Analyst Alexander Kynev has studied the results of the 2025 single voting day elections and examined how they might affect the 2026 federal elections to the Russian State Duma.
In his report, Kynev sets out to investigate the state of the political system based on the election results of recent years. He is interested in three questions:
- what the dynamics of the parliamentary parties will be, whether the system is capable of preserving itself, and what risks exist for it;
- what the dynamics of activity are across regions, taking into account three-day voting;
- how remote electronic voting (REV) is working as the geography of its application expands.
Following the elections of 14 September 2025, the heads of 20 regions, 11 regional legislative assemblies and 24 city dumas of regional administrative centres were elected.
Key conclusions:
United Russia retains its super-dominance. The party runs election campaigns that are not the most creative, but are well organised and systematic. Given the de facto ban on criticism, the opposition cannot compete with it. If this trend continues, United Russia should significantly improve on its 2021 results in the 2026 State Duma elections.
The political system will seek to preserve the status quo, meaning that the five parties currently represented in parliament — United Russia, A Just Russia, the Communist Party (CPRF), the LDPR and New People — are highly likely to enter the 2026 State Duma.
Turnout in the 2026 federal elections could be significantly higher than in 2021, partly due to increased turnout in large cities and previously protest-voting regions. This circumstance could increase the percentage of votes for New People.
The CPRF’s share may decline, though this can be avoided if the party runs a successful election campaign.
The participation of “small parties” that have no chance of entering parliament in the State Duma elections could shake the positions of A Just Russia and New People, drawing votes away from them. The guaranteed entry of these parties into the 2026 State Duma depends to a large extent on electoral policy in the “electoral sultanates” (referring to regions that show extreme results in support of the authorities at elections — for example, Tatarstan, Tuva, Yakutia, the republics of the North Caucasus and others). At present, New People’s positions in such territories are growing, while A Just Russia’s are falling.
In most regions, the opposition should think through campaigning aimed at expanding participation in REV voting as one of the reservoirs for growing its support. Most likely, “result management” or the correction of results via REV will be targeted rather than mass-scale.
The main risk to preserving the federal political balance is “administrative overreach” in the tabulation of local election results: nobody wants to show a worse result.
The full text of Alexander Kynev’s report can be read at this link.