SerpApi.Org
Russia's Presidential Administration has lowered its targets for turnout and United Russia's vote share in September's State Duma election, climbing down from the 50% turnout and 55% party-support benchmarks set in February, according to Russian media reports cited by Riddle Russia analyst Ksenia Smolyakova.
The Duma campaign, which officially opened on June 16, is unfolding against a backdrop of a fuel crisis, internet blackouts and regular Ukrainian strikes on Russian cities — a far tougher environment than the Kremlin anticipated when it set its original targets six months ago.
As IntelliNews reported in May, ahead of the campaign's formal start, Putin's approval rating had already slid to 65.6% by spring, its lowest level since the war began, down from around 74% at the end of 2025, while the upstart New People party had overtaken the Communists as Russia's second-most-popular political force.
Despite the opening for the opposition that such conditions might imply, state television has largely blacked out the race rather than let critics exploit it, according to monitoring by the Atlas of Elections project cited by Riddle Russia. In the campaign's first six days, Russia's six main federal channels devoted a combined total of less than 17 minutes to the election; coverage rose to 105 minutes in the week United Russia held its congress, before falling back to 65 minutes the following week. Elections went unmentioned in 80% of the news broadcasts monitored.
Where the ruling party is covered, it dominates: United Russia's own congress received 1.3 times more airtime than the congresses of the other ten registered parties combined, and six of those parties received no federal television coverage at all, in apparent breach of equal-coverage rules, Riddle Russia found. Television remains the primary news source for 61% of Russians, according to HSE University polling from autumn 2025.
