate candidates are being removed following lawsuits by the LDPR.
For Rodina and A Just Russia, the decline in engagement goes hand in hand with the decline in views, meaning it is not linked to a change in the composition of posts.
For the CPRF, despite the Bondarenko case, engagement fell less sharply than the number of posts and views — a clip from the debates hosted by Vladimir Solovyov on the “League of Free Nations” channel drew notable engagement (693,400 views, 19,800 reactions).
Distribution of posts by platform
VKontakte’s share fell from 62.3% to 55.4%, Telegram’s share rose from 25.0% to 27.8%, MAX — from 11.6% to 15.0%, YouTube — from 1.1% to 1.9%. The growth in YouTube and Telegram’s share is partly linked to the fact that the Bondarenko case and Putin’s meeting with the United Russia top five spread primarily through video and Telegram channels, rather than through VKontakte posts.
The network of “A Just Russia — News [city]” pages continues to operate in the same form: this week 2,767 separate pages with the characteristic name were found, which explains why the party’s number of posts remains high (57,883) while engagement declines. No notable changes in this network compared to previous weeks have been recorded.
Administrative resource
State Duma deputy from the CPRF Alexei Kurinny warned that coercion to vote on 18 and 19 September is a criminally punishable act. According to his information, employees of public-sector and government-controlled organisations will be coerced into voting specifically on those days.
The Telegram channel “Vestnik Buri” reported, citing the outlet DOXA, that the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is requiring employees to register in the remote electronic voting system ahead of the State Duma elections.
The Telegram channel “Tsennosti.RF” wrote about reports from the ground according to which management is obliging public-sector employees to vote for United Russia and to send photo confirmation to the directorate — contrary to the principle of the secret ballot; the channel’s authors asked people to send screenshots of correspondence in the event of such pressure.
Methodology
Four platforms currently used by Russians were selected for conducting the social media monitoring: VKontakte, MAX, Telegram, YouTube. Unfortunately, we are unable to set up effective monitoring of Odnoklassniki and Instagram, which could affect the overall data.
The analysis used mentions of the 11 parties that have the right to nominate lists and candidates without collecting voter signatures: United Russia, the CPRF, the LDPR, A Just Russia, New People, Yabloko, Communists of Russia, the Party of Direct Democracy, Rodina, the Pensioners’ Party, and the Greens.
We analysed posts on each platform and were interested in the following indicators:
the number of mentions (posts) on social media broken down by political party,
the number of mentions broken down by platform,
engagement (reposts, reactions, activity in comments),
duplicate posts, which very often indicate centralised distribution of materials,
key topics,
use of administrative resource.