On Sunday, local elections were held in Russia. RFE/RL reports that mayoral, regional, and district elections were held in 76 of Russia’s 83 regions. These included elections to Moscow city council, as well as the first ever municipal elections in Chechnya and Ingushetia. In total, there were about 7,000 elections and about 30 million people were eligible to vote.

Not having Russian, information is difficult to come by to say the least. Anyhow, given Russia is no longer an electoral democracy, it is unsurprising that the ruling United Russia party has done well. Russia Today reports that only in one place was United Russia’s dominance threatened. This was in the city of Rzhev, west of Moscow. Here, it reports, “the Communist Party of the Russian Federation took slightly more votes in the party list competition, according to preliminary results. However, even in Rzhev, United Russia took all seats in independent constituencies, as well as the mayor’s post”.

As for Moscow, RIA Novosti reports that the turnout was 35.5% with the following results: United Russia 66.3% (32 seats, plus all 17 directly elected seats); the Communist Party 13.3% (3 seats); the ultranationalist Liberal Democrats 6.14%; the leftist Just Russia party (5.14%); the liberal Yabloko party (4.7%); and Patriots of Russia (1.82%). The threshold for representation is 7%.

The same source reports that in Grozny (Chechnya) the turnout was 91.5% and that the acting mayor, Muslim Khuchiyev, won 87% of the vote.

In a previous post, I reported that President Medvedev was planning to reform the constitution to extend the president’s term of office. This happened late last year. The up-to-date version of the constitution in English can be found here.