Stas Gorelik1; 1 George Washington University, United States
Discussion
Thousands of opposition candidates have been disqualified from Russian elections since the 2000s, yet one rarely hears of protests over such candidate filtering. Meanwhile in Belarus, the exclusion of independent candidates from the 2020 presidential race started a violent uprising. So when do voters acquiesce to or even ignore the opposition’s disqualification from elections and when do they recognize its unfairness? This study presents the results of a survey experiment designed to answer these questions. It was conducted in Russia right before the 2021 Duma elections. The experimental findings demonstrate that Russian voters are more likely to believe that candidate filtering is fair when excluded politicians are not considered potential winners. Furthermore, Russians, regime supporters included, are unlikely to protest over disqualifications based even on brazenly implausible pretexts unless they target popular politicians. These findings go against the growing body of research arguing that ‘sophisticated’, legal-looking manipulation allows autocrats to confuse citizens. Candidate exclusions may look legal to many Russians only because the opposition is already marginalized thanks to the regime’s repression and control over the media. Although the study directly addresses one specific practice from Russian elections, its findings can be used to analyze popular reactions to arrests of politicians potentially dangerous to the regime.
