The Moscow election has three winners: the declared winner is Sergei Sobyanin, the Kremlin-backed incumbent, with 51.4% of votes, just enough to avoid a second round, but not convincing enough to provide the level of electoral legitimacy he had sought. Yet it is more than Vladimir Putin, the president, won in Moscow in the presidential elections last year.
The man who gained most from the election is Alexei Navalny, the leading opposition candidate, who exceeded expectations and polled 27.2%, turning him from a one-time anti-corruption blogger, with a popularity rating of about 3% at the start of the campaign three months ago, into a national politician. The third winner is the thousands of volunteers and observers who prevented large-scale vote rigging.
And although the starting positions were hardly equal—with Mr Sobyanin enjoying blanket television coverage of his campaign and the resources of an incumbent mayor—it was nevertheless the most competitive election in Russia’s recent history. Mr Navalny’s result is all the more impressive, given a state television blockade and his pending jail sentence in a fabricated criminal case. He ran a text-book American-style campaign shaking hands with thousands of voters and mobilising volunteers. He has done better than any opposition figure in more than a decade.
