Disengaged or disenchanted? the vote ‘against all’ in post-communist Russia

Abstract

Russian voters have two ways of recording a protest within the constraints of the electoral system. The first is abstention; the second, chosen in recent years by increasing numbers, is to vote ‘against all’ candidates and parties. Although its efflects can sometimes be unpredictable, the ‘against all’ option has the potential to invalidate elections. There are discernible geographical and time-series patterns to the share of ‘against all’ cast from election to election. Analysis of electoral, demographic and survey data allows us to examine the bases of abstention and protest voting. On the basis of these data, it appears that non-voters are disengaged from the political process, whereas ‘against all’ voters are disenchanted but remain engaged.

Notes

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, ‘Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980–2000’, Party Politics, Vol.7, No.1 (2001), pp.5–22; Pippa Norris, Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Ruy A. Teixeira, Why Americans Don't Vote: Turnout Decline in the United States (New York and London: Greenwood, 1987); Alan Siaroff and John W. Merer, ‘Parliamentary Election Turnout in Europe since 1990’, Political Studies, Vol.50, No.5 (2002), pp.916–27; Martin P. Wattenburg, Where Have All the Voters Gone? (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002); Colin Rallings, Michael Thrasher and G. Borisyuk, ‘Seasonal Factors, Voter Fatigue and the Costs of Voting’, Electoral Studies, Vol.22, No.1 (2003), pp.65–79.

Ian McAllister, Political Participation in Postcommunist Russia: Voting, Activism and the Potential for Mass Protest (Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, 1994); Ian McAllister, ‘To Vote or Not to Vote: Election Turnout in Post-Communist Russia’, in Matthew Wyman, Stephen White and Sarah Oates (eds.), Elections and Voters in Post-Communist Russia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998), pp.15–39; Robert E. Bohrer II, Alexander C. Pacek and Benjamin Radcliff, ‘Electoral Participation, Ideology, and Party Politics in Post-Communist Europe’, Journal of Politics, Vol.62, No.4 (2000), pp.1161–72; Tatiana Kostadinova, ‘Voter Turnout Dynamics in Post-Communist Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.42, No.6 (2003), pp.741–59.

A.S. Akhramenko, ‘Golosovanie “protiv vsekh” na rossiiskom regional'nom fone’, Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Series 12, No.5 (2001), pp.97–111; A.S. Akhramenko and E.Yu. Meleshkina, ‘Golosovanie “protiv vsekh” kak forma politicheskogo protesta: problemy izucheniya’, Politicheskaya nauka, No.1 (2002), pp.21–43; K.V. D'yakova, ‘Protiv vsekh byvayut ne tol'ko mukhomory’, Zhurnal o vyborakh, No.1 (2002), pp.37–9; Hans Oversloot, Joop van Holsteyn and Ger P. van der Berg, ‘Against All: Exploring the Vote “Against All” in the Russian Federation's Electoral System’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.18, No.4 (2002), pp.31–50.

For further examination of theoretical background to this discussion, see Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957); and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (New York: Schocken, 1965).

In the USSR, voters were deemed to have voted in favour of the (usually single) candidate on the ballot paper if they simply left it unmarked. They could, however, choose to vote against the candidate by crossing his or her name out. This provision was rarely used, since it involved going into the polling booth, which drew attention to their non-conformity. In the present Russian voting system, ‘against all candidates’ is listed at the bottom of the ballot paper alongside ‘real’ candidates. Voters put a mark against their favoured candidate, or in the box for ‘against all’.

Polozhenie, ‘O vyborakh deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy v 1993 godu’, Presidential Decree No.1557 (1 Oct. 1993), §39, in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 8 Oct. 1993, pp.3–5. Elections to the State Duma are split into two halves: 225 deputies are elected from single-member districts through a ‘first past the post’ system similar to that used in Britain, and the remaining 225 are elected from federal party lists.

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘O vyborakh deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Law No.90-F3 (21 June 1995), §61, in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 28 June 1995, pp.3–7.

The deputies in question were V.F. Grigor'ev and V.A. Vorogushin (constituencies 99 and 100, Leningrad province); and I.S. Anichkin (constituency 125, Novosibirsk province).

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘O vyborakh Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, No.76-F3 (17 May 1995), Section 1924, §§55–56, in Sobranie Zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1995, No.21.

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel'nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, No.124-F3 (19 Sept. 1997), amendments on 30 March 1999 (No.55-F3), published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 6 April 1999. Full revised text contained in Federal'nyi zakon, ‘Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel'nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ (Moscow: Yurisprudentsiya, 1999); the article referred to here is §58.2.

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘O vyborakh deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Law No.121-F3 (24 June 1999), in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 1 July 1999, pp.9–16 (Part 1); ibid., 3 July 1999, pp.9–16 (Part 2), §79.2.

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘O vyborakh Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, No.228-F3 (31 Dec. 1999), in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 5 Jan. 2000, §§72.4 and 73.4.

