About half of votes for Vladimir Putin were falsified, according to statistical analysis by Novaya Gazeta Europe

About half of the votes reported for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential vote this weekend were falsified, according to an analysis of election data conducted by Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Using the method created by leading independent election analyst Sergey Shpilkin, journalists from Novaya Gazeta Europe used data published by the Telegram channel Nevybory (“Non-elections”) with 97 percent of official results reported to determine the number of votes that fell outside of the normal mathematical distribution.

Excluding votes cast electronically, 74.5 million voters were reported to have participated in the election. About 64.7 million of them, according to official data, voted for Putin.

Novaya Gazeta’s calculations reportedly indicate that at least 31.6 million of the votes recorded for Putin, about half of them, were fabricated. According to the outlet, this means the scale of the falsifications in this election exceeded that of any previously seen in modern Russian history.

Meduza has not independently verified these calculations.

Putin’s three “challengers” in this election were Nikolai Kharitonov from the Communist Party of Russia (officially won 4.31 percent), Vladislav Davankov from the New People party (3.85 percent), and Leonid Slutsky from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (3.2 percent). Because all three candidates won more than three percent of votes, their parties will receive a total of about 500 million rubles ($5.4 million) from Russia’s federal budget.