The battle to come will be less over Putin's re-election as president and more over the cheating that went on
There was never any question that Vladimir Putin would win a third term as president. An All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre poll back in mid February put Putin on 53.5%, already an outright first round win and 42 points ahead of his nearest rival, the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. So last night's initial exit poll figures giving him around 59%, did not look wildly out of line. The real issues are how he won, and where he lost.
Hours before the first results, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny called the violations that had taken place yesterday irrefutable, and a Moscow Times photographer snapped a busload of hired hands moving from one polling station to another in the Kurkino district of northwest Moscow, evidence of the so-called voting carousel. The bussing in of Putin supporters to the capital, to boost his vote in a city that would have humiliated him had it been left to vote freely, was so extensive and so blatant that one member of the nationalist pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi admitted to our reporter that he had been transported to the city just to vote. Navalny's claims of widespread election fraud were soon followed by the communist party, who said that they could not consider the elections free or fair after the volume of complaints they had received.
The battle that will unfold over the next 24 hours will be less over the fact that Putin got re-elected as president than it will be over the cheating that went on. The national result will radicalise his opponents less effectively than the local one. The gap between the official result in Moscow and St Petersburg, and what Muscovites and Peterburgers know to be true in their own city districts, is what will fuel the demonstrations due to take place today. Having already had one vote stolen from them in December, this will feel like a second slap in the face.
Whether such tactics were wise for a president, who would have won anyway, is dubious indeed. Last night in his victory speech he appealed for unity, but mass demos and a strong police presence are no way to foster that. After the collapse of the popularity of his party, United Russia, in December, Putin needs to build a party and a new consensus. It will have to be a coalition if it is to address the core issues that brought so many of Russia's best and brightest out on to the streets.
He has thus far made minimal concessions to the democratic awakening stirred in December. He had changed the laws on registering parties and candidates at future elections, but touched little else. Even his supporters do not know how Putin can avoid stagnation if he continues on the same path. But his opponents know one thing: the more Putin rubs his power into their faces, the more he risks provoking the explosion nobody in Russia wants.