Russia's Wartime Duma Election: United Russia Sweeps Preliminary Results With ~58% of Party-List Vote and Claims of 300+ Seats

Russia's Wartime Duma Election: United Russia Sweeps Preliminary Results With ~58% of Party-List Vote and Claims of 300+ Seats

UPDATE (Sept 21, 2026): voting closed Sunday evening and the results are in — a Kremlin sweep, sealed by the largest-ever Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow on the vote's final day.

AP (results story, updated 8:13 PM EDT Sept 20): "With some 58% of the precincts counted, United Russia had nearly 58% of the vote for the 225 deputies apportioned by party lists, according to Russia's Central Election Commission." Another 225 seats are single-seat races, "and United Russia also was poised to win most of those." Turnout finished at "a little under 57%" — up sharply from the 44.38% the CEC reported through two days, and well above the ~39% exit-poll-era figure Sky News carried mid-vote.

The supermajority math: senior United Russia official Andrei Turchak "said his party would win more than 300 of the 450 seats in the State Duma" (Sky News) — the 300-seat threshold that preserves constitutional-change powers, which the outgoing Duma's 310 seats already met. Reuters: "Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council and a former president, was quick to declare that United Russia had performed with dignity, a result he said showed that Russians had entrusted it to govern further."

Context that shaped the vote:

• The liberal Yabloko party — the only registered party that publicly criticized the war — was removed from the ballot by the Supreme Court in August¹; OSCE observers were not invited (AP).
• Election chief Ella Pamfilova said Moscow's electronic voting system was hit by cyberattacks, blaming one of the "systemic parties"; voters reported glitches and queued for paper ballots (AP).
• Voting was held in the four annexed Ukrainian regions and Crimea; in occupied Kherson, "a Ukrainian attack killed a member of the local electoral committee" (AP).
• The final day fell under Ukraine's 1,000+ drone attack — see Ukraine Peace Track: Miami Talks End Without a Deal — and Trump Tells Ukraine to "Get a New Leader".

Signal: the first wartime Duma election delivered the expected landslide with no genuine opposition on the ballot, turnout was pushed to a respectable 57% by three-day voting and e-voting, and the war itself — not the campaign — was the political story: Kyiv timed its record Moscow strike to the vote's last day, and the Kremlin framed the result as wartime vindication.