Authorities in many Russian regions shape actively the “right” results of the poll. And that can be calculated.

Thinking that “all is arranged beforehand” at the poll and so it has no sense, this thinking is wrong. It’s far from that all is arranged. Administrative resource and electoral freedom are phenomena that can be subject of quantitative assessment.   

We shall use official statistics starting from 1995 when it began to be published thanks to State Automated System Vybory (fittingly Election) on the level of Territorial Elective Commissions, or TEC. That means we shall see it in the geographical perspective on the level of rural and urban district administrations. We shall mark the indicators that assumingly reflect the influence of administrative resource. 

1. Disproportionately high or low turnout. Say, in the spring Republic parliament election in Dagestan 100% turnout of voters was registered at 177 polling stations. We have no judicial grounds to state this turnout was falsified, but we can see these territories can be distinguished against the general background. Same can be said about low turnout of 10-20%: one may not prove that the authorities had been working for derangement of undesired election, but one may establish the fact of oddly abnormal figures comparing it to the general background.

2. Disproportionately high or low share of invalid ballot papers. It’s high where the elector is annoyed or – which happens more often – where second tick is put illegally on the ballot papers when undesired candidate is chosen there. Second tick is put in favor of any other competitor. The undesired candidate loses a vote but the number of invalid ballot papers increases as it is impossible to establish the real express of will in such a paper with two ticks. The low share of invalid ballot papers is characteristic of the places where the elector in unnaturally careful or – which happens more often – someone “helps” the elector to make the “right” choice giving the ballot papers filled in beforehand. In 1995 17% of invalid ballot papers were noticed in one Tatarstan TEC. It coincided with the fact that exactly in that district the popular candidate from Communist Party A.Saliy had been running and the local authorities didn’t want him to win.

3. Disproportionately high or low share of votes “against all”. It tends to zero where discontented electors just do not exist or where the mass “insertion” of “rightly” pre-filled ballot papers takes place. Unfortunately, starting from this year such indication is not available as the item “against all” was excluded from ballot papers.

4. Disproportionately high “monolithic nature” of the poll. That indicates to narrowing of freedom of choice conditioned with unknown causes. For example, in spring this year it was registered 100% of votes given to United Russia in 124 poll stations in Dagestan. That might be related to some national traditions. We won’t be trying to guess but take a note of TECs where a party or a candidate is voted for with amazing unanimity.    

5. Difference between share of votes given for the winner in this TEC and the average figure for this candidate or party in the country. This is the sign of regional “patriotism” and another indication to mysterious ability by local electors to consolidate around one person or party. 

It’s clear that deviation from average figures in a single indicator can be accidental. But when TEC is distinguished in all 5 parameters and that repeats every election, there is a sense to reflect on that. It’s easy to calculate the integral index of deviation for each TEC from average figures within the five above mentioned indicators. We shall use for that the algorithm proposed by Professor V.S.Tikunov from Geography Department at Moscow State University.  

Electoral culture

Statistics is not able in judicial terms to answer the question if there were or not any falsifications. But it is able to establish the fact of regular deviation from average norm by some TECs. Why people there give 100% of votes to one party with 100% of turnout with absolute absence of invalid ballot papers and votes “against all” is not known to the science. It can be guessed what it is about but that would be an interpretation.  

No matter if we deal in such cases with direct falsifications or people really love so much their leadership. The main thing is that we deal with a certain socio-cultural environment that allows and even implies shaping of such strange electoral results. So we are talking about this environment, its geography and its influence. We shall call it “special electoral culture”. 

Special electoral culture implies high manageability of the participants of electoral process, i.e. ability by local authorities to mobilize the electors, eliminate competition, provide monolithic support, consolidate the votes and secure desired results on the trust territory.

If single TECs were distinguished with high monolithic nature, high share of invalid ballot papers etc. in accidental way, they would be situated randomly on the country’s territory. Instead, we see the stable zones of special electoral culture in North Caucasus and Kalmykia, in South Urals, in Volga region and some other regions like Orel and Kemerovo oblasts.   

It is significant that contours of the Republics Tuva, Mordovia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Kemerovo and Orel oblasts take shapes when adding TECs like a puzzle, though the borders of the subjects of the Federation were not included in the mechanism of calculation. That means that a complex of reasons is actually present on the territories of those regions influencing systematic deviation of electoral data from the background figures. Several tens of TECs in one subject of the Federation amalgamate into one compact zone with high values of the index of “abnormality” and the borders of such a zone sometimes ideally coincide with administrative borders.