Federal'nyi zakon, ‘Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel'nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Law No.67-F3 (12 June 2002), §70.2, in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 15 June 2002, pp.7–14.

Oversloot et al., ‘Against All’, pp.31–50.

Parties are required, in the first instance, to obtain more than five per cent of the vote in the party list section of State Duma elections before winning representation in the parliament.

Vybory v organy gosudarstvennoi vlasti sub''ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 1997–2000 (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 2001), Vol.2, pp.635–41; and contemporary observation by the author.

For the analysis in this and the following section, a data set of election results was compiled from official electoral commission statistics. For federal elections, the following sources were used: Byulleten' Tsentral'noi Izbiratel'noi Komissii Rossiiskoi Federatsii, No.1, 12 (1994); Vybory deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy. 1995. Elektoral'naya statistika (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 1996), pp.103–44 and 157–98; Vybory Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 1996. Elektoral'naya statistika (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 1996), pp.47–9 and 151–69; Vybory deputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal'nogo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 1999. Elektoral’naya statistika (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 2000), pp.138–71 and 182–208; Vybory Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 2000. Elektoral'naya statistika (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 2000), pp.184–6 and 203–8. For regional and local elections, data were taken from Vybory glav izpolnitel'noi vlasti sub''ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 1995–97. Elektoral'naya statistika (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 1997); Vybory v organy gosudarstvennoi vlasti sub''ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 1997–2000, 2 vols (Moscow: CEC/Ves' Mir, 2001); A.Kh. Khasanov, V.N. Kamen'kova and R.M. Vakhitova (eds.), Po veleniyu serdtsa: Vybory Prezidenta Respubliki Tatarstan 25 marta 2001 goda: Dokumenty. Materialy. Itogi (Kazan': Matbugat yuorty, 2002); Central Electoral Commission website <http://www.cikrf.ru>; website of the Electoral Commission of the Republic of Buryatiya <http://electoral. buryatia.ru>; website of the Electoral Commission of the Republic of Komi <http://www.rkomi.ru/izbirkom/glava_2001/itog.html>. For a significant number of post-2000 gubernatorial elections, the details available on the Central Electoral Commission or subject electoral commission websites are incomplete. For the purposes of the present analysis, gubernatorial elections have been included only if complete information is available on them from an official source; for this reason, only 63 of the 89 regions are used for analysis of the second wave of gubernatorial elections (1997–2003).

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 10 June 2003, p.4. In the latest election to the Vladivostok city Duma, in June 2003, average turnout was just 17 per cent, but on this occasion the election was declared valid.

For example, in Tatarstan – which traditionally has one of the highest turnout figures in the Russian Federation – the turnout for the 2000 presidential election was officially recorded as being above 95 per cent in more than half the rural districts, but was below 85 per cent in all but one of 19 urban districts: ‘Svedeniya ob itogakh vyborov Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii 26 Marta 2000 goda’, given to the author by the Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Tatarstan, 25 May 2000.

Figures recalculated from the results published by the Central Electoral Commission (see note 18). In 1999 only 224 seats were contested, since no election took place in Chechnya.

Derek S. Hutcheson, Political Parties in the Russian Regions (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Ch.6.

The Russian Federation is divided into 89 regions – or ‘constituent ‘subjects’ – with varying levels of autonomy.

The elections used were the 1995 and 1999 State Duma elections (single-member district and party list treated discretely); the 1996 presidential election (first and second rounds treated discretely); and the 2000 presidential election.

To calculate the index, the ‘against all’ vote totals for each region in each of the major federal elections from 1995 to 2000 were placed in descending order. (Mean values from all the constituencies within each region were used for the single-member district State Duma elections.) The mean rank for all federal elections (seven categories from four elections) was calculated. The regions with the lowest mean figures were those that had ranked highest overall for ‘against all’ votes. Where figures were available for Chechnya, they were included for ranking purposes for the individual elections, but the republic was excluded from the final calculation, since the data were incomplete. The mean figures were then placed in descending order to give an index of ‘against all’ voting across the Russian regions, shown in Table 6.

When the rankings produced by the two methods (mean vote and mean ranking) are compared, the variation in placing is in most cases not substantial. Six regions would move more than ten places up the table using mean vote share rather than mean ranking; five would move more than ten places down; and the remaining 77 regions would shift by fewer than ten places.

For further discussion of ‘social capital’ see Putnam, Bowling Alone.

National Representative Survey conducted for the University of Glasgow by VTsIOM (All-Russian Centre for the Investigation of Public Opinion), fieldwork 20–26 Dec. 1995, N = 1,568, question 16; and NRB VIII survey, question d.9.

Akhramenko, ‘Golosovanie “protiv vsekh”’, pp.104–5; Akhramenko and Meleshkina, ‘Golosovanie “protiv vsekh” kak forma politicheskogo protesta’, pp.21–43.

New Russia Barometer VIII, conducted by VTsIOM on behalf of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, fieldwork 13–29 Jan. 2000, N = 1,940.