Russia elections 2024: Why Vladimir Putin has never lost a poll race

It’s the year of elections and next in line is Russia. The European giant will go to the polls on Friday (15 March) and end on Sunday (17 March), with the result to be declared thereafter.

In the case of Russia, however, the result is foregone. Russian president Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win his fifth election. This means that Putin, who has been in power since 2000 — whether as president or prime minister — will have been in power for 30 years, longer than any Russian or Soviet leader since Tsar Peter the Great (who died in 1721).

But why is it that the 71-year-old leader is guaranteed a win and another six years in power?

Putin and the polls

In December 2023, Putin ended the suspense by announcing his candidacy after a Kremlin award ceremony, when war veterans and others pleaded with him to seek re-election. “I won’t hide it from you — I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Putin had then said, adding, “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”

With this announcement, he will be running for the fifth time. He was previously elected president in 2000, 2004, 2012, and 2018. He was barred from seeking a third consecutive presidential term in 2008 and this is when he became prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev’s tenure.

He then once again made changes to the constitution that allowed him at least two more six-year terms. This means he can be in power until 2036, when he will be 83 years old.

Opposition all but stamped out

One of the biggest factors that contributes to Putin’s victory election after election is that there’s no viable Opposition. Over the years, the Russian strongman has stamped out dissent , with critics calling him out for his iron-fisted treatment of opposition and protests.

On 16 February, Alexei Navalny , known to be Putin’s most outspoken and vocal critic, died in an Arctic penal colony. His friends, family, supporters and the international community call his death a political murder. In fact, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, asserted in a video: “Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband, Alexei Navalny.”

Incidentally, Navalny had been denied registration into the 2018 presidential election — the same year that Putin had won with almost 78 per cent of the vote.

Earlier, Boris Nadezhdin , another high-profile anti-war and anti-Putin candidate, also had to withdraw his run for presidency when the election agency excluded him from the ballot. Election authorities claimed that there were “irregularities” in the list of signatures he submitted.

Similarly, peace activist Yekaterina Duntsova’s bid to contest the polls was also blocked after the poll authorities rejected her nomination documents. When asked about her bid, she had told NPR, “The only way to protest that one man has been in power for so long and there’s no change is through elections. It’s the only peaceful way to do it.”

Other political opponents have also been silenced by being arrested. For instance, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kaza-Murza have been sentenced to eight-and-a-half years and 25 years in jail, respectively, for their criticism of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Token Opposition

As The Atlantic Council writes in one of its pieces, “Putin has preserved many of the trappings of democracy over his more than two decades in power, but he has entirely hollowed out its contents.”

And this is reflected in the token opposition candidates that will contest the polls. As Al Jazeera notes, their participation is to show how “popular” Putin is. And who are these candidates?

One of them is Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party. The 75-year-old member of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has finished a distant second to Putin at every election since 2000. In fact, during the presidential election in 2018, the Communist candidate earned 12 per cent of the vote, compared to Putin’s 77 per cent.

There’s also Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party.

Slutsky is a known backer of the Russia-Ukraine war. He has also been involved in several scandals and was sanctioned by the West in 2014 for his support of the annexation of Crimea. He has also been accused of sexually harassing journalists and was even dubbed by some media as a “Russian Harvey Weinstein.” In 2018, an investigation by the late Navalny had revealed that he owned luxury cars that cost far more than his official income.

The other candidate ‘in the running’ is Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party. According to The Moscow Times, Davankov is a former businessman. He said in his presidential campaign that he advocates for “peace and negotiations” with Ukraine, “freedom of the press” and normalising Russia’s relations with Western countries, as well as calling to stop “persecution for dissents” and halt “ideological censorship.”

Rigged elections

Apart from the fact that there’s no real opposition to Vladimir Putin in the polls, many also question the fairness of the polls itself. Independent observers note that all the parties and the candidates are vetted by the Kremlin.

Russian politics professor Samuel Greene, of King’s College London, told The Independent, “All parties that function in Russia are coordinated by the presidential administration. Candidate lists are vetted by the Kremlin; fundraising is both limited and enabled by the Kremlin.”

Candidates such as Kharitonov, Slutsky are allowed to contest the polls but don’t really expect to win and even their campaigning agenda is set by Putin himself.

Moreover, by extending the voting day to a three-day period and also allowing for online balloting can open up the polls to more manipulation. Nadezhdin, commenting on the same, told the BBC: “It is absolutely impossible to say about our presidential elections that they are fair and free.”

There have also been past reports of forced voting, with videos on social media showing ballot-box stuffing. The Guardian has reported that in the past, people who have voted at one polling station are carted to the next, in order to get them to vote four and even five times — all for Putin, naturally.

In the 2018 presidential election, an International Election Observation Mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that vote lacked genuine competition and was marred by “continued pressure on critical voices.”

However, the Kremlin has refuted all such claims and last week, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would not tolerate such criticisms. “Our democracy is the best and we will continue to build it,” he said.

Putin’s future

While the election result is a foregone conclusion, it will be interesting to note the margin by which Putin is declared the winner. The Russian strongman is keen to portray to the world that he is the popular and legitimate choice.

Also, experts believe that the vote could be perceived as a referendum on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

As The Conversation notes, He may win the presidential elections in March, but just how long he can remain in power, given the unavoidable demands of the coming months, may be uncertain.

With inputs from agencies