LAHORE MIRROR (Reuters) — President Vladimir Putin won a record 88% in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, exit polls and first results showed, cementing his grip on power, even though thousands of opponents staged a symbolic “noon against Putin” protest at polling stations. as Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn write.
The early result means Putin, who rose to power in 1999, looks to have easily won a new six-year term that would enable him to overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.
Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history, an exit poll by pollster FOM showed.
The Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) put Putin on 87%. First official results indicated the polls were accurate.
There was no independent tally of how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, amid extremely tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.
Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with queues of several hundred people and even thousands.
With nearly 30% of votes counted, the electoral commission says Putin is on 87.68% and the three other candidates are all below 4%, Mark Trevelyan reports.
Veteran Communist Nikolai Kharitonov has 3.95%, deputy parliament chairman Vladislav Davankov is on 3.81% and nationalist Leonid Slutsky trails on 3.0%.