If you leave such a subject of the Federation, for example, if you go from Bashkiria to Chelyabinsk region or from Orel oblast to Tula oblast, then the figures of the index go down sharply. So, electoral culture is connected closely to particularities of the administrative system of the region. 

In other words:

There are regions in the Russian Federation that are distinguished significantly with their electoral culture;

Administrative factor contributes significantly into the phenomenon of special electoral culture;

The proposed method allows correct marking out of such regions;

Despite the widely spread myth, electoral manageability is conditioned not by the Central authorities but mostly by regional elites. The central power only sets up incentive system for the regional elites and tries to provide for consensus. It poses the task. And the task is coped with in the fields in accordance with one’s own understanding. 

Along with contrasting borders between “background” and “special” areas there are a number of smooth transitions from maximum index values to the average and further to the normal level. The border contrast is most striking where neighboring are two opposite electoral (or administrative?) cultures. Sometimes, even within the areas with high degree of manageability one may see the TECs with relatively independent manner of behavior by the electors and not high index values. As a rule, this is about cities, especially larger ones. This is another argument proving that calculated by us index actually reflects the objectively existing disproportion of socio-cultural space in Russia.  

Even in super manageable Bashkortostan and Tatarstan the capitals of Ufa and Kazan look like foreign bodies and their index values are closer to Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Saratov and other large centers. It is surprising that out of tens of large cities with several TECs present, it’s only Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Novokuznetsk, Krasnoyarsk and Vladivostok that got in the category of manageable. Absolute majority of other large cities show rather low index values close to the background ones. The share of independently voting electors is higher there, and the number of political activists and observers from political parties is bigger. That makes the election more transparent and competitive. In large cities election is held in a socio-cultural environment different from the provinces, especially the provinces of national Republics.     

General number of manageable TECs fluctuates from election to election. During presidential campaigns one may see polarization of opinions concentrating about this or that contender and that is reflected in high monolithic nature of voting and rising of index values. Our method does not consider political preferences themselves; it only considers the measure of freedom and alternativeness of the voting. In the presidential election of 1996 Kalmykia and Tuva were distinguished with high values of index (monolithic support of Yeltsin) and also were Dagestan and North Ossetia (monolithic support of Zyuganov). Electoral culture is an indicator of the environment in which the election is held; it is not indicator of preferences made. 

The trend of increasing manageability during presidential election is reflected by the graph of change of the share of the manageable electorate. This indicator is calculated as percent of electors in a TEC with the index of manageability over 3000 or 4500 for the greatly manageable electorate, among the general number of the voters in the country. It should be considered that even in strongly manageable TECs there are electors who vote being based on their own scenarios. So it would be a mistake to consider all the voters in such TECs to be dependent. However, general dynamics of fluctuations leaves no doubts: the number of manageable TECs and the contribution by manageable electorate increase during presidential campaigns and decrease during the Duma’s campaigns (see the graph).    

Along with that, it’s only 73 TECs out of almost 2750 that have always had the index of electoral manageability over 3000 during all seven elections. In these 73 TECs registered are 1.5 million of voters which is 1.4% of the general number of voters in Russia.

These permanently manageable TECs with special electoral culture belong to the following subjects of the Federation:

22 belong to Tatarstan;
18 belong to Dagestan;
14 belong to Bashkortostan;
5 belong to Tuva;
3 belong to Mordovia;
2 belong to Adygei, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria to each;
1 belongs to Chuvashia, Krasnodarsky krai, Kemerovo, Orel and Ulyanovsk oblasts to each.

If we take only super manageable TECs with the index always higher than 4500, there will be 14 of them:

8 in Tatarstan;
2 in Dagestan;
and one in Bashkortostan, Ingushetia, Tuva and Krasnodarsky krai in each.

All those TECs are rural ones except one, it’s Sudovyaya TEC attached to the port of Novorossiysk in Krasnodarsky krai. In this case we seem to deal with understandable phenomenon of exceptional monolithic nature and manageability of voting under conditions of closed collectives on the ships. 225 thousand electors are registered in such super manageable TECs.     

If we consider not 7 but any 6 election campaigns then the number of manageable TECs comes to 167 (out of them only 6 are urban ones) and super manageable 58 (out of them 3 urban ones) with 3.3 million and 993 thousand electors registered in them respectively.

