Getting the Vote Out for United Russia

Today is polling day in Russia, and United Russia has no intention of leaving the result to chance.  But how best to fix an election without attracting the attention of international election monitors?   Here are United Russia’s top five failsafe methods of getting their vote out:

1. Bribery: Students in Chelyabinsk were offered concert tickets if they photographed their ballot papers to prove they had voted for United Russia.
2. Intimidation: Students who resisted bribery were threatened with ‘consequences’.
3. Threats: An entrepreneur employing 40 people was threatened with a visit from tax inspectors if he refused to help in the elections.  Since this would mean either paying a bribe or stopping work, he complied.
4. Inducements: A paediatrician at a Moscow clinic was asked to vote for United Russia to secure funding for her clinic.
5. Group Pressure: A civil servant working at Moscow City Hall was told to bring a list of at least 10 friends or acquaintances who had promised to vote for United Russia.

According to the Moscow Times, an election official said, “Everyone is under such stress.  I really hope that these elections finish as soon as possible and the way they [the authorities] want.”  If all else fails, there’s always good old-fashioned fraud.  The official added, “We have been trained how to do it.  Foreign observers, who do not speak Russian or understand cyrillic very well, will not notice anything.”

Populist Parties on the Rise in Early Slovenian Elections

In the context of a deepening economic crisis across the European Union, the fall of Slovenia’s government received little international attention.  Yet rising borrowing costs and falling demand for exports have battered the Slovenian economy, and the centre-left government lost a vote of confidence in September.  On Sunday Slovenia will hold its first early elections since its democratic system was founded in 1991.

The centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) is likely to win the biggest share of the vote.  It has pledged to take urgent action to prevent the country from sliding back into recession, raising the pension age, trimming public services and easing the credit crunch by setting up a ‘bad bank’ to take over state owned banks’ non performing assets.  However, these reforms will be difficult to implement.  The retirement age in Slovenia is currently the lowest in the European Union (57 for women and 58 for men) and the outgoing government’s pension reform plan was rejected in a referendum in June.

A brand new party, Positive Slovenia, is likely to take second place in Sunday’s elections.   It plans to close the 5.8% budget deficit by raising value added tax by 1%.  Another new party, Citizen’s List, will also do well by promising to cut red tape and white-collar crime while reducing public expenditure in an ‘intelligent’ way.  All of the parties involved in Slovenia’s previous government (SD, Zares, LDS and DeSUS) are being punished severely by voters for presiding over the economic crisis since 2008.

These developments are significant because, until now, Slovenia has been one of the post-communist region’s most politically stable democracies.  Although the voters’ tendency to blame governing parties for Slovenia’s economic woes is understandable, the emergence of populist parties claiming to have easy answers is troubling.  As a small, export-dependent economy, Slovenia’s economic situation is likely to worsen as the euro-zone crisis deepens.  Parties claiming to have easy answers may win votes now, but they are likely to have a hard landing in a few months’ time.

For further details of parties’ policies, see: 
http://www.sloveniatimes.com/looking-for-the-magic-formula

For an analysis of the political situation in Slovenia, see:
http://www.robert-schuman.eu/doc/oee/oee-735-en.pdf

 

 

Russian Elections Will Be Fixed in the Regions

The Russian people will vote on Sunday, but the final result has already been decided. United Russia will win 59.7% of the final vote, and the turnout will be 56%. The Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and Just Russia will all scrape past the 7% electoral threshold, providing various shades of political vegetation in the sixth Duma.

Russia’s public opinion research centre, VTsIOM, published this ‘forecast’ yesterday; the methodology is revealing.  The report starts by polling 1,600 people across Russia using conventional methods. The raw data is probably a fairish reflection of Russian public opinion:  United Russia, 45%; the Communist Party, 13%; the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, 10%; and Just Russia, 5%.

A few sleights of hand turn the opinion poll into a ‘forecast’ of the final result.  First, the raw data are adjusted to take account of predicted turnout and the likely effect of the 7% threshold.  Then the figure is amended to incorporate the deliberations of an ‘expert panel’. In the final calculation, United Russia wins 59.7% of the vote, the Communist Party 19%, the Liberal Democrats 11.3% and Fair Russia 8.8%.

The identities of the ‘experts’ massaging an extra 15% into United Russia’s vote are, of course, a closely kept secret.  But they are not relying on instinct to predict the final result.  Russia’s governors (all Kremlin appointees) have been allocated quotas determining the United Russia vote share that they must secure in their region.  Then they must deliver voters, dead or alive.

Some governors enthusiastically exceed the Kremlin’s demands.  In 2007, the Chechen governor, Ramzan Kadyrov, was top of the class delivering 99.36% of his region’s vote for United Russia.  Over ninety percent of the vote also went to the party of power in Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkarskoy, Mordovia and Karachaevo-Chekesskaya.  It is hardly surprising, then, that Russia’s governors have been dubbed ‘locomotives’ (parovozi) because they drive United Russia to victory.

But the current government risks outstaying its welcome.  Public support for United Russia is falling and, even with ‘assistance’ from the regional governors, the party is predicted to win 50 or 60 less seats in the Duma than in 2007. Vladimir Putin, a politician who always seemed invincible, was booed at a recent martial arts event in Moscow. United Russia’s leaders are getting their excuses in early, pointing to the strong anti-incumbency mood sweeping Europe.

United Russia should face few real obstacles to gaining an overall majority on Sunday.  For the time being, Joseph Stalin’s adage remains true:  “It is enough that the people know there was an election.  The people who cast the votes decide nothing.  The people who count the votes decide everything.”