Social media monitoring report for the ninth week of the election campaign for the deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the IX convocation, scheduled for 20 September 2026
The Elections Atlas project continues its programme of weekly social media monitoring during the State Duma deputy elections. We track the online activity of election participants.
The results of social media monitoring are published weekly.
During the week of 11–17 August, 336,685 posts were analysed. The main topics of the week were the further development of the case on the removal of Yabloko from the elections, the sentence handed down to Yabloko deputy chairman Lev Shlosberg, and the court ruling on the removal of CPRF candidate Mikhail Matveyev in Samara based on a complaint filed by the Party of Pensioners.
Key findings
After Yabloko was removed from the elections, the overall volume of publications about the parties fell by almost 25%. Despite this, Yabloko leads in views for the second consecutive week (146.9 million) and in engagement (3.9 million), significantly outpacing even United Russia (91 million views and 1.9 million engagement). This week, audience attention was sustained by two new developments around Yabloko: the rejection of the party's appeal against the Russian Supreme Court ruling removing the party list from the elections on 17 August, and the sentence handed down to Lev Shlosberg.
The combined contribution of Yabloko and Rodina — the parties to the court proceedings — remained decisive for the second consecutive week, although it declined substantially compared with the previous week. A large number of views for Yabloko was generated by CPRF candidate and popular YouTube blogger Nikolai Bondarenko, who criticised the court ruling and was detained on 21 August (he is charged under administrative Article 20.3 on displaying "extremist symbols" — an article that leads to the loss of the right to stand for election).
Social media users did not overlook a new episode of a candidate being removed from the elections over copyright infringement: Party of Pensioners candidate Anna Sarantseva secured in the Samara Regional Court the removal from the elections of incumbent State Duma deputy from the CPRF Mikhail Matveyev. The formal grounds were copyright claims over a font used on his pages.
Both previously identified networks of small accounts remain active, while also generating near-zero real engagement. These are the VKontakte page network of A Just Russia (916 pages, 59,298 publications, 6.15 million views, but only 875 reactions) and the network of Telegram channels in the kompromat format (2,553 of 2,578 tracked channels, 89,527 publications mentioning the tracked parties, 113,787 views and only 63 reactions). Notably, this week the A Just Russia network did not circulate anti-Yabloko statements (unlike the previous week).
Number of mentions
In the ninth week of the election campaign, 336,685 mentions of parties were recorded — 24.8% fewer than a week earlier (447,078). The decline affected almost all parties: Communists of Russia fell by 72.9% (from 6,131 to 1,663), the Greens by 57.6% (from 12,246 to 5,187), Rodina by 51.4% (from 19,066 to 9,275), New People by 37.3% (from 16,691 to 10,464), the CPRF by 27.9% (from 45,390 to 32,720), the LDPR by 25.1% (from 36,168 to 27,097), United Russia by 24.1% (from 167,062 to 126,794), Yabloko by 20.3% (from 38,426 to 30,644), A Just Russia by 12.7% (from 102,963 to 89,889), and the Party of Pensioners by 1.9% (from 2,737 to 2,684). The only party with growth in the number of publications is the Party of Direct Democracy (+35.4%, from 198 to 268), but this is explained simply by the extremely small number of mentions.
As a result, United Russia retains a clear lead in the number of mentions, followed at a considerable distance by A Just Russia, then a group of parties consisting of the CPRF, Yabloko and the LDPR, while New People is among the "small parties" not expected to enter the State Duma.
On 17 August, the appellate board of the Supreme Court upheld the ruling removing Yabloko's federal list from the elections; the party announced its intention to file a supervisory appeal with the Presidium of the Supreme Court.
