🧵1/6 Russia has held its first parliamentary election since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Voting took place for the first time in four Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow. United Russia won by a wide margin. But, the dodgy voting patterns underlying its win, observed in previous Russian parliamentary and presidential elections, are familiar too.

🧵5/6 Shpilkin’s method estimates how many votes United Russia would have received if higher turnout had not come with unusually strong support for the party. The difference between that estimate and the official result gives an estimate of the votes that may have been added through ballot-stuffing. According to RFE/RL’s analysis, that number comes out to some 18 million votes. Without those extra votes, United Russia would have received about 35 percent of the vote. Instead, they officially received 57.8 percent of the vote, according to results released by the Central Election Commission with 90 percent of ballots counted. The analysis can identify results that look statistically unusual, but it cannot show exactly how those extra votes were produced; for example, if the ballot boxes were stuffed or there was some other type of voter fraud. The model also depends on which polling stations are used as the baseline for a normal result. But the scale of the gap is substantial.