Russian election: Big victory for Putin-backed party United Russia — BBC

The independent election monitoring group Golos said that "although the level of violations in this election campaign was lower than in 2011 there were many in the run-up to the voting". It said the elections were "far from what could be called really free and fair".

United Russia, backed by President Vladimir Putin, has won a majority in the country's parliamentary election, far ahead of rival parties.

With 93% of the votes counted, the party has secured 54.2% of ballots and 343 seats in the 450-member parliament, officials say.

Mr Putin said his party had "achieved a very good result", however the turnout was a record low of 47.8%.

The Communist Party and nationalist LDPR both secured just over 13%.

The party A Just Russia gained just over 6% of the votes. All four parties are loyal to Mr Putin and dominated the last parliament, or State Duma.

Mr Putin has enjoyed 17 years in power as either president or prime minister.

'Utmost regret'

Voting irregularities were reported in several areas and the head of the election commission suggested that the results might be cancelled in three polling stations.

Liberal opposition parties failed to get enough votes for party-list representation. "To my utmost regret, not one other party managed to get over the 5% barrier," said Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova.

The two main opposition parties allowed to field candidates, Yabloko and Parnas, received just 1.89% and 0.7% respectively.

Half the seats were also being contested in constituencies but even there the small number of opposition candidates failed to win.

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The independent election monitoring group Golos said that "although the level of violations in this election campaign was lower than in 2011 there were many in the run-up to the voting".

It said the elections were "far from what could be called really free and fair". The number of independent observers at polling stations was lower than before, and there were cases of ballot-stuffing, carousel voting and other abuses, Golos complained.

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