Russian legislative election, 2021

Russian legislative election, 2021

At the latest 19 September 2021
All 450 seats to the State Duma 226 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Leader Dmitry Medvedev Gennady Zyuganov Vladimir Zhirinovsky Party United Russia Communist Party LDPR Leader since 26 May 2012 14 February 1993 12 April 1991 Leader's seat None [a 1] No. 1 in Federal List No. 1 in Federal List Last election 343 seats, 54.2% 42 seats, 13.3% 39 seats, 13.1% Current seats 340 43 39 Seats needed 183 187   Leader Sergey Mironov Aleksey Zhuravlyov Rifat Shaykhutdinov Party A Just Russia Rodina Civic Platform Leader since 27 October 2013 29 September 2012 17 April 2015 Leader's seat No. 1 in Federal List Anna Neftekamsk Last election 23 seats, 6.2% 1 seat, 1.51% 1 seat, 0.2% Current seats 23 1 1 Seats needed 203 225 225
Incumbent Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin United Russia

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Legislative elections will be held in Russia no later than 19 September 2021 to elect the 450 seats the 8th convocation of the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly. Going into the elections, United Russia is the ruling party after winning the 2016 elections with 54.2% of the vote and 343 seats.

Electoral system

Under current election laws, the State Duma is elected for a term of five years, with parallel voting. Half of the seats (225) are elected by party-list proportional representation with a 5% electoral threshold, with the other half elected in 225 single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting.^[1]

In the proportional part, candidates can be nominated only by political parties. The lists of parties must include at least 200 and no more than 400 candidates. The list may also include candidates who are not members of the party, but their number should not exceed 50% of the number of candidates on the list. The party list of candidates should be divided into federal and regional parts. The regional part includes regional groups of candidates corresponding to the group of bordering federal subjects. The number of regional groups must be at least 35. No more than ten candidates may be included in the federal part of the list of candidates. The regional parts of the party list should cover the entire territory of Russia.^[2]

In the majoritarian part, candidates can be nominated both by political parties and in the order of self-nomination. The political party must provide a list of candidates to the Central Election Commission, and the list must contain the name and number of the constituencies in which each candidate will run. Documents of candidates-self-nominees, unlike candidates from political parties, have to submit applications to District Election Commissions.^[3] For registration, the self-nominated candidate must collect at least 3% of the signatures of voters residing in the constituency (or at least 3,000 signatures if the constituency has less than 100,000 voters).^[4]

One and the same candidate can be nominated both in the party list and in the single-member constituency, however, in the case of its passage to the State Duma and the party list and in the single-member constituency, he will need to give up one of the places (usually refuse the seat received on the party list, as in this case the party does not lose this seat and simply will give another candidate).

Participating parties

As of 15 June 2018, 63 political parties can participate in the elections.^[5] At the same time, parties represented in the State Duma, parties that received more than 3% of the vote in the previous elections or are represented at least in one of the regional parliaments are allowed to contest in the elections without collecting signatures. Other parties need to collect signatures to participate in the elections. The official list of parties entitled to participate in the elections without collection of signatures will be announced before the election, but at the moment, there are only 14 such parties.^[6][7]

Opinion polls

Opinion polling (WCIOM)

Opinion polling (WCIOM)

Footnotes

References