‘One phone call, and they rewrote the number’: Election analyst says A Just Russia was handed some 60,000 votes as it risked missing State Duma threshold

A Just Russia gained roughly 60,000 votes around midday on September 21, during the count of ballots cast in Russia’s State Duma elections, electoral analyst Stanislav Andreychuk reported on Carnegie Politika.

The party was hovering right at the 5% threshold needed to enter the State Duma. The Central Election Commission ultimately announced that A Just Russia had made it into the State Duma.

“It’s just one phone call, the decision is made, they rewrote the number right there, and that’s it,” he said.

Earlier, an electoral expert who spoke to the Telegram channel “Vybory v detalyakh” (“Elections in Detail”) on condition of anonymity had flagged a sharp spike in votes cast for A Just Russia.

“Between 1:29 p.m. and 2:29 p.m., 67,330 votes were added for the party on the Central Election Commission’s website, meaning that at those “precincts” the party averaged 14.5%, while the Communists got 4.5% and New People got 3.1%. But now A Just Russia has 5.06% overall,” he said.

United Russia won 57.96% of the vote in elections to the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, under the federal party-list system, according to data from 97.37% of precincts processed that the Central Election Commission published on the evening of September 21.

Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF) came in second with 13.67%, followed by the LDPR with 8.96%, New People with 7.91%, and A Just Russia with 5.1%.