The elections on the single voting day of 2026 (SVD-2026) are, in every sense, a unique electoral event. Never before have parliamentary elections in Russia taken place under such difficult domestic and foreign policy circumstances.
Initially, it seemed that the election campaign would proceed in extremely lenient and favorable conditions for the authorities: the irreconcilable opposition has been crushed, its surviving leaders, as well as independent voices, have been pushed out of the country; the moderate opposition in parliament has passed numerous loyalty tests and participated in supporting both the authorities' pro-war actions and repressive, inhumane laws; law enforcement agencies control virtually all spheres of public life; and anti-extremist, discriminatory, and foreign-agent legislation leaves no chance for effective public criticism of the regime. Even before the start of the election campaign, the authorities had preemptively protected their candidates from competition by the least compliant and most popular communists, Yabloko members, and A Just Russia members in the regions. It seemed that complete and unshakeable control over the situation had been established, and the elections could hold no surprises. However, with the registration of the Yabloko party list, the situation suddenly spiraled out of control, and election administrators had to take extraordinary and emergency political measures to nevertheless achieve the initially set target of support for United Russia and its candidates.
Although the issue is not even solely about the specific results for United Russia and turnout figures — the main thing is to maintain, through the "party of power," absolute control over the State Duma (a constitutional majority) and to prevent uncontrollable politicians from entering parliament. Against the backdrop of the general politicization of ordinary citizens during these elections, the growth of protest sentiment and hidden discontent caused first by the registration and then by the removal of the Yabloko party and its candidates, and a certain radicalization of the communists, it appears that election administrators have found that inflated indicators of ultra-loyal voting, traditionally produced by the so-called Russian "electoral sultanates," are no longer sufficient.
To ensure the required result (a majority on party lists and victories for all agreed-upon candidates in single-member districts), it was decided to take some additional preventive measures on the eve of the voting, as well as to develop special electoral instruments — and to ensure their application on the voting days.
Electoral "administrative preparation"
As it appears, the main task was to eliminate any possibility of external oversight of the voting results in those regions that had been assigned the special mission of delivering the required outcome.
To achieve this task, under the pretext of ensuring security, the possibility of conducting early (advance) voting was introduced in 12 regions: the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts, Crimea, Sevastopol, Krasnodar Krai, and Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov oblasts. Moreover, it was organized in such a way that no unwanted observers could monitor its progress. Information about where and when it would be held was not always available. As a result, voting in the frontline regions was extended by another week or more. No candidate is able to prepare and mobilize a sufficient number of observers in advance for such a period. In those cases where this was nevertheless achieved, observers naturally ran into problems. The most egregious and unpleasant incident occurred in Rostov Oblast, where on 17 September, individuals in civilian clothes and balaclavas removed an observer from the Yabloko party, Boris Miklyukov, who was working at precinct No. 58 in the settlement of Yuzhny, Azov District, from the polling station and drove him a hundred kilometers away. Afterwards, his and his parents' phones and all equipment were confiscated, and he himself was fined 100,000 rubles under Part 3 of Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for a comment on social media.
As a result, by the first day of voting on 18 September, turnout in these 12 regions was: in the DPR — over 74%; in Bryansk Oblast — over 54%; in Zaporozhye Oblast — over 52%; in Kherson Oblast — over 47%; in Sevastopol — over 38%; in Kursk Oblast — over 25% of voters; in Krasnodar Krai — about 22%; in the LPR — about 28%. There is no doubt that we will see ultra-loyal voting results at these precincts.
New restrictions on video surveillance were introduced by the CEC of Russia on the eve of voting day under the pretext of protection against unauthorized access. Access for candidates is now only possible from special centers, meaning they have effectively been deprived of the last opportunity to independently organize video surveillance, which, one can be sure, could have recorded numerous procedural violations and outright falsifications at polling stations. But the organizers and administrators of the elections very much do not want such recordings to become publicly available. In those cases where, on 18 September, some persistent candidates nevertheless tried to organize normal video surveillance, their access was simply blocked, and consideration of complaints about this will take two days. On 18 September, in Goryachy Klyuch, Krasnodar Krai, two PEC members responsible for video surveillance were denied access to the video on the same day it was issued. Access was revoked without explanation.
