Putin's party wins record 355-seat Duma supermajority
United Russia won a record 355 of 450 seats in Russia's parliamentary election, cementing a supermajority that can amend the constitution — the first vote since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has won a record 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, after a tightly controlled three-day parliamentary election that ended on Sunday.
Electoral chief Ella Pamfilova announced the preliminary results on Monday, 21 September, with more than 95 per cent of votes counted. The result beats the party’s previous record of 343 seats set in 2016, giving United Russia an expanded supermajority — more than three-quarters of the chamber — that allows it to amend Russia’s constitution.
It was Russia’s first parliamentary election since Moscow launched its full-scale military operation in Ukraine in 2022, and no parties critical of the Kremlin or the war took part. The only party that had called for an end to the war was barred from running for the federal parliament, and Moscow also organised voting in occupied areas of Ukraine.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation came second with 40 seats, followed by the nationalist LDPR with 25 and New People with 20. Turnout was more than 59 per cent, Pamfilova said.
“This vote, of course, points to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. Putin, in power since New Year’s Eve 1999, was not on the ballot and is not due to face a presidential election until 2030.
Sources: AFP via Malay Mail; Al Jazeera; Al Arabiya; Frontline (The Hindu); Daily Sabah.
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