At the same time, if we take TECs that have never been in the category of the manageable, their number turns out to be much bigger – 832. This is 31.6 million of voters, that’s 30% of the general number. Most part of such “background” TECs – 20 and more in a subject of the Federation – is present in Altai, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk and Stavropol krais, also in Volgograd, Kaluga, Kurgan, Nizhniy Novgorod, Omsk, Perm, Rostov, Ryazan, Tver and Chelyabinsk oblasts. In these regions the share of votes “against all”, the share of invalid ballot papers, turnout figures and other indicators of manageability are close to those average in the country. They can be considered as a standard of average Russian electoral culture. It doesn’t mean free and just election done there but it means that extent of electoral freedom and interference by administrative resource is equal to that average in Russia.

Judging from index values, Dagestan is distinguished with pronounced special electoral culture. In practice it expressed in 63.2% of votes given for Zyuganov in the first bout of presidential election of 1996. It was two times as many as the number of votes given for Yeltsin. It was also two times as many comparing with Zyuganov’s average figure for the whole country. It was monolithic voting at the background of high turnout and other chosen by us indicators. However, at the second bout most part of TECs in Dagestan supported Yeltsin. In the first bout the gap between the two contenders was 34.7% in favor of Zyuganov, and in the second bout it was 7.8% in favor of Yeltsin. The amplitude of change of 42.5% just in two weeks on the scale of a subject of the Federation is the unique case in all Russian electoral history. In similar way Bashkortostan and Tatarstan changed their political orientation in two weeks. “Weathercockness” is the characteristic feature of such territories. That proves the hypothesis that in such regions results depend greatly in the attitude by regional elites. As soon as they realized they had staked at the “wrong horse”, the whole territory radically changed its electoral preferences. It is significant that polling giving diametrically opposing results in the two bouts was equally managed in terms of quantitative parameters of socio-cultural environment.         

Special electoral culture doesn’t mean faithfulness to a certain party or ideological principles. On the contrary, if we speak of any principle it’s the one of keeping the power with any means available, including manipulation of the polling.

In other words, a certain part of Russian electorate belongs not to the left, right, centrists, or nationalist ideologists, but to pragmatic regional elites in the subjects of the Federation with special electoral culture. The elites, having administrative instruments of influencing, demonstrate support for that political force which seems most promising to them at the moment (see the Table).   

In our estimation, the share of the manageable electorate whose polling behavior depends dramatically on the attitude by regional authorities amounts 10-12% of the general number of the Russian voters. This is significant but not excessive figure.

Pre-election card shuffle

Administrative resource feels best in the province where there is no appropriate control and socio-cultural reality does not promote free election. But 73% of Russians live in cities. The more passively city dwellers participate in polling, the more is relative contribution in the final result by “submissive” backwoods. With understandable reasons and through working of administrative resource its turnout is 15-25% higher than in towns. For same reasons, it demonstrates astonishingly monolithic support of party in power in case the local elites are strongly motivated. Today it is so. Leadership in the fields has realized that market economy gives them much more opportunity comparing with the Soviet power, of course, under conditions of keeping the power by bureaucracy. This is what underlies Putin’s stability and this is the reason of shifting electoral support of Putin and United Russia from urbanized territories to the province, with few significant exceptions like Moscow.

In the 90’s, under conditions of elites dissidence Boris Yeltsin was the “President of Russian towns” while the province was conservatively communistic disposed. Today we are dealing the mirror-like situation. Putin is rather the “province President” while the cities mainly ignore the election or give 10-15% reduced support for United Russia.   

It’s paradoxical that freer behavior by urban electors is realized in growing support of Communist Party.

In spring election in Orel region the victory by United Russia was provided through administrative resource of governor E.Stroev realized in the province. As for Orel City itself, United Russia was defeated by Communist party there. Similar situation was in Samara with the only difference that United Russia was defeated by Just Russia. In Stavropolye region consolidated urban elites managed to win not only the city of Stavropol but also overcome on the krai scale the administrative resource by governor Chernogorov who worked for United Russia using manageable province.      

The result of this present Duma election was in the city dwellers’ hands. Consolidated administrative resource cannot secure for the party in power the addition of more than 10-15%. It just doesn’t have free capacity. To counter-balance 10% turnout increase in relatively free voting cities the average turnover in the manageable province must be increased by 30% as the urban population is three times bigger! Considering that current figure of the rural turnout is already 60-70% it is impossible to be done technically. Even in a super manageable Dagestan the total turnout can’t exceed 75-80% which seems to be the technical limit. 

