A very unbiased headline

Leftist parties (socialist and socdem) were doing so well in the Duma after the collapse of the USSR and the Russians got a taste of capitalism that Yeltsin - with the backing of the US - in a metaphorical but also very literal sense - attacked the legislative branch and consolidated all functional power in the executive. Again, with US backing. Putin is just using the levers of power than Yeltsin and Clinton handed to him.
- Word. The USSR didn't collapse. It went down fighting and the capitalists had to stage a series of coups to finish it off, only to lose it to a slightly more capable capitalist.
- But it was also very good for wealthy Americans too
No, they wanted a comprador colony. They stopped getting that around 2008 so Russia is back to mortal enemy.

I'm so sick of this idea in the west that elections must always be really "close" or else they won't be legitimate somehow. They literally argue that actual popular support for a politician is somehow undemocratic.

(Not saying that Putin is just really popular and doesn't gerrymander and manipulate votes the same way every capitalist government does, I'm just so fucking sick of this idea that every vote needs to be "close" like a fucking sports game in a movie.)

Actually, democracy is only valid when the vote margin is 0.1% in favor of the loser who loses on an idiosyncratic technicality of how votes are divided up and counted, and both candidates are less popular than a police precinct being burned down by protesters.
Whenever the government has popular approval that's populism and is bad, actually. If ever you find yourself with too much public support you have to strategically triangulate towards your opponent and alienate your base to make the election fair and democratic.
Putin has an 86% approval rating in Russia
- Yes, but I don't know if that is due to genuine popularity or a lack of decent opposition (though the two are usually directly related). I just don't know enough about Russian politics to really weigh in.
- No he doesn't. That's fake news. Made up numbers. Nobody in Russia likes Putin. They are all forced to like him, at gunpoint.
There's a case that constant 51/49 polls are a sign that American democracy is faltering on a nechanical level.
Good ideas in politics should be widely understood. One would hope to see 70/30 or more splits on most issues coming to a direct vote.
Without the FPTP electoral model, everyone would have to play the coalition card, which would likely lead to majorities larger than 51/49 for most legislation. Of course, it's also odd that even a two party systrm splits the country almost exactly evenly despite social shifts. It's like looking at a trench war that's been going on for 150 years. It's almost like business likes and supports a government prone to rictus.
If there wasn't so much cash floating in the system, it would be harder to coax the masses into voting against their own interests, again reducing the number of campaigns swung to a 51/49 outcome.
- A lot of good points here. I would slightly differ in that the cause of electoral failure in the US is not a breakdown in messaging or debate. It is because American politics are essentially cynical. Political ideas expressed by politicians are merely a means to an end, a playing card carried for the sole purpose of placing it down at the expedient moment. That is part of why the margins are so slim, because no party or politician wants to “spend” more of their cards than they must.
  There is no significant diversity of political ideology in the US. It all serves the interest of capital.
Putin is actually very popular, idk why people on the left can't simply accept this fact, but every time stumble on some platitudes, the western political upbringing is showing. Yes, people are capable of voting en masse for not ideal candidate.
- Oh, I'm not calling the results into question, more just wondering if his popularity is a result solely of his policies or due to there not being any sort of major opposition party to him, though in the latter case, it's hard to be effective opposition against a popular party with popular policies.
- We do accept that. It's the libs that can't wrap their heads around it.
I remember reading somewhere that winning ~80% of the vote was evidence of a rigged election. The anglo skull volume is too pressurized to fit the idea of "popular government with policies the people want" inside it.
- It's so dumb, like if they were actually rigging elections, surely they would rig it so they win like...60% of the vote, so it looks close, so people suspect them. But no, it's got to be something so obvious a (western) child would notice, but not something the people actually living in the country in question would. Got to add a little bit of racism and western chauvinism to your "anti-authoritarianism" after all.

It's not that I think Russia is a free and fair democracy, it's clearly filled with corruption like all liberal democracies. it's just the misinformation about why and the utter hypocrisy and -100 self-awareness on criticising it.

