«Novaya Gazeta Europe» estimated United Russia’s result without anomalous votes at 34%

According to calculations by “Novaya Gazeta Europe”, the center of the “core” without pronounced statistical anomalies is at about 34% of votes for United Russia. The party’s official result is about 57.8%, that is, roughly 1.7 times higher than the estimate obtained by the editorial team.

The publication reached this conclusion using the method of Russian electoral statistician Sergei Shpilkin, comparing turnout and party results at individual polling stations. In the analysis, polling stations without pronounced statistical anomalies form the “core” on the graph, and as the number of votes for one party grows together with turnout, a characteristic “comet tail” appears.

In its calculations, the journalists assumed that votes for all parties except United Russia were counted correctly. They then compared the ratio of votes for United Russia and for other parties at the polling stations that they classified as the “honest core”.

Moscow was excluded from the analysis, where a significant share of voters cast ballots remotely and the results of paper voting differ from the overall picture. The editorial team also did not take into account several regions in which it suspects the mass attribution to United Russia of votes actually cast for other parties.

“Novaya Gazeta Europe” notes that Shpilkin’s method is primarily intended to identify statistical signs of ballot stuffing. That is how the publication interpreted the discrepancies obtained between the official result and the estimate without anomalous votes.

Sources

• Material: theins.ru