Russian presidential elections from abroad
How russians vote abroad for Russian presidential “elections”
In 2024 the results of elections of Russian president was reported as high as 87%. Although abroad Russians are not punished for calling the war how it must be named and a lot of people from Russia flee1,2 away from prosecution, arrests and repression machine3,4, so those are clearly not agree with current line, the result from abroad are - 72%, still. Not only in Russia election procedure turns into acclamation but the state meticulously control the results of Russians voting abroad to get an impressive result from 1.7% of total election voices.
While we look at historical data one can see that from 45 till 30% are military or “controlled” votes. That is calculated by including all voters at military located pooling stations. So without that the genuine result is about 33%, similar to what Putin get in many European cities. Also in the last elections there is a clear signs of fraud abroad.
You might have seen long ques in Europe5,6 of people who wanted to vote on this elections. In case we look at turnout comparison from 2018 to 2024 a few locations stand out, among them Cyprus with 903% increase in total voters. Majority of this increase - 36,838 people reportedly have been voting from home at one polling station, while last time in 2018 for the whole country it was only 5,278. Bangladesh (482 to 4058), Egypt (1518 to 4765) with the tremendous increase in votes and Turkey where exit poll observes have been kicked out from the street nearby station are under suspicion as well.
Though only Cyprus with a couple of states where Russia has military presence due to unrecognized nature of this state is enough. Looking at the cumulative number of voters it shows that only top four countries, including unrecognized states Abkhazia, Osetia and Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic gives about 42% of all Russian citizens abroad. Simple recipe is to make sure there you get 94% or more and your final results are almost known.
Figure 1 demonstrates dynamic of voting for Russian president from abroad. In 2004 it was first elections from abroad (CEC) and the result was 84%, in 2008 new name appeared on ballots and results goes up to 86%. In 2012 quite a lot of people were not that happy with Putin’s came back and you can see it by increase of spread over y axis, some countries results were way below 50%, though in total it’s 73%. However in 2018 again all points are moving upwards and there is no single country with result less than 50%, as a result 85% overall. In 2020 constitutional referendum the turnout was twice less than in 2018. Finally in 2024 the spread between the countries is clearly increases, overall result is 72%.
In 2024 almost in all regions, except Asia, protest voters decided to come and vote against Putin in response to Navalny’s call, while supporters remain passive or simply dilute in protesters. In 2012 more people who voted against Putin came to polling stations in comparison to 2008 (+71,912, blue dots below), those numbers were higher than complimentary voters who’s turnout also increased. In 2018 the opposed thinking electorate didn’t came (- 48,566) and thus increase of pro-government voters (+76,675) gave that consolidate result in 2018. Those swing in mood especially for the people who are opposed to government gives this spread in 2012 and narrow it down to a high percentage result in 2018.
Navalny’s death triggered a lot of living abroad Russians come and vote. However Russia even here prefers to control the outcome by well known and so professionally mastered mechanisms - manipulating with ballots and make sure that military controlled territories express their voices enough, up to 96%. Illegitimate acclamation, not elections.
Tooltip on the map shows results of respective and previous elections. Military ratio when shown (i.e. Military:100%) calculated as follows: all voters at polling stations in Russian military units relative to all voters in the country. Below you can see change in turnout from previous president elections clustered by group of voters (pro/against) and previous results.
Feedback, questions: Ilya Tishchenko, data avialable in the repository github.com/vearlen/RU_Elections_04-24