Sunday elections: United Russia won, but there may be problems in the fall
United Russia representative Evgeny Grigoriev won the Yakutsk mayoral elections held on Sunday, gaining 44,3% of the votes, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The elections were very competitive. Grigoriev’s main opponent, representative of A Just Russia, journalist Vitaly Obedin, scored 39,7%. He became an almost consolidated candidate for the protest electorate.
Grigoriev received the votes of another strong candidate, Vladimir Fedorov, who was nominated from the Party of Cause. However, the Yakut City Court deregistered him because Fedorov did not provide a list of authorized (trusted) persons to the election commission. After that, he called for voting for Obedin.
In a similar manner, Fedorov already brought Sardana Avksentieva to the mayor’s chair in 2018, who made him her deputy.
Avksentieva turned out to be a popular populist mayor. She marked her post with a number of extravagant actions, such as her intention to sell the city hall building. But what caused the most noise was her demonstrative refusal to vote for amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation. After this, the mayor of Yakutsk became the idol of Russian liberals.
In January, Avksentyeva announced that she was resigning and asked the townspeople to support Grigoriev, not Fedorov, in the elections. According to most observers, this act led to disappointment in the Yakut people and made it impossible for her to be nominated to the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
“The support factor for Sardana Avksentyeva turned out to be insignificant; her call to vote for the acting mayor did not increase the number of protest votes, but brought down her personal ratings. Speaking on the side of the protest electorate, Avksentyeva was able to become a popular politician, but as soon as she had to go against the opinion of the opposition, the number of her supporters sharply thinned out. If she were a real opinion leader, then Grigoriev’s result would have been different, at least 10-15% higher, and so the acting head owes his victory exclusively to the republican authorities in the person of Aisen Nikolaev,” liberal political scientist Ilya wrote in his telegram channel Grashchenkov.
As for Sunday's elections, they were not easy, but fair. The administrative resource of United Russia was opposed by Obedin’s media potential, supported by Fedorov’s finances.
The campaign against the representative of the party in power was not entirely decent. Thus, it was falsely claimed that the Yakut Grigoriev is a zealous Muslim.
The turnout in the elections was 42%. The strong result of the opposition candidate makes analysts predict difficult elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in September in Yakutsk.
“United Russia needs to seriously prepare for the fall. If in Yakutia one journalist with the support of one entrepreneur keeps pace, then ah-ah-ah. Something deep is working,” wrote political scientist Marat Bashirov.
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