The Russian election

The aim of this article is to first look at the events of the Russian election over the past few weeks and the government’s universally worldwide.

Last week proved to be very interesting in Russia, when it comes to election time we see how politicians try practically anything to publicise and promote themselves.  We see in France how the prime minister was giving a rallying call after the gunman who was causing much trouble was finally brought down.  The same was said about Barack Obama when he led the coo which was said to take out Osama Bin Laden. Politicians apparently look for a big hit which will take them over the edge in election or re-election. We also saw how it can go the other way, as the president of the United States was heard this week (thinking the microphone was off) that he could be more flexible with regards to certain policy issues after elections.

Regardless of what we really know about politicians and what is processed through the media, there are constant examples we can draw from when looking at government officials.

With regards to Russian politics I’m not really a forerunner, I do from time to time take an interest however and I found myself following events somewhat for the last few weeks. Just watching the news as frequently as I do, I was watching a programme which had some projections on how Vladimir Putin would win his election.

The figures taken were showing that it would well be a landslide. If I recall correctly he was projected to have 50+ per cent of the vote. This didn’t really surprise me as it is possible to win by this margin. Elections are won on this margin from time to time. What did surprise me was what happened the next week.

It came out a few days later that Mr Putin had in fact won the election, various stories were now being promoted that ballots had been forged and their was a rigged election. I don’t believe the outcome was much higher than the projected figures some days prior. It surprised me because last week it had said he would win, now when he did win it was said that it had been by cheating. Days before no-one was saying he would lose, it was apparently now some strange res. It ult. In my opinion, its either the election was already fixed or the media were just trying to create some bad publicity. It wasn’t a surprise to me that he won because the news said he would. What we do know is that the media have an effect on the vote and on the perception of figures in the public.