Sept. 20 (UPI) — Russia’s three-day parliamentary elections have resulted in a landslide victory for President Vladimir Putin’s party, Moscow’s top voting commission said Monday.
The Central Election Commission said Putin’s United Russia party won 315 of 450 seats in the lower house, known as the Duma.
The results allow the party to keep its supermajority and Putin to press ahead with his agenda virtually unchallenged.
The election result was expected with Putin’s most credible opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, in jail and dozens of opposition candidates barred from running.
Despite the victories, Putin’s party lost 21 seats.
“This is an expansion of the political diversity,” Central Electoral Commission chief Ella Pamfilova said, according to the state-run TASS news agency. “We can assume that not four, as it used to be since the 90s, but five political parties pass to the State Duma.”
Pamfilova said the results of the three-day election will be finalized Friday.
“There will be eight or more parties in total in the State Duma, that is, five parliamentary and three non-parliamentary parties,” Pamfilova said, according to state-run Interfax news agency. “This is perhaps the most significant distinction of this campaign.
“United Russia has garnered more votes than others, thus securing itself a constitutional majority.”
Last week, Apple and Google removed Navalny’s app from their app stores under pressure from the Russian government. The app aimed to coordinate voters to turn out over the weekend and vote in large blocks against Putin’s party.