Navalny was never that popular, nore were any of the opposition members who were "banned" (for allegedly forging signatures). Nobody contests this, just western media like to act as if he mattered at all, and will never dare admit that the real opposition to Putin is commies (even if name only).
Russia has not banned any of the actually major opposition parties, while Ukraine actually has explicitly banned almost all opposition.
Acting like it's not common practice in all western democracies to deny people from being listed on ballots due to bureaucratic technicalities. They all do it.
Putin's vote share does actually line up with widely accepted polls of his popularity. Russia is a country at war with a 1/6th of the world, the West, so it's little surprise to have an especially high rate now.

My constant reaction to libs arguing Putin is Hitler is "Sure whatever, now admit the state of democracy in your western country is about the same or worse and how that is the problem, Putin isn't special."

Acting like it's not common practice in all western democracies to deny people from being listed on ballots due to bureaucratic technicalities. They all do it.
There are like 2 dozen candidates in the 2024 US general presidential election who will not be listed on any ballots for far less legitimate reasons. Candidates get dropped because they would make the list too long.
I'm pretty sure the average liberal thinks this was supposed to be an election between Navalny and Putin. That's how misinformed they are.
You're also right. Putin is massively popular in Russia at a level libs can't seem to comprehend. The only major opposition he has involve the communists, but they mostly align with Putin's foreign policy anyway. Most polls show Putin with a 85% approval rating and libs will always think numbers like that are unfair or fabricated.
- I'm uncertain if American libs can even conceptualize the idea of a popular government with broad public support. They seem to think that winning more than 55% of votes means the election was rigged and that if a government has an approval rating about 30% they're faking the poles.
“Sure whatever, now admit the state of democracy in your western country is about the same or worse and how that is the problem, Putin isn’t special.”
Hey wait but isn't that almost a whataboutism??? CHECKMATE TANKIE
- Fuck, you're right. By pointing out a second, very related problem and how fixing just one achieves nothing, I have committed the cardinal sin of whataboutism and all I have said becomes invalid
now admit the state of democracy in your western country is about the same or worse and how that is the problem, Putin isn’t special
Getting this through people's skulls (in Russia too) is such a monstrous task, feels like a sysiphean labour
- "X country sucks, it declares wars, is full of corruption, rich oligarchs, nothing's fair and the population are brainwashed!"
  "Oh yeah, sure I agree, a lot like our country, right?"
  "LIES TANKIE RUSSIAN SHILL BOT RED FASH"

"Lack of credible opposition"

(According to his Wikipedia article, Kharitonov even quit in the previous political party he was in because it became part of United Russia)

Slutsky lmao

If only Russians had a real choice between Putin and 101% Putin it would have been a wholesome freedom democracy like in the west.

Well they had a real choice, several times, between Putin and a various copies of Yeltsin.

Are there elections that aren't "state-managed?"

For real. US elections are multi-year multi-billion dollar media extravaganzas managed by an army of consultants and media professionals
- Remember when the candidate selection vote for the Democrats in several key states used an untested black box app developed by one of the candidates?
  Definitely no corruption here
- Ah, but those consultants and media professionals are all part of the private sector! Same for the RNC and DNC. This is why the US is the only country with free elections.

Biden extends one man-rule in America after stage-managed election devoid of credible opposition
1 hour ago • Atheist Jones

The Russia Ukraine war for me is a situation where all the players are just bad or worse but goddam is lib rage hilarious

It's honestly the best part of this war, the libs really go mask off over it.

Is that podium FLOATING?

Russia has spent all of their budget on the war, so they can no longer afford podium stands and speakers have to hold them up themselves.
- Putin won because he was the only candidate capable of a perfectly steady grip.
there's a thin black metal pole underneath it that's camouflaged by Putin's suit. You can see the contours of it if you squint
Replacing all your podiums with vending trays so that candidates can rove through the crowd and distribute snacks while speaking.
- Uhh actually when you give people a little treat for voting that's corruption or some liberal bullshit.

The funniest part is if you look online at news of people queuing at the Russian embassies to vote, it's always interspersed with mentions of how they're actually "protests" and how everyone there is turning out to write-in Navalny (LOL). Like, no, it's obviously cherrypicked examples to align with your country's position on Russia.

