Elections in Russia

Elections In Russia

On the federal level, Russia elects a president as head of state and a legislature, one of the two chambers of the Federal Assembly. The president is elected for, at most, two consecutive six-year terms by the people (raised from four years from December 2008). The Federal Assembly (Federalnoe Sobranie) has two chambers. The State Duma (Gosudarstvennaja Duma) has 450 members, elected for five-year terms (also four years up to December 2008), all of them by proportional representation. The Federation Council (Sovet Federatsii) is not directly elected; each of the 83 federal subjects of Russia sends 2 delegates to the Federal Council, for a total of 166 members.

Since the fall of the USSR, there have been five elections for the presidency and five for parliament.

In the five presidential elections, only once, in 1996, has a second round been needed. There have been three presidents, with Boris Yeltsin elected in 1991 and 1996, Vladimir Putin in 2000 and 2004 (Yeltsin had already relinquished power to Putin in 1999) and Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. The Communist candidate (of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or Communist Party of the Russian Federation) has finished second in every case: Nikolai Ryzhkov in 1991, Gennady Zyuganov in 1996, 2000 and 2008 and Nikolay Kharitonov in 2004. Only in 1996 has there been a third candidate who gained more than 10% of the votes in the first round, Alexander Lebed.

In the parliamentary elections, the Communist Party was the biggest party in the 1995 and 1999 elections, with 35% and 24% of the votes respectively. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia has ranged from 5 to 15% of the votes, and Yabloko won 10% of the votes in 1995 and around 5% in the other three elections. The only other parties that have achieved more than 10% of the votes have been Russia's Choice with 16% in 1993, Our Home is Russia with 12% in 1995, and, in 1999, Unity Party of Russia with 23%, Fatherland-All Russia with 13% and People's Deputies Faction with 15%. United Russia, an alliance of Unity Party of Russia and Fatherland – All Russia, became the biggest party with 38% in 2003.