2011 Russian legislative election

2011 Russian legislative election

← 2007 4 December 2011 2016 →
All 450 seats in the State Duma 226 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	60.10% ( 3.61pp)
First party Second party   Leader Vladimir Putin Gennady Zyuganov Party United Russia CPRF Last election 64.30%, 315 seats 11.57%, 57 seats Seats won 238 92 Seat change 77 35 Popular vote 32,379,135 12,599,507 Percentage 49.32% 19.19% Swing 14.98pp 7.62pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader Nikolai Levichev Vladimir Zhirinovsky Party SR LDPR Last election 7.74%, 38 seats 8.14%, 40 seats Seats won 64 56 Seat change 26 16 Popular vote 8,695,522 7,664,570 Percentage 13.24% 11.67% Swing 5.50pp 3.53pp
Results by constituency
Chairman before election Boris Gryzlov United Russia Elected Chairman Sergey Naryshkin United Russia

Legislative elections were held in Russia on 4 December 2011.^[1] At stake were the 450 seats in the 6th State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly (the legislature). United Russia won the elections with 49.32% of the vote, taking 238 seats or 52.88% of the Duma seats.

This result was down from 64.30% of the vote and 70% of the seats in the 2007 elections. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation received 19.19% of the vote and 92 seats, its best result since 1999, while A Just Russia received 13.24% and 64 seats, with the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia getting 56 seats with 11.67% of the vote. Yabloko, Patriots of Russia and Right Cause did not cross the 7% election threshold. The list of parties represented in the parliament did not change.

United Russia lost the two-thirds constitutional majority it had held prior to the election, but it still won a majority of seats in the Duma, even though it had slightly less than 50% of the popular vote. The Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia all gained new seats compared to the previous 2007 elections.

The election received various assessments from abroad: positive from the Commonwealth of Independent States observers, mixed from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and critical from some European Union representatives and the United States. Reports of election fraud and voter discontent with the current government led to major protests particularly in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The government and United Russia were in their turn supported by rallies of the youth organizations Nashi and Young Guard of United Russia. Later, the actions of anti-government protesters sparked the fear of a colour revolution in Russian society, and a number of the "anti-Orange" protests were set up^[2] (the name alludes to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the most widely known color revolution to Russians) including one on the Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, the largest protest action of all the protests so far according to the police.^[3][4][5]

The Central Electoral Commission issued a report on 3 February 2012, in which it said that it received a total of 1686 reports on irregularities, of which only 195 (11.5%) were confirmed true after investigation, a third (584) actually contained questions about the unclear points of electoral law, and only 60 complaints claimed falsifications of the elections results.^[6] On 4 February 2012 the Investigation Committee of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation announced that the majority of videos allegedly showing falsifications at polling stations were falsified themselves.^[7]

Statistical analysis of poll data have shown massive abnormalities that most researchers explain by mass-scale electoral fraud.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]}