Vladimir Putin's United Russia party headed for a major setback in parliamentary elections Sunday, barely hanging onto its majority just months before Mr. Putin seeks to return to the presidency, early voting results showed.
The results mark the biggest electoral upset for Mr. Putin since his rise to power 11 years ago, and highlight the fragility of the system of government that he has built since then under the name of "sovereign democracy." While the results don't threaten Mr. Putin's immediate grip on power, they could fuel rising tensions with the West. In the run-up to the vote, Mr. Putin had ramped up anti-Western rhetoric, accusing foreign-funded groups of attempting to destabilize the government.
Widespread evidence of voter fraud Sunday will likely bring condemnations from Western capitals in the coming days. With 92% of the vote counted, United Russia had garnered only 50%, compared with 64% in the previous parliamentary election four years ago. Opposition parties said that even this figure was inflated because of alleged ballot stuffing and illegal voting that they said was rampant.
Russian voters seem increasingly impatient with the Kremlin's stifling dominance of politics amid slowing economic growth and deepening inequality, analysts said. Lately the public discontent has spread to Mr. Putin, who has for the past two weeks avoided unscripted appearances after he was booed at a martial-arts competition in Moscow.
"United Russia over the years lost a considerable number of supporters—more than even liberal sociologists predicted," said Larissa Putova, project director of the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation.
While Kremlin leaders sounded reassurances that United Russia remained in a leadership position, loss in parliament was clearly a worry to a Kremlin apparatus that has kept a tight hold on the media, but has been unable to control popular grumbling on the Internet.
In a sign of the Kremlin's concern, departing President Dmitry Medvedev, who led the United Russia party, said the results could force the pro-Kremlin bloc into coalition-building with opposition parties to pass legislation. Such a result would mark a reversal for United Russia, which has in recent years been able to pass any legislation the Kremlin wanted without compromising with the sidelined opposition.
Opposition parties, stunted over the years by the dominance of United Russia, were beneficiaries of Sunday's vote. The Communist Party won a bit more than 19% of early returns, followed by Just Russia, a left-wing party founded with Kremlin help with about 13%. The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, whose erratic head, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has historically garnered protest votes, won just under 12%.
Westward-leaning liberals remain locked out of popular politics, and the sole liberal party allowed to run in elections Sunday didn't reach the 7% barrier to enter parliament.
But while the Kremlin will have a harder time steering Russia's parliament, vast powers still reside in Russia's presidency, a post Mr. Putin plans to occupy for another six years after elections in March.
Although final results could still give United Russia a majority in parliament, Kremlin leaders appeared to be positioning themselves for a setback.
Mr. Medvedev, interviewed on Russian state TV at United Russia headquarters, called the results "democracy in action," causing smiles in the room. Mr. Medvedev said that with a "more complex configuration" in parliament it may be necessary to resort to "coalition, bloc relations."
Mr. Putin, looking stern, said the results "reflect the real situation in the country. For United Russia, it's the optimal result." But he maintained that United Russia still kept its "leadership position."
State TV, usually carefully scripted in its coverage of politics, offered a surprising diversity of opinions in live reports Sunday night as news of the poor showing rolled in. Some commentators in the studio described the results as "catastrophic" for the ruling party, while others said the unexpectedly strong results for opposition parties were a sign of much-needed diversity in Russian politics.
Opposition parties and independent observers reported widespread voting abuses, though government officials said the election went smoothly. Nearly all the vote-rigging reported Sunday favored the United Russia party. Exit polls indicated that United Russia would get 46% to 48%, but as results trickled in the official tally climbed toward 50%.
The election came after what Kremlin critics called unprecedented pressure on vote monitors who were amassing evidence of voting irregularities. Websites of independent vote monitors and news websites fell under simultaneous hacker attacks before the start of voting Sunday.
Hordes of riot police were trucked into the center of Moscow, closing off squares and arresting more than 100 who tried to rally in traditional meeting places. In Russia's regions, election monitors were pushed out of voting places or refused the opportunity to watch tallies, opposition groups said.
The websites, belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and Novaya Gazeta, had published numerous stories on vote fraud allegations. The U.S.-financed vote monitoring group Golos, which fell under hacker attacks before polls opened, had been singled out by state-run media as a tool of foreign governments.
At Golos, email accounts were swamped by thousands of spam messages, and telephones of employees were also rendered useless by a torrent of automatic calls. Phone calls to the monitoring group were also somehow diverted to an unknown number, where an operator told callers to phone elsewhere, said Golos director Liliya Shibanova.
"We had these situations in the past, but never on this level," said Ms. Shibanova. "This kind of attack takes a lot of money and a lot of attention."
The spam attack disabled a Golos project that has drawn special Kremlin ire in the past week—an interactive map displaying reported campaign violations across the country ahead of the vote. The map allowed voters to click on the map to learn about and report violations in their own regions. As of Saturday the map had contained more than 5,500 complaints.
Other Kremlin critics simply boycotted the election, or encouraged voters to deface their ballots because restrictions on opposition parties made any real choice impossible.
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