Traditionally, elections in Russia and the Soviet Union have a higher voter turnout than U.S. Presidential elections. While Putin handily won the presidential election on March 18, there were some efforts made to make sure the voter turnout was high enough.
For the record, Putin won the election with 76.66% of the vote. Pavel Grudinin of the Communist Party got 11.80% of the vote and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the LDPR was 5.66%. I assume Zhirinovsky still wants Alaska back. There was no serious opposition candidate.
Oddly enough, the percentage of vote that Putin got was higher than the opinion polls or the exit polls. The opinion polls tended to show 60-65% while the exit polls were between 74-76%. From my experience, Russian’s are not very open to pollsters.
Turnout was officially 67.47%. In 1996, which was a free and open election, and which I accidently ended up witnessing, the turnout was 69.7% in the first round. The turnout in the last U.S. presidential election was 55.7%. U.S. voter turnout has not been above 60% since 1968 and has not been above 66% since 1900.
There were some who questioned the integrity of the election, including chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and our very own Edward Snowden, now living in Moscow in exile (and would be arrested if he returned to the U.S.)
Anyhow, Putin has been elected for a second six-year term. According to the constitution, he can still only serve two consecutive terms. He served two four-year terms, the Medvedev served a four-year term with Putin as his prime minister. They then changed to constitution so that the presidential terms were now six years in length, and Putin is now starting his second six-year terms. He is 65 now and will be 71 when that term ends. A lot of people assume that he will never really let go of power.
Also See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_2018
