Medvedev By A Landslide

By Cernig

The Russian presidential election worked out just as Putin planned it:

Dmitry Medvedev has been declared Russia's next president, after winning the expected enormous majority in yesterday's election. According to exit poll figures released shortly after the polls closed, he won 69.4 per cent of the vote, more than three times the share taken by his three opponents put together. The turn-out was put officially at more than 65 per cent.

...Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party candidate, did better than expected, with 19 per cent – while the right-wing populist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky did a bit worse, with 11 per cent. The fourth candidate, Andrei Bogdanov, managed less than 2 per cent. Mr Zyuganov's relatively strong performance was thought to reflect concern about those left out of the general rise in living standards.

So now Putin gets to be PM and Russia's new soft-totalitarianism continues. About the best that can be said for it is that it's better than hard totalitarianism.