In our country the queue outside the embassy was ginormous, and there are videos of it being shared on social media but no news covering it at all.

Same in Beijing.
Sky News did this with people queuing to vote at the Embassy in London. They found one person who said they were going to spoil their ballot in protest of Putin. They were the only person they got a quote from even though they went back to the street report twice.

Every newspaper in Britain is running with the 'no real opposition' line on the Russian election.

While simultaneously talking non-stop about a snap election between the Tories & Labour.

While also running lots of Tory-soothing stories about how Labour have vowed not to undo Tory policy.

Beyond parody.

I am reminded of Yanis Varoufakis' story about German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble screaming at him that "elections can not be allowed to change economic policy!"
- I'd genuinely forgotten that, but that's a good pull.

Comrade CNN highlights the pointlessness of electoralism to achieve system change

Russians don't even have a choice between putler and 99% putler, smdh.

In Russia, you are given exactly one option for President and everyone is required to agree that he is the only person fit to lead the country.

In America, you are given three choices. One of them is a senile baffoon who will most assuredly spell the end of the Republic if he is elected. The other is a throwback to the 1980s who is coasting entirely on name recognition. And the third is a failson without any credible leadership qualities, who simply runs because he doesn't have anything better to do.

One of these countries will have 75% election turnout. The other will be lucky to crack 60%. Care to guess which?

One of them is a senile baffoon who will most assuredly spell the end of the Republic if he is elected. The other is a throwback to the 1980s who is coasting entirely on name recognition. And the third is a failson without any credible leadership qualities, who simply runs because he doesn’t have anything better to do.
I am disturbed by the fact I can't tell which one is which

Westoid media seems to be making a big deal about the lack of "international observers" to the Russian election. When was the last time you heard about official international observers in western elections?

even wikipedia has this about the observers:
On 14 March, delegations from 36 countries arrived in Russia at the invitation of the Russian Federation Council as foreign observers of the election, who in fact do not represent observer missions but a visitors' programme.[121][122] On 17 March 2024, the Chair of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (CEC), Ella Pamfilova, announced that 1,115 international observers and experts from 129 countries were monitoring the electoral process.[123] They included Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan Sikandar Sultan Raja.[124]
so what the media is actually saying they need to have some kkkrackers there to "observe"
- Of course these fucks are lying about the observers as well as about everything else
It is actually pretty common practice for international observers to be present in western elections

To anglos it is common knowledge that a war-time president who holds off the hated enemy and manages to stabilize the country while somewhat improving or at least maintaining standards of living will be very unpopular and lose elections.

How long has Bibi ruled fascist

?

Maybe if the west stops trying to shove

into every election or bomb election ballot trucks or create nuclear exetential threats to Russia they might have some more "favorable" changes? Almost like the more we keep fucking with Russia, the more the Russian population resists. Really fucking strange!

What happened to the like 20% polling that the KPRF had a while back?

What does this fucking Russia-gate dribble mean at this point?

Who even knows? As a putler bot troll soros schill crisis actor I have no internal process.

woah he looks so strong holding up that podium

Who's the comrade (I don't remember their pronouns) who said they feel a 71.62 for Putin?

I know you exist, you posted it in the previous news mega

Tbh I'd vote for the candidate handing out ice creams at the political theatre, too.

Comrade, this is a Wendy's
- Commie kyles shouldn't bully a fellow worker at a fast food chain lol.
Dude, every sports game or stadium event basically anywhere will have a person with snacks on a vending tray, no nudity involved. Comparing this to a fetish thing is a stretch so large it says everything about you and you alone, not about politics.
Just be normal.
- Okay but what if they were naked? Where would they keep change? What if they stepped on gum, or it was raining? We need to account fro these variables.
- ya you're right. noted.

it's perfectly normal for Netanyahu but if Putin then bad

Za Pobedu

"Election devoid of credible opposition"

Meanwhile in the US you only get the option to vote for a white supremacist party which is only 99% fascist and a white supremacist party that's 100% fascist. Complete projection.