Presidential elections were held in Russia on 18 March 2018. Incumbent president Vladimir Putin was eligible to run. He declared his intent to do so on 6 December 2017 and was expected to win. This came following several months of speculation throughout the second half of 2017 as Putin made evasive comments, including that he had still not decided whether he would like to "step down" from the post of president, that he would "think about running", and that he "hadn't yet decided whether to run for another term". Different sources predicted that he would run as an independent to capitalize more support from the population, and although he could also have been nominated by the United Russia party as in 2012, Putin chose to run as an independent. Among registered voters in Russia, 67% voted in the election.
There were allegations of widespread electoral fraud, including ballot box stuffing, forced voting, and threats against election observers. A video widely shared online showed people stuffing papers into ballot boxes. In addition, critics of Putin were barred from running.
Putin was re-elected for his second consecutive term (and fourth overall) with 78% of the vote. Vladimir Zhirinovsky from the Liberal Democratic Party, a perennial candidate having unsuccessfully run in five previous presidential elections, finished third with 6% of the vote. Other candidates included Pavel Grudinin (Communist Party), Sergey Baburin (Russian All-People's Union), Ksenia Sobchak (Civic Initiative), Maxim Suraykin (Communists of Russia), Boris Titov (Party of Growth) and Grigory Yavlinsky (Yabloko). Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny announced his intent to run in December 2016 but was barred from doing so due to a prior criminal conviction for corruption, which was widely seen as politically motivated. Consequently, Navalny, who had previously organized several public rallies against corruption among members of Putin's government, called for a boycott of the election. He went on to die in a labor camp in 2024.
Background
The president of Russia is directly elected for a term of six years, since being extended from four years in 2008 during Dmitry Medvedev's administration. According to Article 81 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, a candidate for president must be at least 35 years old, hold no dual nationality, have permanently resided in Russia for the past 10 years, and cannot serve more than two terms consecutively. Parties with representation in the State Duma can nominate a candidate to run for office while candidates from officially registered parties that are not in parliament have to collect at least 100,000 signatures. Independent candidates have to collect at least 300,000 signatures with no more than 7,500 from each federal subject of Russia and also from action groups made up of at least 500 people. The nomination process took place during Russia's winter holiday period, and 31 January 2018 was the last day for submitting signatures in support of contested access candidates.
Change of date
On 3 March 2017, senators Andrey Klishas and Anatoly Shirokov submitted to the State Duma draft amendments to the electoral legislation. One of the amendments involves the transfer of elections from the second to the third Sunday in March, i.e. from 11 to 18 March 2018. According to article 5, paragraph 7 of Russian Federal law No. 19-FZ, "If the Sunday on which presidential elections are to be held coincides with the day preceding a public holiday, or this Sunday falls on the week including a public holiday or this Sunday is declared to be a working day, elections are appointed on the following Sunday". The second week of March includes International Women's Day (8 March), which is an official holiday in Russia. The bill passed through the State Duma and Federation Council without delay in May 2017 and was signed into law by Vladimir Putin on 1 June 2017. On 15 December, the upper house of the Federal Assembly, the Federation Council, officially confirmed that 18 March 2018 will be the date of the election, officially beginning the process of campaigning and registration for candidates. This date is significant in the country as it is the fourth anniversary of Russian annexation of Crimea.
A total of 97,000 polling stations were open across the country from 08:00 until 20:00 local time.
Nomination of candidates
Free access
Political parties represented in the State Duma or the legislative bodies of not less than one-third of the federal subjects could nominate a candidate without collecting signatures. The following parties could nominate candidates without collecting signatures: Civic Platform, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, A Just Russia, Rodina and United Russia.
On 1 July 2017, Chairman of Rodina Aleksey Zhuravlyov announced that his party would only support incumbent president Vladimir Putin in the election. On 11 December, the leader of Civic Platform Rifat Shaykhutdinov also said that his party would support Putin. On 24 December, the leader of A Just Russia Sergey Mironov stated that his party would not put forward a candidate. Senior party member Mikhail Yemelyanov confirmed that A Just Russia would support Putin's candidacy.
Contested access
Individuals belonging to a party without any seats in the State Duma had to collect 105,000 signatures to become candidates, while those running as independents had to collect 315,000 and also to form a group of activists made up of at least 500 people. Multiple political commentators, including former presidential hopeful Irina Khakamada, talked about the difficulty of gathering signatures without the support of a political party, a hurdle which cast doubt on many of the claims of the large number of people who said that they would run for president as independents. However, according to CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova, the conditions for contested-access candidates were easier than ever because such potential candidates no longer had to collect 1,000,000 signatures. Pamfilova incorrectly predicted that there could be even more candidates in this election than there were in 2000, when 11 candidates contested the presidency (the largest number of candidates in the history of presidential elections in Russia).
Primaries
Party of Growth
In July 2017, the Party of Growth announced that it would hold primaries to nominate a presidential candidate. Four candidates participated in the primaries: Oksana Dmitriyeva, Dmitry Potapenko, Dmitry Marinichev and Alexander Huruji. Voting was conducted via the Internet from August to November 2017.
On 10 August 2017, the party's press secretary told the media that the results of the primaries will be taken into account at the party congress which will be held to decide the candidate for Party of Growth. However, the winner of the primaries would not guarantee themselves the right to run on behalf of the party.
