A bell, a saw, an axe

Scientists who study election statistics are calling last week's vote on constitutional amendments that, among other things, would allow Vladimir Putin to remain president until 2036, the most unfair in 20 years. According data to the Central Election Commission (CEC), with a turnout of 65%, 77.92% of voters voted in favor of the amendments, against — 21.27%. Immediately after the results were summarized, electoral analysts began to publish graphs proving that this result could have been achieved only with the help of large-scale falsifications. For example, in the opinion of physicist Sergei Shpilkin, the actual voter turnout was about 44%, and the share of those who voted in favor of the amendments — about 65%. That is, only 29.3 million Russians supported the amendments to the Constitution.  

It is not easy to understand the complex analysis and graphs of electoral analysts, so «Important Stories» has prepared a visual explainer explaining why the past vote cannot be considered fair and what was the real scale of fraud. Understanding these graphs will give you a better understanding of electoral statistics and whether you should trust the official voting results.  

Just scroll down the visualization.

For you, researchers:

The electoral data of all the elections from this article has been uploaded into the Lab . Now, you can see the elections with your own eyes™.

Electoral data of all the elections in this article is available in the Navigator for Elections and Datasets for download and independent analysis.