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Putin Wins Russia Election, and Broad Mandate for 4th Term

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Russia’s Election: More Charade Than Race

President Vladimir Putin’s real challenge in Sunday’s presidential election is not winning the race, but getting enough turnout to show the world his victory is legitimate.

Meet Russia’s presidential candidates. By all accounts, the winner of this debate was the one contender who didn’t show up: Vladimir Putin. Experts say it’s part of an elaborate charade, an election where the lead candidate couldn’t be bothered to campaign, the field of competitors is stacked with sure losers, and the outcome is known in advance. After 18 years in power, Putin remains popular in Russia among voters who see him as a strong leader. His real challenge is not winning the race, but getting enough turnout to show the world his victory is legitimate. Official state polls showed Putin expected to get about 70 percent of the vote. His main rival was Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most outspoken and well-organized opposition figure. But Navalny was barred from running after a series of court cases widely considered manufactured. Among the other seven remaining candidates — ranging from an ultranationalist firebrand to a reality television star turned journalist — none had more than 10 percent support in official polls. Here’s Putin at a campaign rally. What’s notable is that it was his only rally. Russia experts say Putin has been surprisingly absent from his own campaign. A no-show at the presidential debates, he never put out a formal policy platform, and Putin didn’t even do any filming for his campaign ads. Instead, producers reportedly had recycled old photos. There were calls for voters to boycott the election from Putin critics, including Aleksei Navalny, the candidate barred from running. But regardless, analysts say voters — pro- or anti-Putin — are not motivated to get out to the polls. Expected turnout is far below the Kremlin target of 70 percent. To help entice voters, officials and supporters have rolled out an elaborate campaign. There are regional governments promoting ballot selfie contests, raffling iPhones, and selling discounted goods at polling stations. On social media, an anonymously produced video campaign has gone viral: a series of slick vignettes preying on conservative fears about the threat of not voting. In one, video a man wakes up in a country where families have to adopt gay people. While the winner might not be in doubt, there’s much speculation about 2024. Current term limits could make this Putin’s last run for president. And the brutal battle over who or what comes next is expected to be the real contest.

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President Vladimir Putin’s real challenge in Sunday’s presidential election is not winning the race, but getting enough turnout to show the world his victory is legitimate.CreditCredit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MOSCOW — Russian voters gave President Vladimir V. Putin resounding approval for a fourth term on Sunday, with nearly complete figures from the Central Election Commission showing him winning more than three-quarters of the vote with a turnout of more than 67 percent.

The Kremlin had initially projected that Mr. Putin would get at least 70 percent of the vote with a 70 percent turnout, and the results with 99.84 percent of the ballots counted were in line with that assessment.

Mr. Putin won 76.6 percent of the vote, and the turnout of 67.47 percent was higher than the 65 percent participation rate in the last presidential election, in 2012. More than 56 million of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters backed Mr. Putin.

A poor showing by the already fractious opposition prompted a bitter public dispute between the two most high-profile liberal politicians, with one denouncing the other as a Kremlin stooge even before the polls closed.

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Election observers and opposition activists shared videos on social media showing individuals appearing to cast multiple ballots during Russia’s election on Sunday.CreditCredit...Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik

The big numbers allow Mr. Putin, 65, to claim a popular mandate for another six-year term, which under current term limits should be his last. Mr. Putin has been president since 2000, stepping aside for one term as prime minister to get around term limits.

Mr. Putin is expected to continue with little change in terms of trying to rebuild Russia as a global power while limiting economic reforms at home. Given his lame-duck status, many expect the fight will now begin in earnest among the Kremlin elite to choose his successor.

In a late-night news conference broadcast live on television, Mr. Putin said he could now begin thinking about changes in the makeup of the government. Asked if he was also planning any changes in the Constitution, particularly any that would allow him to remain in power beyond 2024, he said it was an odd night to ask such a question.

“Let’s count — what, will I be sitting here until I’m 100 years old?” he said. “No.”

Aleksei V. Makarkin, a leading analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, called the turnout quite high considering that there was no question about the outcome.

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President Vladimir V. Putin at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on Sunday.Credit...Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via Shutterstock

This is a mandate to pursue any policy,” he said. “Society trusts Putin and believes that he can deal with any internal and external problems.”

The voting was more a referendum than a choice, but there is no question that Mr. Putin is wildly popular among Russians. His picture and his campaign slogan, “Strong President, Strong Russia,” blanketed the country, and many voters who supported him echoed that sentiment.

“He is a strong politician, a strong president, who led Russia to rebirth,” said Vitaly T. Tretyakov, the dean of the faculty of television journalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University, after casting his ballot at Polling Station No. 148, a five-story red brick schoolhouse in central Moscow.

The years under President Boris N. Yeltsin in the 1990s were a disaster, Mr. Tretyakov said, echoing a common theme. Whether the current electoral system is good or bad is a different issue, he said.

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Election Day was moved to March 18, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, to emphasize that theme.Credit...Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters

For many voters, choosing any of the seven opposition candidates would have been like asking one of the dwarves to assume the role of Snow White.

Aleksei A. Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and the Kremlin’s most dogged critic, was barred from the race and called for a boycott.