On 26 November, it was announced that the party would nominate Boris Titov, who was not involved in the primaries. According to a person from the party leadership, none of the proposed candidates could obtain sufficient support.
Left Front
On 2 November 2017, the Left Front headed by Sergei Udaltsov started online primaries for the nomination of a single left-wing candidate. Primaries were held in two rounds, the first round took place from 2 to 23 November, and the second round – from 24 to 30 November.
The first round included 77 candidates, among whom were representatives of various left-wing political parties and organizations, including Pavel Grudinin, Yury Boldyrev, Gennady Zyuganov, Sergey Mironov (who later supported Vladimir Putin), Sergey Glazyev, Zakhar Prilepin, Viktor Anpilov, Valery Zorkin, Zhores Alferov, Sergey Baburin (who later was nominated as a candidate from the party Russian All-People's Union), Natalia Lisitsyna (who was later nominated as a candidate from the Russian United Labour Front), Maxim Suraykin (who was nominated as a candidate from the Communists of Russia) and others.
Boldyrev and Grudinin made it through to the second round, which was won by Grudinin, who garnered 4,086 votes (58.4%).
At the end of December 2017, Grudinin was officially nominated as the candidate from the Communist Party.
Third Force
The bloc Third Force held primaries among candidates from ten non-parliamentary parties to nominate presidential candidates. According to the organizers, the primaries would determine four presidential candidates representing different views.
The official presentation of the candidates was held on 30 October 2017. The candidates included: Andrei Bogdanov, Andrey Getmanov, Olga Onishchenko, Stanislav Polishchuk, Sirazhdin Ramazanov, Ildar Rezyapov, Vyacheslav Smirnov, Irina Volynets and Alexey Zolotukhin.
However, the block failed to identify a clear winner, then all candidates, except for Olga Onishchenko declared that they would participate in the elections. Later, however, all of the candidates refused to participate.
Candidates
These candidates were officially registered by the CEC. Candidates are listed in the order they appear on the ballot paper (alphabetical order in Russian).
Campaigning
Sergey Baburin
Sergey Baburin was nominated at the party congress on 22 December 2017. On 24 December, Baburin filed registration documents with the CEC, but the documents were rejected 25 December because the CEC identified violations in the information provided regarding 18 of his party's 48 representatives. On 29 December, Baburin resubmitted the documents and they were approved by the CEC.
Russian All-People's Union started to collect signatures in support of Baburin on 9 January 2018. Signatures were collected in 56 federal subjects. On 30 January 2018, Sergey Baburin handed over the signatures to the CEC. When testing revealed only 3.28% of invalid signatures, Sergey Baburin was admitted to the election.
Pavel Grudinin
At the end of November 2017, Pavel Grudinin won the primaries of Left Front, a coalition of left-wing parties with no representation in the State Duma. Some branch of the Communist Party voted to support the candidacy of Grudinin and did not deny his nomination from the Communist Party. Despite the fact that in early November the First Secretary of the Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, said that his nomination is supported by all left-wing organizations, which the media felt was the official statement from Zyuganov to participate in the election, Zyuganov later denied this, saying that the official decision will be made at the party Congress in December. On 21 December, it was reported that Zyuganov proposed to nominate Grudinin.
Initially, the Communist Party and the National Patriotic Forces of Russia (NPFR) planned to nominate a single candidate: Grudinin, supported by the Communists, or Yury Boldyrev, supported by the NPFR. Boldyrev also participated in the primaries of the Left Front, where he lost in the second round to Grudinin. According to Deputy Alexander Yushchenko, Gennady Zyuganov was still among the candidates for the nomination. He named the other candidates as Yury Afonin, Sergey Levchenko, and Leonid Kalashnikov. On 22 December, Zyuganov, Levchenko, and Kalashnikov withdrew their bids, and Zyuganov rejected the candidacies of Afonin and Boldyrev, leaving Grudinin as the sole candidate. Grudinin was officially selected as the presidential candidate from the Communist Party at its congress on 23 December.
Alexei Navalny
Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny started his presidential campaign on 13 December 2016. In early 2017, he traveled to different cities across Russia to open campaign offices and meet with his supporters, despite his involvement in legal cases that might have barred him from running. As noted in an article by Newsweek and by the former Russian presidential administration adviser Gleb Pavlovsky, the American-style campaign by Navalny was unprecedented in modern Russia as most candidates do not start campaigning until a few months before the election. The primary focus of Navalny's campaign was combating corruption within the current government under Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. On 2 March, Navalny published a documentary on YouTube titled He Is Not Dimon To You, detailing the corrupt dealings of Prime Minister Medvedev. He then called for mass rallies to be held on 26 March to bring attention to this after the government did not respond to the documentary, which only about 150.000 people attended across Russia. 2017–2018 Russian protests 26 March rally was the largest protest held in Russia since the protests in 2011. Navalny called for another protest to be held on Russia Day, which is 12 June.
On his website, Navalny listed the main principles of his presidential program: combating government corruption, improving infrastructure and living standards in Russia, decentralizing power from Moscow, developing the economy instead of remaining in isolation from the West, and reforming the judicial system. His more specific economic proposals included instituting a minimum wage, lowering prices of apartments and reducing bureaucracy of home construction, making healthcare and education free, lowering taxes for many citizens, taxing the gains from privatization, decentralization of financial management and increase in local governance, increasing transparency in state-owned firms, implementing work visas for Central Asian migrants coming into the country for work, and increasing economic cooperation with western European states.