With polling stations closing the first exit polls from the Russian parliamentary elections give the government party United Russia a comfortable lead.

The exit poll results from FOM are: United Russia 48.7%, Liberal Democratic Party (Zhirinovsky’s party) 14.2%, Communist Party of the Russian Federation 16.3%, A Just Russia 7.6%.

A different exit poll from VCIOM gives similar but slightly different figures, with United Russia party winning 44.5%, with the LDPR second with 15.3%, and the Communist Party third with 14.9%.

If these exit polls are correct then it would suggest that the balance of forces in the new Duma will be very similar to that of the outgoing Duma, though the nationalist Liberal Democrat party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky seem to have gained ground at the expense of the two left wing parties, the Communist Party and A Just Russia.

Exit polls are not always reliable whether in Russia or anywhere else. Moreover in these elections there is a wild card in that only half the seats in the Duma are being allocated according to proportional representation, with the other half being allocated in first past the post voting in single member constituencies. Whilst that is expected to work to United Russia’s further advantage, it might throw up a few mavericks in odd places.

Though there are no final figures, it seems turnout is well down and may be as low as 40%.</s>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sarah Rainsford reports from a Moscow polling station where there is a festive mood

Voting is ending in Russia's parliamentary elections dominated by President Vladimir Putin's supporters.

The last poll in 2011 was followed by mass protests as evidence of fraud emerged. This time serious violations were reported in one Siberian region.

For the first time, people are voting in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move condemned internationally.

There were reports of scuffles with Ukrainian nationalists as people voted at the Russian embassy in Kiev.

Voters will choose 450 MPs in the State Duma (lower house), for the next five years. The outgoing Duma had just a handful of MPs opposed to Mr Putin.

Image copyright AFP Image caption A woman votes at home in Moscow during the elections

Despite Russia's economic malaise and tensions with the West over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, some observers called the election campaign the dullest in recent memory. Widespread voter apathy suggests that turnout could be low.

Violations: By Oleg Boldyrev, BBC News, Moscow

As election day started across Russia's vast territory, the first turnout figures started coming in. In the Far Eastern region of Kamchatka only 34% of voters went to the polls.

It's too early to say whether this trend is going to hold across Russia. In Moscow early voting was mostly sluggish, although some polling stations were filled with dozens of voters at once, prompting suspicion of an organised vote.

The first reports of violations are also coming in from across the country, although so far not as numerous as in the 2011 campaign.

In one case, in Altai region, notorious "carousel" voting - people being bussed round polling stations and voting several times - was witnessed. Ella Pamfilova, the head of Russian Central Election Committee, threatened to cancel the results of the vote there and said a criminal case will follow.

Independent monitors say the influx of absentee votes is a major complaint, despite Mrs Pamfilova saying that the total number of absentees registered this time was half that of 2011.

She has brushed off reports of such irregularities, calling them "hysteria". Two days ago, summing up the pre-election campaign, Mrs Pamfilova acknowledged some violations were inevitable, but said she would do everything possible to fight fraud.

Among irregularities reported so far:

Monitoring group Golos says it had received more than 1,300 complaints by late afternoon, AP reports

Reports of "carousel" voting in the city of Barnaul, in the central Siberian Altai region, prompt officials to threaten to annul the election there

Two men detained in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on suspicion of organising carousel voting

Mr Putin voted at around lunchtime in southern Moscow

Questioned by journalists, the president said, quoted by Russian media: "I know who I'm voting for. Don't you have an idea?"

The first exit polls are expected on Sunday evening.

Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Putin voted at the Academy of Sciences building in southern Moscow

Some critics of President Putin got a rare chance to put their case to a mass audience on TV but significant opposition figures like Alexei Navalny were barred from campaigning.

Ukrainian protests

Tensions are running high in Ukraine, with reports that right-wing Ukrainian activists were blocking the entrance to Russia's embassy in the capital Kiev.

Image copyright AP Image caption Voting in Crimea - annexed by Russia in 2014 - has angered Ukraine

Image copyright EPA Image caption Nationalist activists have been trying to blockade the Russian embassy in Kiev

One demonstrator was arrested during scuffles with police, AP news agency reported.

Ukraine's government is furious about Russia's plans to hold elections in Crimea, annexed after an unrecognised referendum on self-determination.

A Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mariana Betsa, said voting in the Russian election could not take place in her country.

Ukraine refused to provide extra security at Russian consular buildings for the poll, but Russia insisted that polling stations would be set up in them anyway.

About 80,000 Russian voters live in Ukraine, Russian electoral officials say.

Ukraine's parliament, the Rada, has urged countries not to send observers to the Russian elections in Crimea and not to recognise the results there.

Any such visits will be treated as criminal violations of Ukraine's borders, the parliament warned.

President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov countered that Russia did "not plan to discuss the electoral process on its territory with any other country".

Russian election battle</s>The polls have closed for Russia's 2016 parliamentary elections, with the first exit polls showing no real surprises: President Vladimir Putin's party of power, United Russia, stands to remain the dominant force in Russian parliamentary politics. According to exit polls, the party looks to claim up to 49.4 percent of Sunday's vote, according to the Public Opinion Fund (FOM), a state-funded pollster.

According to another state pollster, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), United Russia took 44.7 percent of the vote. Support for the party appears to have been strongest in regions with high voter turnout.

The two state pollsters differed on which sanctioned opposition party took second place in the election. According to FOM, Russia's Communist Party held onto its second-place spot with 16.3 percent of the vote. However, VTsIOM has the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) in second with 15.3 percent to the Communist party's 14.9 percent. FOM had LDPR at 14.3 percent.

Meanwhile, efforts by Russia's fractious opposition parties were mired by low turnout in urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg, where support for liberal-minded or otherwise opposition-focused movements was at least measurable. Yabloko, the leading liberal opposition party, pulled in just 2.6 percent of the vote, according to FOM. (The party managed to rake in 3.4 percent of the vote, according to VTsIOM.) By failing to pass the five-percent threshold, Yabloko will not gain representation in the Duma, unless one of its candidates can win a seat in a single-mandate contest.

A source close to the Kremlin told The Moscow Times that officials expect United Russia to win more than 300 seats in the Duma (in both the proportional voting and winner-take-all races), giving the party a majority large enough to amend the Russian Constitution. “This is possible,” the source said.

The only other party to pass the five percent threshold was A Just Russia, which won 7.6 percent of the vote according to FOM, and 8.1 percent according to VTsIOM.

Numbers published by the Central Election Commission at 6 p.m., Moscow time (two hours before polls in the capital closed), indicated a sharp drop in voter participation. National turnout is estimated to have been just 40 percent this year — ten percent lower than five years ago, when Russians last voted for parliament.</s>President remains the favourite, despite the longest economic crisis the country is reeling under.

Russia’s ruling United Russia party on Sunday cruised to an easy victory in parliamentary polls that could pave the way for President Vladimir Putin to glide to a fourth term in 2018 elections, partial results showed.

The ballot for the 450-seat State Duma was smooth sailing for authorities desperate to avoid a repeat of mass protests last time round and eager to increase their dominance as Russia faces the longest economic crisis of Mr. Putin’s rule.

But indications of a low turnout suggested that many Russians may be turned off by a system in which the Kremlin wields near-total power, which could raise questions over legitimacy.

“We can announce already with certainty that the party secured a good result, that it won,” Mr. Putin said after the vote.

“The situation is tough and difficult but the people still voted for United Russia,” he said on state television.

After 30 per cent of the ballots in the party-list vote had been counted, Mr. Putin’s United Russia had received 52 per cent of the vote, far ahead of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party on 14.7 per cent, the Communists on 14.6 and A Just Russia on 6.3, results published by the election commission showed.

Those four parties — which made up the last parliament and all back the Kremlin — were the only ones to clear the five per cent threshold needed to claim a share of the one-half of seats up for grabs.

The vote comes as Mr. Putin's approval ratings remain high at around 80 per cent and authorities appear to be banking on trouble-free presidential elections in two years.

Preliminary results from Sunday’s polls indicated that liberal opposition groups are unlikely to make it to parliament, with the Yabloko party garnering 1.5 per cent.

The Parnas opposition party, headed by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, meanwhile received a mere 0.6 per cent of the vote, early results showed.

The other half of the deputies are being elected on a constituency basis after a change to the election law. So far United Russia is leading in 191 constituencies, the electoral commission said.

