- Vladimir Putin has won Russia's presidential election with 87% of the vote.
- The Russian state was actively involved in ensuring high voter turnout.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, 71, is set to remain in power.
As of 7 a.m. Moscow time on Monday, Putin had secured about 87% of the vote in the presidential election. About 99.4% of the votes had been counted. This marks a record win for Putin, who took home 77% of the vote in 2018.
There was never any doubt Putin would win at the ballot box. His opponents — who are far from Putin's level of clout and influence — were pre-approved by Russia's election commission and posed no serious challenges to the incumbent leader.
A main challenge for Putin was, in fact, just getting a high voter turnout.
The Russian state was actively involved in that undertaking, with civil servants and state-linked companies pressuring employees to cast their ballots. Some staffers were also expected to bring family members along and had to share their geolocations with their bosses via a special app, independent Russian media outlets reported.
David Szakonyi, a political-science professor at George Washington University, told Business Insider last week that voter turnout was an extremely important metric for Putin.
Szakonyi said the facade of a free and fair election was important to Putin because it would show Russians and the rest of the world that he had been democratically elected and had a "natural and justified defensible place in Russian politics."
Szakonyi said that with the presidential election behind him, Putin would be turning his attention back to the war in Ukraine because winning the war was still his top priority.
That means Russia is expected to keep producing and sourcing more military goods, in turn boosting the economy and further consolidating support for Putin.
A strong economy
Putin's victory has much to do with how his administration managed to steady Russia's economy and keep Russians on a relatively stable footing over the past two years amid the war.
Russia's GDP grew 3.6% in 2023. The International Monetary Fund expects its economy to grow 2.6% this year. Unemployment is around a record low, and wages are soaring even if inflation is running hot at about 7%.
Russia's poverty rate fell from 9.8% to 9.3% in 2023 from a year earlier, according to official statistics.
As Denis Volkov, the director of the independent pollster the Levada Center, told The New York Times in a Sunday report, most Russians adapted to what the Times called the "new world" after their initial shock over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
"Much of that was the result of government efforts to raise morale by making sure the country's economy stayed healthy and injecting money into its industrial sector," Volkov told the Times.
He said the redistribution of resources to the masses in the form of wage hikes and social spending meant most people "feel that they can now live a normal life without getting directly engaged in the war."
Szakonyi told BI: "I don't think Russians operate differently than the American voter or any voter in any country in the world. They still vote with their pocketbooks."
To be sure, there are other factors at play in Putin's victory besides Russia's strong economy. Repression is one of them: Putin has effectively wiped out internal political competition and free speech. His most outspoken and powerful political opponent, Alexey Navalny, died in a remote Arctic prison on February 16.
That said, Putin is taking steps to keep the economy afloat — and to keep the voting masses on his side.
Recently, Putin announced he would introduce a more progressive tax schedule that would redistribute wealth in the population — a huge change from a flat 13% personal income tax rate for the majority earning up to 5 million rubles, or about $54,000, in a year. Those earning above this threshold pay 15% in income taxes.
"There's just a lot of changes going on and for now, it seems to be holding the ship the ship afloat," Szakonyi said.
"I think we're starting to see a stabilization in terms of expectations among business and even consumers that perhaps the worst fallout from this war is behind them, and as long as the government keeps spending and maintaining sufficient demand, the country can at least not contract," he added.
Putin has continuously been in power since 1999, either as Russia's president or prime minister, making him the country's longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin.
March 18, 2024: This story has been updated.