Moscow, 22 October: The results of the regional and local elections held on 11 October did not come as a surprise to the people of Russia, and only one in 10 expects the newly elected bodies to work better than before, studies of public opinion have shown.

Nearly half of all Russians (48 per cent) did not take part in the regional and local elections held on 11 October. Of those who did turn out, 24 per cent cast their votes for One Russia, 6 per cent for CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), and 4 per cent apiece for LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and A Just Russia, Levada Centre pollsters told Interfax on Thursday, quoting the results of a poll carried out on 16-19 October in 128 population centres in 46 regions.

According to the poll, 1 per cent of those questioned voted for Yabloko, 1 per cent for the Right Cause, and less that 1 per cent for the Patriots of Russia. Some 11 per cent of those polled said they had cast their vote for a specific candidate rather than a party.

According to the pollsters, only 28 per cent of the 1,600 people polled reported that any local elections had been held in their regions, while 64 per cent answered in the negative and 8 per cent said they did not know.

Of those respondents who know about the elections held in their regions, 36 per cent are satisfied with the results and 22 per cent are not. However, 35 per cent of respondents told the pollsters that they did not
know the results.

Meanwhile, according to Levada Centre figures, only 11 per cent of respondents were surprised with the results of the elections, while four times as many had forecast the result correctly (45 per cent), and (nearly) one in ten had expected nothing at all from the voting (9 per cent).

In the survey, 30 per cent of respondents reported that there had been violations of some kind in the elections, including 17 per cent who described them as "substantial", while 28 per cent noticed no violations in the staging of the elections or the counting of the votes, and 42 per cent said they were unable to answer the question.

Asked "Can the elections held on 11 October be regarded as reflecting the opinion of the population of Russia?", most respondents (40 per cent) said yes. Among those who disagreed, the prevailing view was that "a minority of potential voters took part in the election, and they cannot speak for all the people of Russia" (17 per cent). Other respondents are convinced that "candidates from the parties other than One Russia were in an unequal position and could not present their views in full" (15 per cent).

As a result, only one in 10 of those polled by Levada Centre believes that the newly elected members of the authorities will work better than their predecessors, more than half (54 per cent) expect no change; 15 per cent believe that the authorities "did not work before and will not work now"; and 6 per cent even expect things to get worse.

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