Even before the 52 per cent result was announced, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev confidently said that the party would end up with an “absolute majority” in the Duma.

Though the overall tally for United Russia was higher than the 49 per cent it claimed in 2011, participation was low, particularly in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There was no final turnout figure but just a few hours ahead of the polls closing less than 40 per cent of voters had cast their ballots.

Sunday’s election follows a tumultuous few years that have seen Russia seize the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine, plunge into its worst standoff with the West since the Cold War and start a military campaign in Syria.

But the Kremlin exerts almost complete control over the media and public discourse, and this year's election campaign was dubbed the dullest in recent memory.

Looming large was the spectre of mass protests over vote rigging that followed the last legislative polls five years ago and grew into the biggest challenge to Putin since he took charge in 2000.

Since then, the Kremlin has cracked down on the right to protest while making a show of stamping out electoral manipulation.

The former scandal-tainted election chief was removed in favour of a human rights advocate who allowed more genuine opposition candidates to take part.

Despite the authorities pledging to crack down on vote-rigging, observers around the country made claims of violations including “cruise-voting” — where people are bussed to vote at multiple polling stations — and ballot stuffing.

Electoral Commission chief Ella Pamfilova admitted that there had been problems in certain regions but officials said the number of violations was way down on the last vote.

“In any case, there already is full confidence that the elections are nonetheless quite legitimate,” Ms. Pamfilova said. “And we did a lot for that.”

For the first time since Moscow seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014, residents there voted for Russia’s parliament, in a poll slammed by Ukraine as illegal.

Voters in some areas of the vast country were also electing regional leaders.

In the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, strongman Ramzan Kadyrov looked set to win a crushing victory in the first electoral test of his rule after rights groups said that criticism was ruthlessly silenced during the campaign.</s>MOSCOW (AP) — The Latest on Russia's parliamentary election (all times local):

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that the ruling United Russia party, which early results show is winning in the parliamentary election, has produced a good result.

Putin, who was speaking at United Russia's election headquarters shortly after the polls closed, told party members that he views the early results as a vote of confidence.

Putin admitted that "things are tough" in the Russian economy, but said people see that United Russia lawmakers "are really working hard even though it does not always work."

The popularity ratings of United Russia are far lower than those that Putin enjoys. Putin isn't a member of the party nor has he formally campaigned for it.

Exit polling by a state-run survey agency suggests the pro-Kremlin United Russia party will win a strong majority of the nationally chosen seats in the lower house of parliament.

The poll by the VTsIOM agency was shown on state television Sunday evening as the final voting stations closed in western Russia.

It showed United Russia receiving 44.5 percent of the vote for the State Duma seats chosen by part-list. Half the 450 seats are being chosen that way. The other 225 were contested in specific districts.

The Communists and the nationalist Liberal Democrats were shown with about 15 percent of the vote each and the A Just Russia Party with 8 percent — roughly the same proportion as in the old parliament.

No other party cleared the 5-percent mark need to win party-list seats.

The chief of the Russian Election Commission says that she sees no reason to nullify results in any location in the country's parliamentary election.

Ella Pamfilova said in a televised briefing as the polls closed in Russia that she saw no reason to invalidate the vote in any district despite the reports of election fraud.

Pamfilova conceded, however, that the election "wasn't sterile" and added that reports of ballot stuffing were confirmed in three polling stations.

Russia's Central Election Commission says the very first results show the ruling United Russia party winning in the parliamentary election.

Polls closed at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) in Russia's westernmost region while Russia's regions in the Far East and Siberia have been counting the ballots for several hours now.

Less than 7 percent of the ballots counted show United Russia getting about 44 percent of the vote, with the Liberal Democrat Party trailing behind with 18 percent of the vote. The results are likely to change as votes in the west of Russia are counted.

Complaints of election violations have been increasing as Russians vote for a new national parliament.

The voting for the 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, wasn't expected to substantially change the distribution of power, in which the pro-Kremlin United Russia party holds an absolute majority. But the perceived honesty of the election could be a critical factor in whether protests arise following the voting.

Massive demonstrations broke out in Moscow after the last Duma election in 2011, unsettling authorities with their size and persistence.

Russia's elections commission head says results from voting for parliament in a Siberian region could be annulled if allegations of vote fraud there are confirmed.

