A triumphant victory over myself

The Kremlin considers the results of the vote on constitutional amendments a triumph: 

«Unequivocally, [the Kremlin] considers [the results of the vote on constitutional amendments] a triumph. In fact, a de facto triumphant referendum of confidence in President [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has taken place», — Dmitry Peskov, the head of state's press secretary, told reporters on Thursday, TASS reported.

«World press about the election: this is Putin's triumph», wrote «Vesti».

So, two triumphs. The «Yes» option garnered 57,747,288 votes in the 2020 constitutional vote, Vladimir Putin in the 2018 election — 56,430,712 votes — virtually the same amount. In some ways, that's not surprising, since the goal in both cases was the same — more than half the popular vote.

On the other hand, it means that in about half the precincts in the country, more voters voted for the amendments than for Vladimir Putin in 2018, and in half the precincts, — fewer.

At the other end of the spectrum, it means that more voters cast ballots for the amendments than for Vladimir Putin in 2018.

That is, in half of the polling stations Putin 2020 defeated himself 2018, and in half — lost to himself.

1. Let's compare 2018 and 2020 polling stations by region and number. Of the 96766 precincts, 2020 has 94391 precincts similar in number (105.7 million voters out of 108 million «paper» voters). We'll limit ourselves to that subset.
2. Let's divide the 2020 precincts into two groups: precincts in which more voters voted for Putin in 2018 than for the amendments in 2020 (44975 precincts, 51.8 million voters in 2020), and vice versa (49416 precincts, 53.9 million voters).
3. Let us plot the distributions of votes for the two groups of precincts. They turn out to be radically different.

Plots where the amendments received more votes than Putin — by and large lie in the «tail» of the comet.

Plots where fewer — are divided between the nucleus and the tail, and most — in the nucleus.

Surprising, isn't it?

Or is it unsurprising? It's just that the amendments defeated Putin where there was some really badass cheating in 2020.

And lost — where they counted honestly, or where they cheated more in 2018 than in 2020.

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.