In the same week, the Pskov City Court sentenced party deputy chairman Lev Shlosberg to 11 years and 1 month in a penal colony in the case on repeated discrediting of the Russian Armed Forces — this news generated 1,612 publications and became a separate notable spike in attention to the party at the end of the week. The formal grounds of the case involved two articles at once: a case on "fakes" — over a repost in Shlosberg's Telegram channel of an Ekho Moskvy publication of 25 February 2022 with a Daily Mirror cover, and a case on "repeated discrediting of the army" — over a recording of debates posted on Odnoklassniki in which he spoke of the need for a speedy ceasefire. The party leadership issued a joint statement by chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky, in which it called what was happening "a tragedy of the collapse of modern Russian justice" and promised to seek an end to the prosecution "by all lawful means".
The week also brought a new court episode on the cancellation of a candidate's registration. Party of Pensioners candidate Anna Sarantseva secured in the Samara Regional Court the removal from the elections of incumbent State Duma deputy from the CPRF Mikhail Matveyev. The formal grounds, as in the Yabloko case, were copyright claims — in Matveyev's case, the reason was the use of a Microsoft font on his Telegram and VKontakte pages. In the overall share of publications, this topic accounted for 1.8% of all content.
Views
Views of publications about the parties fell to 422.4 million (-33.3%, compared with 632.99 million a week earlier). We also see that the average reach per post fell following the fading of the peak wave of interest in the Yabloko case. Views predictably declined for almost all parties: Rodina by 57.6% (from 94.73 to 40.21 million), Yabloko by 26.7% (from 200.50 to 146.89 million), United Russia by 17.5% (from 110.28 to 91.01 million), the LDPR by 42.6% (from 85.63 to 49.17 million), A Just Russia by 43% (from 44.42 to 25.3 million), New People by 46.6% (from 29.30 to 15.66 million), Communists of Russia by 71.8% (from 14.16 to 3.99 million), and the Greens by 64.0% (from 13.41 to 4.82 million). Among the major parties, only the CPRF shows a slight increase (+1.2%, to 39.17 million).
Two exceptions stand out with growth in views against the overall weekly decline: the Party of Pensioners (+257.0%, to 5.48 million) and the Party of Direct Democracy (+114.4%, to 705.1 thousand). For the Party of Pensioners, the growth was driven by discussion of the case on the removal of CPRF candidate Matveyev from the elections. A brief overview in one of Dozhd's YouTube videos of the party's campaign work in the form of "cartoons for adults" also contributed to the growth in views, illustrating the discrepancy between politicians' statements on screen and the real financial situation in the country in connection with the problem of the obvious inequality between ordinary citizens and the ruling elite.
For the Party of Direct Democracy, the growth is linked to overview publications about the investment portfolios of State Duma candidates. The fact is that this party turned out to have the largest volume of securities among all election participants. For example, the most-viewed item concerns the combined portfolio of candidates worth 2.55 billion roubles.
Despite the overall decline, Yabloko remains the leader in views for the second consecutive week, ahead of United Russia (146.89 million versus 91 million) — although the gap narrowed slightly compared with the previous week. In third place is the LDPR (49.17 million), overtaking Rodina (40.21 million), whose figures predictably fell sharply after the end of the peak week with the court hearing.
The greatest reach among publications about Yabloko, however, was generated not by the party's own statements but by bloggers' videos with commentary or an overview of the situation around the party. For example, Maxim Katz's video "Why Russians went all in for Yabloko and what they will do next" (1.09 million views) or a video about the deputy who initiated the party's removal (1.01 million views).
A commentary by Nikolai Bondarenko on the situation with the cancellation of the party's registration (920.3 thousand views) also contributed to the growth in Yabloko's views, in which he notes that everything happening is aimed at minimising citizens' participation in the elections and the overall suppression of turnout among opposition-minded voters. He is also one of the politicians who publicly did not support the harassment of the Yabloko party (on 21 August, the day this report was being prepared, it became known that he had been detained; he is charged under administrative Article 20.3 on displaying "extremist symbols" — an article that leads to the loss of the right to stand for election).
