Russia’s presidential election this month officially broke all the records. President Vladimir Putin received an unprecedented 87.3 percent of the vote amid turnout of 77.4 percent. His sparring partners got a meager 3–4 percent of the vote: two or three times less than the ratings of the parties that nominated them. Voting has conclusively transformed into an elaborate performance for a single spectator, and previously concealed methods for “correcting” the results of voting, such as mobilizing both public sector and corporate employees, are now proudly on show and have de facto been legalized.
The presidential administration’s political bloc headed by Sergei Kiriyenko had been quite open about the fact that it was aiming to set a record, having promised Putin more than 80 percent of the vote with a turnout of no less than 70 percent. Kiriyenko began heading the political bloc of the presidential administration back in 2016, and by the 2018 presidential election he was already using the system of key performance indicators commonly used by private businesses.
These KPIs were regularly leaked into the public space. In 2018, the target was 70 percent of the vote for Putin with 70 percent turnout. KPIs were also set before the vote amending the constitution in 2020 to allow Putin to remain in power beyond 2024, before the State Duma elections in 2021, and before this year’s presidential election, which took place on March 15–17.
The KPIs are usually surpassed, and this time was no exception. In the 2018 election, when the KPI for Putin’s share of the vote was 70 percent, the president’s official result was 76.7 percent (although turnout fell short of the target by 2.5 percent). Kiriyenko’s tactic is clear: he draws inspiration not only from corporate management practices, but also from the legacy of the Soviet Union, when if workers fulfilled the plan, they were simply not punished. If they surpassed it, however, they were rewarded. Accordingly, the political bloc always sets the KPI slightly below what it believes to be feasible, and then outdoes itself.
This time around, the RBC news agency reported that the Kremlin’s formula for creating the appearance of electoral legitimacy would be 75 percent of the vote for Putin amid a turnout of 70 percent. But those figures were presented to regional authorities with a slightly different wording: “75 percent or more.” This meant they were interpreted as stating that 80 percent was the bar they needed to reach in order to avoid punishment.
This was a deliberate move by Kiriyenko and his team, who were banking on the zeal of the regional authorities and were not mistaken: the majority of Russia’s regions returned figures showing support for Putin of about 85 percent or even more. Putin was clearly delighted by this show of massive support, so the Kremlin is unlikely to give up on this tried and tested system of vaguely worded KPIs and record targets anytime soon.
It’s not just the turnout and performance targets that have become public under Kiriyenko. Many of the state’s techniques and methods have also been laid bare. In 2024, this “transparency” has reached new levels. One notable example is mobilizing public sector and state corporation employees to vote, along with those employed by businesses loyal to the government.
Previously, this tactic was not exactly concealed, but nor was it openly advertised. It was known about by people interested in politics, but not necessarily by the average person. Most people were supposed to think that everyone follows their heart when voting, and not their boss’s orders.
In this month’s vote, administrative and corporate mobilization was given pride of place. Workers in protective helmets and office staff with smartphones in hands came to polling stations in groups of their colleagues to “perform their civic duty”—mostly on the first morning of the three-day vote. The political bloc did not consider it necessary to distribute turnout evenly across all three days.
This focus on the first day of voting gave the Kremlin room to maneuver over the turnout during the next two days. For the same reason (“it’s more convenient”), the political bloc decided to retain multiday voting, which was only introduced in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Opening the polling stations for three days not only makes it easier to mobilize the masses, but also provides plenty of nocturnal opportunities for the manipulation of ballots. The same can be said of electronic voting.
If Kiriyenko’s predecessors Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Volodin still had to consider the image projected by any tactics, those concerns are long gone. Today’s coerced voters are a world away from the unfortunates who a decade ago were secretly driven to special polling stations, as far as possible from the watchful eye of election observers.
This time around, they were part of the pageantry of the election. It was important for the leadership to see the kind of friendly support from “work collectives” familiar from Soviet times. Corporate and administrative mobilization has effectively been legalized by the Kremlin’s political bloc and regional authorities.
Indeed, the outcome of the 2024 campaign was the creation of new standards and practices that have legalized all the electoral tricks the Russian authorities have up their sleeves to ensure the required results. This new set of standards and practices includes all forms of voter mobilization, multiday voting, and competition over figures relating to turnout and support for the government candidate. Should Kiriyenko move to another job now that the election is over, his successor will easily be able to apply these new standards going forward.
Of course, these new standards do not represent any kind of guarantee against a crisis for the Kremlin. There have been multiple occasions in history when autocratic leaders have won supposedly record percentages in elections only to be toppled in a few short years. Kiriyenko likely knows this perfectly well, but what’s currently more important to him is bringing in impressive numbers for his boss and receiving personal bonuses and perks for his team for doing so. Right now, his standards work just fine, above all for the leadership of the administration’s political bloc itself.