We believe that the removal of candidates from the Yabloko party in a number of regions was caused (dictated) not by political-electoral considerations, i.e., fears that they might defeat their competitors, but by the desire to prevent their observers from appearing at polling stations. For example, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, all five candidates for the State Duma were removed, and besides this, only local by-elections for 25 seats are taking place in the region — a pristine space for the required ultra-high results. Likewise, in Chuvashia, both party candidates were removed. In Moscow Oblast, which is known for its political fragmentation, several districts were left completely without Yabloko candidates. At the regional level, only the party list in Novgorod Oblast held firm, while in Kaliningrad, Tomsk, Pskov oblasts, and the Republic of Karelia — it did not. We believe that in many regions we will see a noticeable difference in results between districts where Yabloko candidates remained and those where they did not.
But even where Yabloko candidates remained, they and their observers faced problems with access to polling stations and to the observation procedure itself even before voting began. One can be certain that these problems are deliberately organized and not accidental. In Tambov Oblast, police officers contacted all appointed observers from the party, summoned them for interviews, and handed them warnings "about the inadmissibility of unlawful actions" on the voting days. Such actions could not have been carried out without the involvement of the TECs, to which the lists of observers had been sent. As early as 14 September, it became known that the TECs of the Central Administrative Okrug of Moscow refused to allow observers appointed by Yabloko candidate for the State Duma, Sergei Mitrokhin, in the Central single-member district No. 207, allegedly due to errors in the submitted documents.
18 September: assault on electoral rights on all fronts
As of the end of the first voting day, 518 reports of possible violations and incidents had been posted on the "Elections 2026" information resource. In the first day alone, 187 reports were received from 32 regions. The most common type of report throughout the entire campaign was "violation of observers' rights" (88 reports).
Administrative pressure on voters to force them to vote began at the end of August. Moreover, unlike in previous years, this time in many cases it was not simply participation that was required, but voting for specific candidates. Voters were required to vote specifically for United Russia and its candidates, and to confirm this with photographs. In many regions where remote electronic voting was conducted, applications to participate were submitted by 10-15% (and sometimes more) of the total number of voters. The pace of electronic voting at the beginning of the first day convincingly demonstrated the involuntary nature of such voting — by 12:00 Moscow time, turnout in the federal REV system across the country had already reached 49%, and by the end of the day it had reached 70% (2.8 million voters out of 4.0 million who had submitted applications). The pattern is typical for each of the 32 regions: people began voting en masse from the very opening of the voting day at 8:00 AM, as soon as they arrived at their workplaces. This caused a system overload. The peak of voter activity in all regions occurred in the first 1.5 hours. Because of this, both REV systems (federal and Moscow) practically stopped working at one point — a queue of "willing" voters formed in the federal system, and in Moscow, the TEGs installed in the voting premises stopped working. Some Moscow commissions were forced to switch to paper voting, although, judging by information from many precincts, election commissions obstructed voters from obtaining a paper ballot in various ways. Overall, today once again demonstrated that REV is neither an individual nor a free form of voting.
The first day of voting revealed a problem traditional for Russian elections — the violation of the rights of observers and candidates, including through pressure on them. The publication 7x7 calculated that on the first day of voting, nearly 1,300 observers from the CPRF and Yabloko were not allowed into polling stations: at least 984 observers from the CPRF (later the CPRF reported 1,144 observers) and 350 observers from Yabloko, including in Altai Krai, Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Leningrad, Tyumen oblasts, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. In Samara Oblast, CPRF candidate Mikhail Matveyev wrote on 17 September that unprecedented pressure had begun on his observers: employers, under threat of dismissal, were demanding that they not go to polling stations. At the end of the first voting day, the CPRF calculated that problems with admitting observers had arisen in at least ten regions. According to the party, this involved 1,144 observers. The leaders were: Voronezh Oblast — 481, Leningrad Oblast — 279, and Tyumen Oblast — about 200 out of 825 trained observers. In wartime conditions, another method of pressure on male observers was added — they began to receive summonses to report to the military enlistment office directly on voting day. Since this occurred in different regions — Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar Krai, Karelia — this also confirms the coordinated nature of this form of electoral special operation. In Moscow, candidate Yulia Kuznetsova unexpectedly dropped out of contact, and her observers were allegedly withdrawn. By the end of the day, reports began to come in that observers were being removed from polling stations: in some places with the help of the police, in others based on court decisions. For example, in Shchyolkovo, Moscow Oblast, a court removed an observer from PEC No. 4154, representing Yabloko candidate for the State Duma Ilya Myakinin, because the observer had asked to review the voter list. In regions where combined elections are held, observers from some candidates for the State Duma began to be removed from polling stations under the pretext that they did not have regional or local residence registration (federal elections do not require this) and therefore could not observe local or regional elections (where this norm exists). In Perm, former city duma candidate Alexei Ogloblin, who became an observer, spent the entire day demanding that the commission provide a place for observation from which the ballot boxes would be visible. During these proceedings, several police officers, a member of the regional election commission, and observers from the Public Chamber visited the precinct; a police report was filed against the observer — all because the observer was merely demanding compliance with the law. Observers everywhere face similar problems when they merely demand respect for their own rights.
