Russian voters abroad back New People over United Russia by wide margin

Russian citizens voting at embassies and consulates abroad have backed the liberal New People party over United Russia by a wide margin in exit polls conducted during the weekend State Duma elections. The overseas results sharply diverge from the official domestic tally reported inside Russia, where United Russia won nearly 58% of the vote. The polling covered stations in multiple countries and suggests a markedly different political picture among voters outside the country.

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Two independent exit polls produced similar findings. The Vote Abroad project said it surveyed almost 15,700 voters at 27 polling stations across 22 countries and found New People on 43%, the Communist Party on 18.3% and United Russia on 5.5%. A separate poll by the opposition movement Vesna and the Progress project, covering 18 stations in 17 countries, put New People first at every location with 47.3%, the Communist Party second at 19.2% and United Russia at 2.8%.

In 10 countries, including Armenia, Germany and Finland, United Russia did not clear the 5% threshold needed to win Duma seats. The contrast matters because it highlights the gap between voting patterns abroad and the official results inside Russia. The Central Election Commission reported United Russia winning nearly 58%, the Communist Party at 14%, the LDPR at almost 9% and New People below 8%.

Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Progress project and a former head of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said the contrast was "very stark" and said 83.5% of respondents to a trust question did not fully or mostly trust the official results. He also said that while votes cast abroad were unlikely to determine the composition of the Duma, they showed "a completely different reality". The overseas vote also reflects the political choices available to many Russians who left the country after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

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The row of polling data suggests that many of those voters opposed the war and that the only anti-war party, Yabloko, was barred from the election on a procedural pretext and excluded from the federal ballot. Exit poll workers said those abroad who opposed the war therefore had no Yabloko option and mostly voted for New People instead. That makes the overseas result relevant not only as an electoral snapshot, but also as a measure of political sentiment among a mobile and often critical segment of the electorate.

The Vote Abroad initiative said its purpose was to provide a truthful picture of the electoral process abroad. Irina Kh, part of the active core of the project, said the group used no party symbols and had no affiliation with political organisations, adding that the surveys were carried out impartially and independently. The project was launched in 2021 and has since conducted exit polls at Russian elections, including the 2024 presidential vote.

Its work has become part of a broader effort by civic groups and opposition-linked networks to document voting behaviour outside Russia. The findings also underline the limited but symbolically important role of overseas polling stations in Russian elections. Even if the votes abroad are not large enough to change the overall composition of the State Duma, they can still provide a public counterpoint to the official narrative of broad support for the ruling party.

The results may also be read as an indicator of how Russians living outside the country view the political system, the war and the available opposition options. That makes the overseas vote a useful reference point for analysts watching the durability of support for United Russia. What remains unclear is how the overseas exit polls compare with any official count from the foreign polling stations themselves, and whether the figures will be independently verified.