THE RULING PARTY in Russia appears to have lost significant support in the parliamentary elections, a blow to Vladimir Putin as he bids for the presidency next year.
AP reports that state television is showing a poll which has Putin’s United Russia party tallying less than 50 per cent of the vote.
Sky News reports that the exit polls indicate support for the party is down from 64 per cent in 2007 to 48.5 per cent this year.
The poll appears to confirm findings in pre-election polls that United Russia would suffer a blow to its two-thirds majority in the State Duma.
BBC News reports that United Russia will gain 220 seats based on that percentage, down on the 315 it won in 2007.
Exit polls also showed the Communist Party on 19.5 per cent of the, Liberal Democrats on 12.8 per cent and Fair Russia on 11.4 per cent.
The independent monitoring group Golos alleged 5,300 complaints for violations of election laws and claimed that its website had been hacked.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused foreign powers of meddling in election preparations. Last month he insisted that Russia was a democracy and that foreign powers needed to understand this.
He was speaking after his party nominated him to run for president. He is attempting to win a third spell in the Kremlin. He was previously president for two terms between 2000 and 2008 but under the Russian constitution he was unable to run for a third successive term.
Instead he became prime minister as his United Russia counterpart Dmitry Medvedev took over the presidency, he will now step down to allow Putin to run for office again in an election he is almost certain to win.
Medvedev said in September that Putin was more liked by Russians than he was, defending his decision not to seek a second term in office.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say