From place to place: the main parties retained their mandates in the State Duma

Several records, the role of the participants in the special operation and criticism of the multi—day voting - the CEC of the Russian Federation officially summed up the election results. "United Russia" consolidated its position by obtaining a constitutional majority, while the results of the opposition consolidated the trends. "Young people" follow the progressive decisions of the Liberal Democratic Party and the "New People," while the conservatism of the Communist Party and Just Russia is finding less and less response from the people. However, the most noticeable thing about the last election campaign is the new historical realities. Why the EDG in 2026 became the most difficult in the history of Russia is in the "Izvestia" material.

Official results of the State Duma elections

On September 25, Russia officially summed up the results of the parliamentary elections. "United Russia""" (349 seats), the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (37), the Liberal Democratic Party (23), "New People" (19) and "Fair Russia" (17) were elected to the State Duma of the IX convocation in 2026 in the federal District. The "Rodina" party received another mandate — its representative was elected in a single—mandate constituency - and four seats remained for self-nominated candidates.

The EP, as expected, won a majority, and now we can say for sure: the party has formed the largest faction in its entire history. Before that, the record was in 2016 with 343 mandates. However, the most significant thing here is that "United Russia" has retained its constitutional majority, emphasizes Dmitry Zhuravlev, scientific director of the Institute of Regional Problems, associate professor at the Financial University. "United Russia" has previously sought it three times: in 2007, in 2016, and also in 2021.

The election results generally strengthen the dominance of "United Russia", due to patriotic consolidation, high confidence in the president and an effective campaign of the party, said Dmitry Orlov, Director General of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications. He draws attention to the fact that it was the EP that managed to get the majority of the votes of the "new waverers" — this is a group of voters who appeared at the beginning of the campaign.

The opposition parties did not present any significant surprises, but there are still interesting changes. ""The positions of the Liberal Democratic Party and the "New People" have strengthened somewhat, while the Communist Party and the "Fair Russia" have seriously declined. According to Dmitry Orlov, the reason is that there was a high turnout among young people, as well as middle-aged voters, and the voting structure at polling stations was significantly different, including due to the availability of remote electronic voting. "New People" is the only party that the younger generation of big cities can focus on: neither the Liberal Democratic Party nor the Communists are suitable for them, Dmitry Zhuravlev summed up. By the way, the party has significantly improved its previous result with 13 seats. However, more was expected from NL anyway. Even before the vote, experts gave them from 20 to 32 seats.

But "Fair Russia" was literally on the verge of leaving parliament. During the elections, the party balanced at the 5% barrier, but in the end it still managed to secure the right to participate in state lawmaking.

But the main feature of the last election campaign is completely new realities. For the first time, the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, joined the parliamentary elections. By the way, among the new deputies there are 46 participants in a special military operation, said the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova. She also called the fighters the most active in the voting process.

What difficulties did the elections face?

This time, the turnout showed a record figure for three parliamentary campaigns, Ella Pamfilova said. 59.80% of voters decided to participate in the formation of the parliament, which is 67,448,094 people. At the same time, over 7 million citizens participated in electronic voting. The growth here is primarily due to the increased use of the system: this time the DEG was conducted in 33 regions. At the same time, there was a rather modest proportion of invalid ballots — only 1.36%. According to Pamfilova, the results of the regional elections in one district in the Kirov region were not recognized.

The three—day election marathon is an extremely time-consuming event, and, of course, despite the apparent calmness, the organization of voting faced a lot of difficulties. Under the conditions of sanctions and external pressure in general, EDG-2026 has become the most difficult election campaign in the history of new Russia, the head of the Central Election Commission admitted.

— I hope that a number of politicians will moderate party egoism... Yes, it was difficult to watch. But no one complained about this," Pamfilova said, commenting on the criticism of the multi—day vote.

Among the difficulties, the CEC chairman mentioned sending fake letters to election commissions, threats to their members and their children, reports of mining sites, drone attacks and attempts to hack phones.

Political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko emphasizes that the fighting, including UAV raids, as well as cyber attacks on the Central Election Commission's server, and disinformation campaigns by unfriendly countries, is an absolutely unprecedented story that, of course, created a negative background. The vast majority of cyber attacks came from Ukraine, the UK, Brazil and Mexico. Compared to the 2024 presidential election, the number of hacker attacks increased by 8,300% to 100 million.

"But I think that Russia's opponents miscalculated and, on the contrary, increased the level of support for the government and the president personally, that is, they had a greater impact on the effect of the so—called consolidation around the flag," the expert noted.

According to Minchenko, early voting allowed minimizing risks, among other things. It took place in 12 regions of Russia: these are, respectively, Donbass and Novorossiya, as well as other border regions. For security reasons, the entire voting process was broken down by time and place to avoid crowding. However, Ukraine still tried to destabilize the situation. In the LPR, according to Marianna Sumskaya, chairman of the republican election commission, the authorities had to switch 14 polling stations to backup power supply. In the Kherson region, two people were killed, including a member of the regional precinct election commission, due to an attack by an APU drone on a civilian bus. In the Zaporozhye region, as a result of a UAV strike, Elena Astanina, the chairman of the PEC, was killed. Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on her posthumous award of the Order of Courage.

Despite all the difficulties, for the first time in history, 4.6 million people voted early. This largely explains the overall high turnout and, most importantly, the desire of Russian citizens to participate in the life of their own country.