The Uncertain Outcomes of Electoral Performance: Russia’s September 2026 Elections

Online participation possible: sign up here: https://doit.medfarm.uu.se/bin/kurt3/kurt/8911301

The Kremlin’s party of power, United Russia, will almost certainly win the September 20, 2026 parliamentary contest, but it is unlikely to have earned its victory. The panel will consider how a majority outcome was engineered from votes cast and uncast and what this tells us about political development in Russia. The panel will be in a hybrid format including online and offline participants.

Regina Smyth, Visiting Scholar Uppsala University, Professor, Political Science, Indiana University and author of the 2020 book, Elections Protest and Authoritarian Regime Stability, Cambridge University Press.

Stanislav Andreychuk, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Russian Electoral Analyst, and former co-Chair and Chief of Analytics of Golos (Voice) Movement for Defense of Voters Rights—an organization that was declared a foreign agent.

Derek Hutcheson, Pro Dean of Malmö University's Faculty of Culture and Society (KS) and Professor, Department of Political Science, Department of global Political Studies, Malmo University, and author of Political Parties in the Russian Regions, Routledge.

Ora John Reuter, Professor, Political Science, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and author of Workplace Politics: How Politicians and Employers Subvert Elections. (with Timothy Frye and David Szakonyi), Oxford University Press, 2026.