2004 Russian presidential election

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The 2004 Russian presidential election took place on the 14th of March 2004. Voters decided whether Vladimir Putin would keep the office he had held since 2000. Putin was seeking a second full four-year term. He won in a landslide, taking 72% of the vote. Behind that single number sat seven candidates who had originally sought a place on the ballot, though only six names remained by election day. Two rival groups of international observers also reached opposite verdicts on what they had watched. Why did a vote feel so predictable that turnout itself became the bigger worry for organizers? And how could the same election be called both fair and a foregone conclusion?

• 2. The Five Challengers

  ›

  Sergey Glazyev entered the race as an independent after a power struggle with Dmitry Rogozin cost him the Rodina bloc's nomination. At 43, Glazyev had served as Minister of Foreign Economic Relations under Boris Yeltsin. He had also sat in the State Duma as a Communist member before becoming co-chairman of the newly formed Rodina bloc in 2003. Glazyev campaigned as a critic of economic reform, arguing that governments since Communism had ignored social justice, and he promised to improve welfare.

  Oleg Malyshkin, 52, stood for the Liberal Democratic Party after its longtime leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky chose not to run again. Zhirinovsky had contested each of the previous three presidential elections. Malyshkin, a mining engineer, had belonged to the LDPR since 1991. He had headed security for Vladimir Zhirinovsky before winning a State Duma seat in 2003.

  Sergey Mironov, 51, chaired the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, and represented Saint Petersburg as a senator. He declared his support for Putin's candidacy before he even launched his own campaign.

  Irina Khakamada, 48, emerged as Putin's most outspoken critic in the race. She was the daughter of a Japanese Communist who took Soviet citizenship in the 1950s. Khakamada had sat in the State Duma for eight years before losing her seat in 2003. She belonged to the Union of Rightist Forces but did not run as that party's official candidate. Speaking to the newspaper Kommersant, she said, "I am not afraid of the terrorists in power. Our children must grow up as free people. Dictatorship will not be accepted."

  Nikolay Kharitonov, 55, ran as the Communist Party's candidate despite never having joined the party himself. A former KGB colonel, he belonged instead to the allied Agrarian Party of Russia. He stepped forward after longtime Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov declined to stand for a third time.

  Putin turned down an invitation from United Russia to run as its official candidate and chose to run as an independent instead. Not every registered name would make it to election day.

• 3. The Candidate Who Vanished

  ›

  Ivan Rybkin, 57, was nominated as a presidential candidate on the 29th of December 2003. He had previously chaired the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. He had also served as Secretary of the Security Council, 1996-1998. The Central Election Commission registered him as a candidate on the 7th of February 2004. Rybkin then disappeared under circumstances described as scandalous, and he reappeared in Kyiv in February 2004. He withdrew from the race on the 6th of March 2004. His exit left the remaining candidates to face voters under the watch of international observers, who would not agree on what they had witnessed.

• 4. Two Verdicts on Fairness

  ›

  Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe monitored the election. So did observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Both groups cited abuses of government resources during the campaign, along with bias in state media and instances of ballot stuffing on election day. An ad hoc committee from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called the election "generally well administrated." It said the vote reflected Putin's high public approval rating. The same committee said the vote "lacked elements of a genuine democratic contest."

  The Presidential Election Law and the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights Law set the legal framework for the vote, according to that committee's report. Candidates were required to collect 2 million signatures to register with the Central Election Commission, a rule the committee called an "unreasonable hurdle." The Russian Constitution also requires a new round of voting if turnout falls below 50%. That clause pushed the Central Election Commission and local authorities to launch a large campaign encouraging participation. In some regions, local authorities overused their power to force people to vote. The committee called the campaign itself "low-key and all but invisible," a mood it attributed to how predictable the results already seemed.

  Glazyev's campaign manager reported that administrative resources were used to keep him from campaigning in the regions. Khakamada said local authorities were instructed to hamper her meetings with voters. Yabloko and a number of human rights organizations urged a different response, calling for a boycott of the vote entirely. Yabloko's leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, said the boycott was meant to protest the country's slide into authoritarianism.

• 5. State Television's Tilted Clock

  ›

  Two state-controlled television channels reached audiences across the whole of Russia, according to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. The most significant private stations were NTV and Ren TV. The state-controlled broadcasters failed to meet their legal obligation to treat all candidates equally, the report said, showing clear favoritism toward Putin. Private broadcasters monitored by the mission offered more balanced coverage with a wider range of views.

  In the month before the election, Channel One Russia gave more than four hours of news coverage to Putin, most of it positive. Kharitonov was the second most covered candidate on Channel One, yet he received only 21 minutes of primetime news coverage.

  State-funded TV Russia gave Putin nearly two hours of primetime news, again with an overwhelmingly positive tone. Glazyev received only four minutes of coverage on the same channel, ranging from negative to neutral.

  TV Centre, a station controlled by the Moscow city administration, gave Putin an hour and 25 minutes of coverage, mostly positive. Glazyev received a mere seven minutes on TV Centre, again ranging from negative to neutral.

  REN TV, a private broadcaster, gave Putin 35 minutes of primetime news, with 35% of that coverage negative. Khakamada received 22 minutes on REN TV, ranging from neutral to positive. NTV gave Putin more than 31 minutes of coverage, ranging from neutral to positive. Its analytical programs, such as Svoboda Slova and Namedni, offered a relatively balanced picture. NTV did not air election debates because Putin refused to take part. It also skipped special campaign broadcasts, citing low public interest.

  Most local television stations offered very little coverage of the election, and what they did air tended to favor Putin. Very few outlets, television or print, reported Khakamada's campaign announcement. Print media split sharply, with some outlets strongly pro-Putin and others strongly anti-Putin. None of that imbalance showed up in the vote count itself, which would go on to reveal even sharper contrasts between Russia's regions.

• 6. A Landslide With Regional Extremes

  ›

  PACE noted unusually high turnout in five North Caucasus republics, all above 90%, even though the general turnout across Russia stood at 64.39%. Putin received 98.2% of the vote in Ingushetia, 96.5% in Kabardino-Balkaria, 94.6% in Dagestan, 92.3% in Chechnya, and 91.25% in North Ossetia. PACE's report called the results in these regions "unusually high and one-sided" given the more modest national turnout. Looking specifically at Chechnya, the Moscow Times quoted election officials in the republic's capital, Grozny, who acknowledged filling in several thousand ballots for Putin themselves.

  In Krasnoyarsk Krai, Glazyev drew 17.23% of the vote, a sharp contrast to the North Caucasus pattern. Kharitonov took 18.59% in Altai Krai and 14.78% in Chita Oblast. Khakamada took 8.74% of the vote in the Sakha Republic, one of her higher recorded results. Beyond Russia's borders, expatriate voters backed Putin at 85.13%. Ballots cast at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan gave him 83.62%, extending his support to citizens who voted far from home.