Mr. Putin’s closest competitor was Pavel N. Grudinin, 57, the Communist Party candidate; preliminary results showed he got around 13 percent of the vote. Mr. Grudinin, the millionaire director of a farming enterprise, the Lenin State Farm, had vowed to restructure the economy and nationalize industries controlled by oligarchs.

Nikolai A. Volkov, a 26-year-old business manager, said he had voted for Mr. Grudinin because he thought his transformation of the Soviet collective into a successful agricultural and real estate business could be a model for all of Russia.

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The attitude of many voters was that choosing any of the opposition candidates would be like asking one of the seven dwarves to assume the role of Snow White.Credit...Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Ksenia A. Sobchak, 36, the only woman in the race, received less than 2 percent of the vote in preliminary results. One 26-year old theater sound engineer who voted for her — nervous enough about it that he wanted to be identified only by his first name, Andrei — said that “voting for a candidate whose program is the complete opposite of Putin’s is a type of protest.”

Glancing around the polling station, he added, “To be honest, I feel like I have come to an old people’s home.”

The voters did skew older, with an exit poll conducted by the state-backed Vtsiom agency showing that just over half the voters were above age 45, while only about 9 percent of those ages 18 to 25 participated.

Olga Kozlova, 20, a student at the Russian Customs Academy, was hanging out with a friend in a shopping mall on Sunday. Neither had voted.

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Mr. Putin at a polling station in Moscow. He has been the most powerful man in Russia since he first became president in 2000.Credit...Pool photo by Yuri Kadobnov

“These are the first elections we can vote in,” she said. But she skipped them, she said, because the outcome was obvious and “my vote will have no impact.”

Local governments tried various efforts to get out the vote, not least trying to turn the entire event into a carnival. There was music, discounted food for sale and games for the children. At one Moscow polling station a woman dressed as a clown shouted out historical questions and rewarded right answers with a chocolate bar.

The region of Omsk offered free iPhones for voters who turned up in the best costumes, prompting a parade of voters who came as Santa Claus or a Roman legionnaire. One family was a hockey team.

State employees, pensioners and residents of rural areas, all of whom depend heavily on the government, tend to vote for Mr. Putin out of a combination of enthusiasm, habit and blackmail.

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The government tried to create a carnival atmosphere with music, food and prizes to persuade more people to go to the polls.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

For some who supported Mr. Navalny, the outcome was a stark disillusion.

Ilya Amutov, a 26-year-old software engineer and longtime Navalny supporter, served as an election observer for the Sobchak campaign. He was taken aback watching elderly voters at his polling station off Leninsky Prospekt kissing Mr. Putin’s pictures on the official poster listing all eight candidate and crossing themselves, he said. That is how the Russian Orthodox faithful treat religious icons.

“They cherish and love Putin,” he said. “This is a big cultural shock. Of course the election was like a circus, but it was not rigged by our authorities. It was rigged by our people. This is extremely depressing.”

Mr. Navalny tried to put the best face on it, telling reporters at his headquarters that at least the boycott seemed to keep turnout below 2012 levels.

There were scattered reports of the usual election irregularities, with a few observers harassed or beaten and video cameras catching some ballot-box stuffing. There was also a discrepancy in some places between the turnout numbers tallied by Mr. Navalany’s organization, which fielded more than 30,000 observers, and the official numbers.

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The only serious challenger, Aleksei A. Navalny — at a polling station on Sunday — was barred from running and had called for a boycott.Credit...Maxim Zmeyev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

There was no real need for extensive rigging, however, because of Mr. Putin’s genuine popularity.

The result set off immediate, bitter infighting within the already divided liberal opposition.

Ms. Sobchak, who just organized a new political party, came sweeping into Mr. Navalny’s headquarters proclaiming that they should unite. “We have common goals,” she said. “They are more important than our differences, regardless of how unjust the government has been to you.”

What came next was like a scene from “House 2,” the reality television show based on “Big Brother” that Ms. Sobchak hosted before she became a political journalist.

Mr. Navalny verbally bashed Ms. Sobchak, calling her a tool of the Kremlin and releasing the anger evidently pent up since she stepped forward to claim the liberal banner in the election.

“It was a grandiose fraud and you were part of it,” he shouted, accusing her of undermining the boycott. “You are part of this lie, this falsification.”

Instead of criticizing Mr. Putin, he said, Ms. Sobchak made advertisements for caviar and vodka during the campaign.

Many suspected Ms. Sobchak, who is the daughter of Mr. Putin’s political mentor, of being a Kremlin stalking horse in the campaign and agreeing to do it to raise her profile for the advertising and lucrative hosting opportunities that come with appearing on state television. She had been barred from such appearances after she took part in anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2012.

Mr. Putin, a former Soviet intelligence officer, barely bothered to campaign, except to stress his constant theme that Russia was a besieged fortress and that he was the only man to keep it safe by rebuilding its arsenal and projecting power beyond its borders, especially in challenging the United States.

Election Day was moved to March 18, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, to emphasize that theme.

Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter: @NeilMacFarquhar

Reporting was contributed by Ivan Nechepurenko, Matthew Luxmoore and Andrew Higgins.

Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter: @NeilMacFarquhar.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Putin Wins Fourth Term in Russia Election, and Broad Mandate to Pursue Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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