Similar technical limit of electoral support of the party in power with maximum use of administrative resource is 55%. A bigger figure is impossible to be achieved without violation of the elective procedure and returning Russia to socio-cultural reality reminding of former USSR or today’s Dagestan. And that is difficult to be done as the environment is likely to resist. Such an operation can be done more smoothly when the cities are put under ideological anesthetic. Such a thing happened to Moscow where “advanced” citizens consider political indifference to be almost the main civil virtue and they allow manipulating with municipal election on the background of low political activity.   

Meanwhile, everything is easy. If urban population - instead of talking like “nothing can be done” – just came to vote in accordance with their preferences, the result would be not as predictable as it seems now. The myth of almighty administrative resource works for this resource itself mostly. This always happens to totalitarian bogeyman stories.

Table

Subject of the Russian Federation	Rating of special electoral culture	Integral index of special electoral culture
The Republic of Ingushetia	1	10 000
The Republic of Dagestan	2	8 953
The Republic of Tuva	3	8 596
The Republic of Tatarstan	4	8 522
The Republic of Mordovia	5	7 669
The Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria	6	7 224
The Republic of North Ossetia-Alania	7	6 531
The Republic of Bashkortostan	8	6 077
Orel oblast	9	4 954
Chukotsky Autonomous Okrug	10	4 773
The Republic of Adygei	11	4 346
The Republic of Kalmykia	12	4 026
The Republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia	13	3 912
The Republic of Chuvashia	14	3 888
Kemerovo oblast	15	3 578
Yamalo-Nenetsky autonomous Okrug	16	3 504
Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenetsky) Autonomous Okrug	17	3 264
City of Moscow	18	2 995
Belgorod oblast	19	2 655
Kursk oblast	20	2 436
Ulyanovsk oblast	21	2 359
Tambov oblast	22	2 328
Penza oblast	23	2 295
Saratov oblast	24	2 238
Aginsky Buryatsky Autonomous Okrug	25	2 166
The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)	26	2 058
Sverdlovsk oblast	27	2 030
Murmansk oblast	28	1 971
Orenburg oblast	29	1 840
Kamchatskaya oblast	30	1 799
Koryaksky Autonomous Okrug	31	1 759
Magadan oblast	32	1 669
Primorsky krai	33	1 660
Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Okrug	34	1 659
City of St Petersburg	35	1 631
Sakhalinskaya oblast	36	1 564
Evenkiysky Autonomous Okrug	37	1 352
The Republic of Altai	38	1 350
Khabarovsk krai	39	1 328
Novosibirsk oblast	40	1 305
Irkutsk oblast	41	1 277
Lipetsk oblast	42	1 264
Komi-Permyatsky Autonomous Okrug	43	1 211
Novgorod oblast	44	1 204
The Republic of Buryatia	45	1 198
Bryansk oblast	46	1 175
Krasnoyarsky krai	47	1 150
Tyumen oblast	48	1 150
Samara oblast	49	1 036
Chitinskaya oblast	50	1 017
The Republic of Udmurtia	51	1 002
Voronezh oblast	52	999
Vologda oblast	53	991
Rostov oblast	54	975
Nenetsky Autonomous Okrug	55	965
Perm oblast	56	943
The Republic of Komi	57	936
Moscow oblast	58	845
Jewish Autonomous oblast	59	822
Volgograd oblast	60	817
Altaisky krai	61	812
Kaliningrad oblast	62	773
Nizhniy Novgorod oblast	63	754
Leningrad oblast	64	702
Chelyabinsk oblast	65	684
Omsk oblast	66	672
The Republic of Karelia	67	648
Amurskaya oblast	68	643
Tomsk oblast	69	641
Krasnodarsky krai	70	562
The Republic of Khakassia	71	534
Archangelsk oblast	72	516
Yaroslavskaya oblast	73	486
Stavropol krai	74	437
Vladimir oblast	75	416
Ivanovskaya oblast	76	411
Astrakhan oblast	77	331
Kirovskaya oblast	78	328
Tver oblast	79	321
Smolensk oblast	80	316
Tulskaya oblast	81	316
The Republic of Mariy El	82	276
Ust-Ordynsky Buryatsky Autonomous Okrug	83	272
Pskov oblast	84	255
Kostroma oblast	85	150
Kaluga oblast	86	87
Kurgan oblast	87	61
Ryazan oblast	88	0