Russia voters turn away from Putin party

By Kathy Lally and Will Englund,
WashPost
Sunday, December 4, 8:25 PM

MOSCOW — Russians voting in parliamentary elections apparently turned against the ruling United Russia party in large numbers Sunday, exit polls and early results suggested, to the great benefit of the Communist Party.

In what only months ago would have been a nearly unimaginable scenario, the party dominated by Vladimir Putin was predicted to get less than 50 percent of the vote, while polling organizations put the Communists at about 20 percent, nearly double their count in the last election.

Russia’s only independent election monitor called the election the most flawed to date, an assessment echoed by opposition leaders, implying that the real United Russia vote would have been even less had the election been free and fair.

Not long ago, anything under the 64.3 percent that United Russia won in 2007 would have been seen as unacceptable failure for the party and Putin, who has relied on its control of government and bureaucrats across the country to deliver ever more votes and entrench his authority.

(More here.)