CCI issued a report on general trends in nomination of candidates and party lists in the Elections scheduled for September 13

On August 10, the Committee of Civil Initiatives (CCI) issued an analytical report on the major trends in nomination of candidates and party lists in the Elections scheduled for September 13. This CCI report is the third in a series of reports on the single voting day.

The report was issued by the experts Alexandr Kanev (PhD in Political Science), Arkady Lyubarev (PhD in Law) and Andrey Maksimov (PhD in Law).

The detailed analysis of issues related with candidates-spoilers and Gubernatorial Elections is presented in the report.

Less parties and candidates run for the elections and respectively the statistics confirms this fact, according to the report drafters. The number of parties entitled to run for the elections has increased up to 74, though the number of those exercising this right decreased compared with 2013 and 2014 – the years of active registration of new parties following the liberalization of the Law on Political Parties in 2012. Only 38 parties have nominated their party lists in the most important elections (to the Legislative Assemblies and the City Councils of major cities). 25 parties did not nominate a single party list or a candidate in the elections.

According to the experts, parties are not particularly active in nomination of candidates in single-member constituencies: only eight parties are actively engaged.

In addition the experts noted an increasing engagement of the parties PARNAS, ‘Yabloko’ and ‘Civil Initiative’. ‘The Liberal parties, with rare exceptions, are competing with each other in the same regions’, - the experts report. ‘In a number of regions and municipalities only the long-established systemic parties compete with each other, or in some cases - spoilers of the Left parties and numerous parties under the patriotic names’, - as it was stated in the report.

Fewer candidates are nominated in the Elections of Regional Heads. According to the report, in the end, the Gubernatorial Election becomes similar to a referendum in regard to the non-alternative candidacy.

CCI experts describe the choice of candidacies in the Gubernatorial Elections as ‘procedural and symbolic’, demonstrating ‘the lack of actual intrigue in the election’.

Analytical report ‘The major trends in nomination of candidates and party lists’ (RUS, PDF, 1,23 MB)