Ella Pamfilova's statement came Sunday as Russians cast ballots for the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The pro-Kremlin United Russia party is expected to retain its dominance and the three other largely cooperative parties in the current parliament are also expected to win seats.

Russian officials are concerned that widespread allegations of vote fraud could spark protests similar to the massive demonstrations after elections in 2011.

A candidate from the liberal Yabloko party in the Altai region of Siberia told state news agency Tass that young people were voting in the name of elderly people unlikely to come to polling stations.</s>The ruling United Russia party is expected to win even greater dominance over Russia’s lower house in a parliamentary election on Sunday, showing that support for President Vladimir Putin is holding up despite sanctions and a deep economic slowdown.

The election for the Duma, or lower house, is being seen as a dry run for Mr. Putin’s expected presidential campaign in 2018.

It is also a test of how well the Kremlin can oversee trouble-free elections. It will be the first parliamentary vote since 2011, when allegations of ballot-rigging sparked big protests against Mr. Putin in the capital.

Voting got under way at 2000 GMT on Saturday on the Chukotka Peninsula opposite Alaska and was to wrap up in Kaliningrad, Russia’s most westerly point, where people can cast their vote until 1800 GMT on Sunday.

United Russia, led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin loyalist, has 238 of 450 Duma seats, dominates the more than 80 regional Parliaments, and is routinely depicted in a favourable light by state television.

The liberal opposition hopes it can break through to win about two dozen seats. Pollsters say it will be lucky to snag a handful and may end up with none.

Anxious to avoid a repeat of 2011’s street protests, Kremlin officials have tried to assure Russians that the vote will be the cleanest in the country’s modern history.

First vote in Crimea

 

 Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe are being allowed to monitor the vote.

The election is the first time that voters in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, are helping decide the makeup of the Duma. That has angered the Ukrainian government and there were scuffles between Ukrainian nationalists and police outside the Russian embassy in Kiev on Sunday after a few nationalists tried to stop Russian citizens from voting there.</s>The ruling United Russia party won 44.5 per cent in a parliamentary election on Sunday, an exit poll showed, slightly down on the last election but still enough to preserve the dominance of President Vladimir Putin’s allies in parliament.

The nationalist LDPR party was in second place with 15.3 per cent, according to the exit poll by state-run pollster VTsIOM. The Communists were in third on 14.9 per cent and the Just Russia party was fourth with 8.1 per cent.

Liberal opposition parties, the only grouping openly critical of Putin, failed to get over the 5 per cent threshold needed for party representation, the exit poll showed. Some of their candidates could still make it into parliament in constituency races.

In the last election for the Duma, or lower house of parliament, in 2011, United Russia won 49 per cent of the vote. The vote this time around is being seen as a dry run for Putin’s expected presidential campaign in 2018.

It is also a test of how well the Kremlin can oversee trouble-free elections. After the 2011 election, allegations of ballot-rigging sparked big protests against Putin in the capital.

Voting got under way at 8pm GMT on Saturday on Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska. By 6pm GMT on Sunday all polling stations in Russia were scheduled to close.

Yevgeny Korsak, a 65-year-old pensioner in the city of Saransk, 600 km (375 miles) south-east of Moscow, said he had voted for United Russia “because it is strong and powerful”.

A middle-aged man in the town of Velikiye Luki in western Russia, who declined to give his name, told Reuters: “Of course I voted for United Russia . . . We don’t need other parties here. At least they [United Russia] have done their stealing.”

United Russia, led by prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin loyalist, has 238 of 450 Duma seats, dominates the more than 80 regional parliaments, and is routinely depicted in a favourable light by state television, where most Russians get their news.

The party is able to draw on the support of the other three parties in parliament, and benefits from its association with 63-year-old Putin, who after 17 years in power as either president or prime minister, enjoys a personal approval rating of about 80 per cent. Putin does not belong to any party.

By contrast, liberal opposition politicians, who currently have just one sympathetic member in the Duma, complain they are starved of air time, vilified by state media, and their campaigns systematically disrupted by pro-Kremlin provocateurs. Pro-Kremlin politicians deny that charge.
Russian voters head to the polls to elect all 450 MPs to the 7th State Duma of the Russian Federation. Exit polls show the governing United Russia party with a comfortable lead.