MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – Acting Moscow head Sergei Sobyanin predictably won Sunday’s mayoral election in the Russian capital, while his rival, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, came second with a staggering third of the vote, according to Sunday’s exit polls.
VTsIOM, a state run pollster, said late Sunday that Sobyanin got 53 percent of the vote, while Navalny received 32 percent. A Communist Party candidate came third with 8 percent.
Another poll by FOM, the Public Opinion Foundation, gave Sobyanin 52.5 percent and 29.1 percent to Navalny.
Navalny’s election campaign cried foul, claiming that its polls gave Sobyanin only 46 percent – a figure that suggests a second run – while the opposition leader got 35.6 percent.
Sobyanin, an ally and former administration head of President Vladimir Putin, was uniformly expected to win the mayoral seat by a wide margin.
Navalny’s result, though, showed that a relative newcomer who became politician less than two years ago, has alone exceeded the combined efforts of four other mayoral hopefuls, whose parties form the so-called “system opposition” to the Kremlin’s United Russia party.
Earlier opinion polls gave Navalny about 20 percent.
The Moscow election – first in a decade and marked by a low turnout despite media buzz and massive campaigns by most of the hopefuls – was the most important of regional and municipal elections that took place in Russia Sunday.
Gubernatorial elections, in addition to Moscow, were held in seven other Russian provinces, including the Moscow region and the volatile North Caucasus republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Authorities worked intentionally to keep Navalny in the race, in what analysts say was an effort to boost the legitimacy of the crucial vote after tens of thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections results. The opposition claimed the contests were rigged in favor of the Kremlin.
Popular elections of regional heads were abolished under Putin’s initiative in 2004 as a move to strengthen federal control over the regions in the wake of the Beslan school hostage crisis in the Northern Caucasus. The regional heads have since been voted in by regional legislatures after being nominated by the president – as happened with Sobyanin in 2010.
Popular votes for governors were reinstated in 2012, but Dagestan and Ingushetia will opt out of direct election. Local legislatures, under a law enacted in April, can still select the new head if authorities believe a direct vote could result in instability and violence.
updates with figures from Navalny's poll, adds background
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