United Russia loses seats, but retains majority in Duma

parliament, marking a significant drop compared to 315 seats after 2007’s elections, the Central Election Committee said yesterday.
With votes from about 95 percent of polling stations counted, the ruling United Russia party is now slightly below the 50 percent mark with 49,67 percent, a far cry from the commanding two-thirds constitutional majority the party held in the State Duma for the past four years, according to the official count. United Russia party took 46,5 percent of the votes in Moscow, after counting 97,2 percent of the ballots, which means it is still the single largest party. According to journalist Ivan Zasursky, by having so much power and TV coverage and being the party of president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladmir Putin, the United Russia party in a way united their enemies.
There has been speculation on what caused the ruling party to attract fewer votes this time than they did back in 2007, when around 64 percent of ballots were cast in their favour.
“It looked as if they had victory in the bag, so they could not mobilise enough support. They behaved as if they had it already,” Zasursky believes.
“That is why a lot of people chose to vote for Fair Russia or even for the Liberal Democrats. Many, I think, wanted to punish United Russia for having power for so long and, maybe, not doing everything they could have.”
He adds there has been “a kind of flashmob of Facebook and other social networks with people supporting the position that you should go and vote for anybody but United Russia.”
As for more ‘global’ reasons, Patrick Fullick, founder of Capital Science Connections speaking to RT from London, does not rule out the economic crisis as one of the factors.
“I suspect that as (president Dmitry) Medvedev was saying, the international crisis has played its part in this, and altogether people in Russia have seen to some extent a decline in living standards and problems with the cost of living and so on.”
Meanwhile, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday that the results of Russia’s parliamentary election will benefit the country, and China will further bilateral ties after the Sunday polling.
“We believe that the election results will be beneficial for Russia’s social unity, national stability and economic development,” Spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular press briefing.
China respects the choice of the Russian people, and will work with the Russians to push forward the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, he said. – Xinhua. – RIA Novosti/RT/Xinhua.