ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR OF RUSSIAN CITIZENS IN THE 1996-2018 FEDERAL ELECTIONS ON THE TERRITORY OUTSIDE THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Abstract

This article describes the course of voting in federal elections (President of the Russian Federation, deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation) in the period from 1996 to 2018. The basics of organizing voting outside the Russian Federation and the procedure for registering foreign voters in electoral statistics are described. The study analyzed voting in federal elections in foreign countries with more than 500 voters in key political forces that participated in the elections to the State Duma in 1999-2016 and candidates for the office of President of the Russian Federation in the 1996-2018 elections (party in power, communists, liberals, LDPR, etc.). The sample includes countries on virtually every continent of the globe. Information on the ownership of foreign sites by specific countries is taken from the relevant decisions of the Central Election Commission. Unfortunately, the authors have only incomplete data on voting in the 1990s (there is no information at all for voting in foreign polling stations in the 1995 State Duma elections, for the 1996 presidential elections there is information only about voting in the countries of the former USSR, for elections to the State Duma in 1999 there is only fragmentary information from foreign sites). Since 2003, data on voting has been published in full due to the introduction of the State Automated System “Vybory” (GAS “Vybory”).