RUSSIA: Lower Than Expected Turnout Leaves Poll A Close Run Thing

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Jul 3 1996 (IPS) - The disillusionment with politics that fed a lower than expected estimated voter turnout in Wednesday’s Russian presidential elections did not prevent some lively comment outside the polling stations.

“We need Zyuganov to bring order back,” snapped 67 year old retired veterinary surgeon’s assistant Alexandra Petrova after casting her vote for Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov.

In Moscow at least she was voting against the trend. A straw poll conducted by IPS in one Moscow district saw the votes go 50 percent for incumbent Boris Yeltsin and 35 percent to Zyuganov. A disgruntled 15 percent availed themselves of the option to mark their ballots ‘Against Both Candidates’.

“Yeltsin and Zyuganov are to big fat zeros,” grumbled 46 year old unemployed Muscovite Viktor Guschin. “It is not them but the world that has made the rules for this shabby game. Who says we don’t have an option — I believe we do. But I voted against both because I don’t think there would be any change in MY life.”

Yeltsin strategists calculated that a 70 percent turnout in the run-off vote between the two would see the incumbent safely home. Voter apathy is widespread amongst his supporters while the more disciplined and committed pro-communists were expected to turn out whatever happened. Yeltsin finished three points ahead of Zyuganov in the first round on Jun. 16.

Yet Zyuganov’s campaign has reached out the millions of poor, old, unemployed, disabled or otherwise disadvantaged who have failed to share in the highly visible wealth that has flowed into the pockets of the lucky few able to take advantage of Russia’s free market.

Partially sighted 71 year old Dora Isakovna, who declined to give a last name, was typical. “I am an invalid and the Soviet Union fed me all my life. Yeltsin bankrupted us. We don’t need him.”

“Oh yes we do,” blurted Galina Frolova, a 37 year old advertising agent who overheard Dora Isakovna’s outburst. “You old people speak nonsense. You lived in poverty all your life and now you want the communists back. We got free education, free medical care, guaranteed employment — but we worked for free as well.”

As voting booths closed in European Russia at 22.00 hrs local time (19.00 GMT), across the vastness of the Federation, polling stations on the Pacific coast in its far eastern Khabarovsk Territory had been closed for over nine hours and vote counting was almost complete.

The semi-official Itar-Tass news agency quoted sources in the Territorial electoral commission as saying that 719,444 people or 65.06 percent of registered voters turned out Wednesday — 1. 5 percent less than in the first round. Tass reported from another far eastern territory, the Jewish Autonomous Region, that Wednesday turnout was 2.7 percent down on the first round’s total on Jun. 16.

Preliminary results of the vote count in the regions were to be made public only after the polls close in the country’s westernmost Kaliningrad region.

Nationwide exit polls nevertheless gave a narrow edge to Yeltsin, pollster Warren Mitofsky told the U.S. TV network CNN.

“What we are seeing is a lead for Boris Yeltsin, not the size of the lead that was forecast in some of the pre-election polls, something of life size proportions …but nonetheless a lead.”

CNN said the voter turnout was lower Wednesday than on Jun. 16. But Mitofsky said an exit poll was not the way to measure turnout. “That is up to the Central Electoral Commission,” he conceded.

The vote is also a test of Yeltsin’s strategy of doing deals with strongly supported but unsuccessful candidates from the first round. Yeltsin has had private talks with Grigory Yavlinsky, the pro-free market reformer who finished fourth in round one.

A prospective but unfulfilled pact echoing Yeltsin’s earlier deal with Jun. 16’s third placed Alexander Lebed was designed to bring both their supporters into the Yeltsin camp.

Before campaigning was halted Monday Yeltsin told the Interfax news agency that he hoped Yavlinsky’s voters would vote against the Communists, not for his sake but for the sake “of themselves, their children and a new, free Russia.”

On Wednesday Yavlinsky confirmed that he would be prepared to “dialogue” with Yeltsin after he is elected for a second term, speaking to Tass correspondents after voting in the town of Krylatskoye.

But he once again declined to publicly commit himself to support for Yeltsin — “In the situation in which we have found ourselves, everyone makes one’s own independent decision,” he told Tass when asked how he cast his ballot — a reluctance to openly side with the incumbent that could substantially reduce his leverage in a new Yeltsin government.

Yeltsin had wanted Yavlinsky to back him in public to ensure that his centrist vote base would turn out for him Wednesday. Instead the free market reformer limited himself to advising his supporters to do no more than not vote for Zyuganov.

In contrast Jun. 16’s third placed Lebed — a fervent nationalist whose ‘law and order’ message drained votes from Zyuganov and fifth placed ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the first round — accepted Yeltsin’s offer of a job as his national security adviser and Security Council secretary.

Accordingly Lebed’s backers felt free to turn out for Yeltsin, even as Yavlinsky’s supporters wavered. “I voted for Yavlinsky in the first round, said Moscow university chemistry lecturer Alexander Berlyand, 47. “Though I still have strong reservations on the candidacy of Yeltsin after struggling with myself I have given him my vote today.

“I decided it would be prudent to follow Yavlinsky’s appeal to his electorate to under no circumstances vote for the communist candidate.

As to the future, he was optimistic. “There is hope that Yeltsin will continue the reforms if he follows the advice of democrats,” he told IPS.