New People, for their part, continue to work systematically on the social agenda. As a reminder, the party's public activity previously revolved around the topics of domestic violence and stalking. In the past week, the party came forward with the idea of a bill introducing criminal liability for disrupting insulin supplies.
Engagement
Engagement fell to 9.56 million (-35.9% compared with 14.90 million a week earlier) — a sharper decline than in views: the audience not only saw fewer publications about the parties but also reacted to them noticeably less often than a week earlier. Only two parties showed significant growth, against the backdrop of the case on the removal of deputy Matveyev from the elections.
The highest engagement among publications about Yabloko was generated by the party's own reaction to the appellate board's ruling — a post in the official channel about continuing the struggle (66.7 thousand).
The topic of caring for pensioners remains relevant — for example, the LDPR believes that the established subsistence minimum for pensioners in the country is significantly understated and proposes changing the procedure for calculating it. Users treat such initiatives with a high degree of scepticism. The figure of the party's late leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky still leaves users far from indifferent, and videos featuring him continue to appear among the top publications by engagement.
United Russia entered the top publications by engagement in the past week thanks to the public coverage of the implementation of a political-technology tool in the form of collecting proposals for the party's "people's programme" — Dmitry Medvedev wrote about this. In this campaign, it is particularly noticeable how, at the level of messaging to the voter, the party is merging into a single whole with the figure of the president — the same is demonstrated here in the presentation of the final product of the people's programme: "…the proposals that will be announced by the Head of State".
Dynamics of publication distribution by platform
Telegram's share fell from 51.2% in the eighth week to 46.7% in the ninth — for the first time in several weeks, this platform ceased to be the absolute leader. VKontakte, by contrast, increased its share from 42.0% to 45.5% and became effectively equal to Telegram in the volume of publications. MAX added slightly (from 6.5% to 7%), while YouTube almost doubled its share (from 0.37% to 0.86%) — a growth probably linked to the wave of videos about the Yabloko case.
Centralised activity: channel networks and their contribution to the indicators
A significant part of the week's aggregate indicators continues to be formed through the distributed publication of the same materials via networks of small accounts — both previously described mechanisms remain active.
The VKontakte page network with uniform names "A Just Russia — News [city]" / "A Just Russia — [city]" this week consisted of at least 916 pages (last week — 1,115, a decline of 17.9%) and produced 59,298 publications (an increase of 8.7% over 54,532 a week earlier). The network gathered 6.15 million views (-13.4% compared with 7.10 million), but only 875 reactions and comments across all publications combined (-18.2% compared with 1,070) — the network has views but almost no real audience engagement, as in the previous week (for example, a clickbait initiative from the party leader about treating children with cancer at the expense of the super-rich Russians). Unlike the previous week, when one of this network's formulations was directly aimed against Yabloko (circulated 2,184 times), this week no mentions of Yabloko were found among its publications — the topics were limited to a fairly classic pool: pensions, housing and utilities, healthcare and the party newspaper.
The other network — around 2,578 small Telegram channels in the kompromat format, previously reflected in the monitoring — remained active this week: 2,553 of the 2,578 tracked channels (99.0%) produced 89,527 publications mentioning the tracked parties, gathering in total only 113,787 views and 63 reactions — an average of about 1.3 views per publication. The largest contribution came from United Russia (47,095 posts), followed by the CPRF (14,346), A Just Russia (10,563) and the LDPR (8,113). Yabloko was mentioned in 2,627 publications of this network (2.9% of them) — a notable interest in the party's case even within a coordinated network of public pages, although clearly more moderate compared with the peak week.
Methodology
For the social media monitoring, four platforms currently used by Russians were selected: VKontakte, MAX, Telegram and YouTube. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to establish effective monitoring of Odnoklassniki and Instagram, which could significantly affect the overall data. If this can be done, the data will be added.
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 Party of Pensioners and the Greens.
We analysed posts on each platform, and we 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,
the use of administrative resources.