Russians go to the polls on Sunday in a crucial parliamentary election which is expected to see the ruling party, United Russia, lose votes for the first time since its establishment 10 years ago.
United Russia looks set to win, but opinion polls indicate that the party will lose the two-thirds majority it enjoyed in the outgoing State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.
Two leading pollsters said United Russia will get 53 per cent of the votes, down from 64 per cent it polled four years ago. Three other parties represented in the old house – Communists, Mr. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats and A Fair Russia — are expected to gain seats at the expense of the ruling party. Another three parties in the fray are unlikely to come any were near the seven-per-cent threshold needed to enter the Parliament.
Even though United Russia is expected to dominate the new legislature, its declining support has been a source of worry for the Kremlin. The party, set up in 2001 as a political base for then President Vladimir Putin, won almost half the seats in 2003 and increased its majority in 2007 to a crushing 315 seats in the 450-member Duma. The success of United Russia was attributed almost entirely to the popularity of Mr. Putin, who is the party's chairman, but not a member.
However, in recent years United Russia, dominated by government officials, has been associated more with the vastly increased corruption, monopoly on power, stifling of political competition and incompetent law-making.
If United Russia loses polling numbers this will deal a blow to Mr. Putin, now Prime Minister, just as he prepares to reclaim presidency in the March 2012 elections with President Dmitry Medvedev agreeing to step down and take over as Prime Minister.
In an effort to halt the slipping popularity of the ruling party the Kremlin has promised to hike pensions next year and to double and triple the pay for the military.
Authorities have also put pressure on Russia's only independent election watchdog, Golos, fining it for alleged violations, briefly detaining its leader at an airport and attacking the group on Kremlin-controlled television.