Already on the first day, the first signals of possible falsifications of future voting results appeared. In Krasnodar, at PEC No. 2049, the CPRF called the police due to a discrepancy in turnout data of nearly 200 votes. In Komi, 48 already completed ballots for United Russia were found at a polling station. In Krasnodar Krai, the chairperson of a precinct commission refused to issue a copy of the document concerning early voting ballots.
The clearest evidence that preparations for mass falsification of results are underway during the ongoing voting is the already falsified turnout data for 18 September. Explanation: to add votes (i.e., inflate the results) for certain candidates and parties, it is necessary to increase the number of voters who have voted (i.e., raise turnout), but doing this on the last day, when polling stations will be half-empty, would be too noticeable. Therefore, turnout needs to be inflated from the very beginning, from the first day of voting, and to avoid confusion and to do this evenly, the TECs — and judging by the data, this process is directly overseen at the territorial commission level — instructed the chairs of subordinate PECs to transmit approximately identical inflated figures. This is what produces those straight "lines," "mountains," and other beautiful shapes that electoral experts discover when visualizing turnout data in the regions. For example, in Dagestan, TECs used different strategies: in some places, turnout was drawn "with a ruler," while in others, "mountains" appeared — turnout first increased as the PEC number rose, and then at some point began to decline.
In Ivanovo Oblast, two cities stand out clearly — Kineshma and Shuya — where the results look frankly unnatural, and in Kabardino-Balkaria, the entire republic looks this way.
A similar picture is observed in other regions: in Tatarstan and Chechnya, Krasnodar, Primorsky and Stavropol krais, Kemerovo, Leningrad and Tyumen oblasts, as well as in St. Petersburg. We believe that in these regions we should expect unnaturally inflated figures both for United Russia and possibly for certain other parties, for example, to help them overcome the 5% barrier. Which parties and in which regions — we will see in the final results.
Home voting, which is difficult to control, is being actively used. By law, voting outside the polling station is conducted on the basis of a written application or oral request from the voter themselves, who cannot come to the polling station for a valid reason. In Komi, a TEC transferred to a precinct commission a list of nearly 400 students from Syktyvkar State University for mobile voting. In the same region, mobile voting was organized for employees of the Syktyvkar Timber Processing Complex, which employs about 560 people. At a polling station in Vyborg, Leningrad Oblast, a third of the voters assigned to it supposedly decided to vote at home — that is over a thousand people. In Tambov Oblast, home voting on the first day reached almost a quarter of all voters, and it was higher in apartment buildings, while in the private sector and rural areas it was lower, although the opposite should be expected.
Separately, it is worth noting the extraordinary violations of the rights of ordinary voters that occurred due to the fault of the system of election commissions. For example, in the elections for the Legislative Assembly of Kirov Oblast in the 25th district, two registered candidates were not listed on the ballot. This was only discovered when ballots began to be distributed to voters. As a result, the elections will be postponed to the following year, and tens of thousands of voters will be left without their representative in the regional parliament. In the Rovenskaya TEC of Belgorod Oblast, at 10:52 AM on Friday, 3 hours after the start of voting, a finishVoting transaction appeared in the blockchain, meaning that the REV system would no longer issue ballots. After that, only one person who had managed to obtain a ballot was able to vote. Specifically, the voting for the State Duma elections in district No. 80 was terminated; the other two votes — for the single federal district in the State Duma and for the governor of Belgorod Oblast — continued. In total, there are 1,876 voters on the REV list in the Rovenskaya TEC, but only a third of them managed to vote. Now, REV voters from this TEC receive two ballots instead of three; to vote in the single-member district, they need to go to their home PEC and vote using that single ballot.
Thus, the first day of voting has already shown that the current elections, even at the voting stage, differ from previous ones: extremely little attention is paid to the rights of candidates, observers, and even voters, and it is likely that even such egregious cases as an incomplete ballot or the premature termination of voting, not to mention the mass and systematic obstruction of observation, will not lead to the initiation of criminal cases under Article 141 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, "Obstruction of the exercise of electoral rights or the work of election commissions." In the mode of an emergency special operation, the methods and techniques for achieving the final result are of no fundamental importance.