Commission chair Ella Pamfilova announced the official results of the Sept. 18-20 vote at a CEC session. The tally is down from the 355 seats the commission had cited earlier, a revision that followed A Just Russia clearing the 5% threshold.
The Communist Party (KPRF) took 37 seats, five of them in single-mandate districts. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) won 23 seats, two in single-mandate races, and New People 19, all from party lists. A Just Russia received 17 seats, four in single-mandate districts. Also elected in single-mandate races were Rodina's Alexei Zhuravlyov and four self-nominated candidates.
Pamfilova separately noted that 46 participants in the war with Ukraine were elected to the Duma. According to Meduza, the "SVO faction" in the new chamber is wider: the outlet examined the biographies of everyone entering parliament and counted 148 deputies tied to the war, a third of the Duma. That includes those who served at the front as well as those who finance the war or supply its infrastructure.
United Russia did not settle immediately on its count of war-veteran deputies. Right after the results were announced, the party said it would send 86 war participants to the Duma, but the news was deleted at the request of the United Russia members themselves, and the party's general council secretary, Vladimir Yakushev, gave a different figure: 49. Meduza's count of those on party lists or elected in single-mandate districts with "SVO participant" status also comes to 49: the party marked such candidates with a special badge as early as the primaries, awarding them 25% of the vote for it.
Meduza notes that declared war-participant status is not always backed by concrete evidence of service. For four candidates the party presented as "SVO participants," the outlet found no public information about military service, among them Nikolai Alekseyenko, Dmitry Vorona, Shamsail Saraliyev and Oleg Ivaninsky. Open sources describe only their trips to occupied territories, such as delivering medicine to a hospital in Izyum. For some, the status came through humanitarian trips to the front; for others, military experience is described in detail: Badma Bashankayev taught tactical medicine, and Vadim Logunov worked with the Interior Ministry's Grom unit in the occupied Kherson region.
Turnout was 59.80%, according to official CEC data. Representation of every party except United Russia and New People declined. The elections were held in part in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and the EU officially stated it does not recognize the legitimacy of the vote there. Among those elected from those regions, according to the Russian authorities, are political consultant and former head of the government of the so-called "DNR" Alexander Borodai and pro-war journalist Irina Kuksenkova.
Yabloko, the only party that campaigned on anti-war slogans, was barred from the elections. Its single-mandate candidates lost, though in a number of districts they won 10-15%, according to official data. The party did enter the Novgorod regional duma, while in several other regions it was removed from the ballot.
Opposition forces in exile called for differing strategies, from backing individual candidates against United Russia to boycotting the vote. A number of independent analysts noted a high level of suspected falsification: in precincts where observers were present, United Russia's results were substantially lower than where there was no observation, and the statistical distribution of votes was called anomalous. The main instrument of falsification, it is alleged, was inflating turnout and padding ballots for United Russia. The CEC denies falsification, saying there were very few violations and that they were dealt with.