Choice of responsibility: current governors are in the lead in regional elections

A single voting Day, 2025, has ended in Russia. Interim governors and acting heads of Russian regions are winning in their regions. This is evidenced by the official data of the CEC of the Russian Federation as of the end of the day on September 14. Despite the fact that hacker attacks and drone raids tried to interfere with the voting, the elections were generally peaceful.

Who won the regional elections

Elections of various levels were held in 81 of 89 regions of Russia. In each of them, a single voting day ended at 20:00 local time. The sites in the Kaliningrad region were the last to complete their work (+1 hour to Moscow time). However, the online voting lasted 15 minutes longer. This time, over 1.5 million voters took part in it, and the turnout was more than 90%. Earlier, the CEC of the Russian Federation reported that on the morning of September 14, more than 16 million Russians voted.

In 2025, residents of 20 regions elected governors and about 46,000 deputies to local legislative assemblies and municipal authorities. According to CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova, the electoral process was generally peaceful, without a large number of complaints and violations.

— There are practically no violations. At the moment, I have nothing to "please" you with, there are no egregious facts [of violations]," she said.

In general, the results were similar to the forecasts of political scientists. The most attention was expected to be focused on the gubernatorial elections, where candidates from United Russia are confidently leading in all regions. The exception was self-nominated Oleg Nikolaev, whom Vladimir Putin appointed acting head of Chuvashia in January 2020. In September of the same year, he won the election, and this time he intends to repeat his success with the support of 75.61% of residents.

In addition to Chuvashia, the heads of the region were elected in Komi, Tatarstan, Sevastopol, Arkhangelsk, Bryansk, Irkutsk, Kaluga, Kostroma, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Orenburg, Rostov, Sverdlovsk, Tambov and Jewish Autonomous Regions (EAO), as well as in Kamchatka, Perm and Krasnodar Territories.

Political scientists predicted the most interesting struggle in the Irkutsk region, where the current head of the region, Igor Kobzev from United Russia, and the former head of the region from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Sergei Levchenko, fought for the governor's seat. For the first time in many years, the incumbent governor was opposed by his predecessor. At the moment, the EP candidate is gaining more than 60%, while his Communist opponent is gaining 23%.

The position of Denis Pasler, the acting governor of the Sverdlovsk region, who, according to a VTsIOM poll, was preferred by 54% of citizens, was not so confident. Nevertheless, according to the results of the vote, he was able to exceed the forecast, gaining almost 62%. The only female candidate, Maria Kostyuk, confidently passed the EDG, winning in the Jewish Autonomous Region with 83.02% of the vote.

Thus, the acting and acting heads of the regions are expected to remain in their posts.

"At a time when Russia is facing the most serious geopolitical challenges, it is logical to say that the majority supports people in power who make decisions about regional development," Alexander Asafov, a political scientist and deputy chairman of the Moscow Civic Chamber's commission on civil society Development and public control, told Izvestia.

As a rule, the second place was played between the candidates from the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. For example, in the Kamchatka Territory, both candidates are gaining 13% each. In addition to representatives of parliamentary parties, nominees from the Party of Pensioners, the Za Party, the Greens and the Communists of Russia competed for the governor's seat.

As for the elections of regional deputies, the United Russia deputies were able to gain an overwhelming majority of votes there. However, it was not possible to get 75+1% everywhere. Earlier, Sergei Perminov, a member of the General Council of the EP, said that this was the task the party faced in these elections.

Hacker attacks and Communist behavior

Despite the successful completion of the EDG, both the electronic voting system and the face-to-face format of the elections faced a number of challenges. Firstly, this is an unprecedented number of hacker attacks. About 290 thousand of them were registered on the portal of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, and over 300 on the DEG electronic voting system, Ella Pamfilova said.

"It's like a war. The attacks did not affect the performance of our state automated Vybory system or the DEG. We were ready for this," she clarified.

Another difficulty that has become particularly relevant with the activation of artificial intelligence is fake news about the election process. For example, information appeared on the Internet that residents of Sevastopol allegedly had to register through a special website and a bot in order to vote. At the same time, no registration is needed for this — such sites are created to collect personal data of Russians by Ukrainian fraudsters, Pamfilova explained. Another attempt at deception in the deepfake format was a video about the protection of "particularly dangerous" polling stations in the Kursk region by the Akhmat special forces.

There were also scandals involving representatives of the opposition party of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. On September 13, in the Zavodsky district of Saratov, Mikhail Kachalin, a member of the Communist election commission, decided to prevent the opening of the PEC. When the chairman of the commission approached him, the conflict began. As a result, the woman fell, hitting her head, she was taken to the hospital, and proceedings were initiated against Kachalin.

Another incident, in Astrakhan, was a clash between Andrei Smirnov, a candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and a member of the Electoral Commission, from whom he tried to take documents with personal data of voters. The commission clarified that he had previously been a member of "Navalny's group (listed in the register of terrorists and extremists - Izvestia) and belongs to the more radical wing of the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation."

— [This is] very bad. It is not necessary for [the parties] to pick up the political scum left over from the Navalnyites. I definitely don't recommend this to anyone, these are real provocateurs whose brains are awry, and they have been processed for a long time," Pamfilova commented on the incident and added that she would have to turn to Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.

Meanwhile, the West is working hard to "process" journalists and leaders of youth movements, the State Duma said.

- We also record contacts of Western NGOs [non-governmental organizations] with defected former municipal deputies. Their task is to collect materials for the preparation of fakes and defamatory information stuffing," said Vasily Piskarev, chairman of the State Duma Commission on the Investigation of Foreign Interference in the Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

In general, EDG-2025 was organized and without serious incidents. Ella Pamfilova summarized that complaints about elections at various levels are almost completely absent.