Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Electoral reforms and democratization 145in Tyva and Primorskii Krai. It seems that the party’s results in a specific regiondepend directly upon the personal makeup of the specific regional list, howactively the electoral campaign is conducted and also upon the real degree ofcompetition in the protest niche. Above all the party lost votes in places wherethere were other colourful protest forces (in particular Rodina headed by Sheinin Astrakhan and the RPL in Tyva), and it gained votes in places where newfigures appeared in its list (in particular Yefimov in Novgorod Oblast). Thus,despite a certain level of basic support from its traditional voters, the appearanceof a new centre–left alliance (A Just Russia) has clearly faced the CPRFwith the problem of carrying out a major renewal and strengthening of itsregional structures. As a rule the party’s internal activists dominate its lists, andbringing in people ‘from outside’ is usually the exception rather than the rule.The results for the populist and nationalistic LDPR proved to be worsethroughout the whole period of regional elections under the mixed system:its vote dropped in every region, except Chuvashiya, irrespective of whetherits leader, Zhirinovsky, visited the region during the electoral campaign. Ofthe three regions where the party received more than 7 per cent of the vote(Kareliya, Novgorod Oblast and Chuvashiya), it only just scraped across thethreshold in the Novgorod Oblast. At one point during the count inAstrakhan Oblast the LDPR crossed the 7 per cent threshold, only to fallback below it again. Even with a 5 per cent threshold the LDPR would stillnot have managed to enter the parliaments in the Jewish AO, Tyva andLipetsk Oblast. Of particular concern to the party leadership would havebeen the fall in its share of the vote in the Far Eastern and north Russianregions that had previously constituted the electoral base of the LDPR:Kareliya, Primorskii Krai and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.In a number of regions the leadership of the regional organization waschanged immediately before the elections (Novgorod Oblast) or it lost anumber of former leaders (Sverdlovsk Oblast). As a rule the party’s candidatesare from small and medium regional businesses, and in the absence ofexternal investors they rely on party functionaries from the regional branches.It would seem that the key issue for the survival of the party is to position itselfcarefully in relation to the ‘party of power’, and not just to fight against anyother opposition, and also to lower the threshold to 5 per cent.In comparison with the results for the PRR–RPL bloc in 2003, theRussian Party of Life improved its vote everywhere, and moreover usuallyseveral-fold, if not tenfold or more. In Kareliya, Tyva and the Lipetsk Oblastthe party came second to United Russia. Overall the party entered regionalparliaments in four out of the seven regions, and its result was below 5 percent in only two regions (the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and PrimorskiiKrai), although not substantially. This result reflected the significant financialbacking it had received for major financing for its regional campaigns,together with federal PR support (linked to the establishment of the Unionof Trust) and the high-quality makeup of the regional lists, something thathad not been in evidence previously: the leader of the opposition of the