According to the Central Election Commission of Russia, 32.67 percent of Russians in Finland supported Vladimir Putin.
Simo Ortamo,
Yevgeny Bogdanov
Only ten percent of Russians living in Finland said in a door-to-door survey having voted for the president Vladimir Putin In Russia’s weekend show elections.
Counter candidate Vladislav Davankov 44 percent of respondents said they voted. A fifth said they had tampered with the ballot and almost a quarter refused to tell their candidate. Two other counter-candidates each received 1 percent support in the survey.
According to the door-to-door survey, 3,384 people went to vote at the Russian embassy in Helsinki on Sunday. 79 percent of them answered the survey.
The results of the door-to-door survey indicate the popularity of the opposition opposing Putin among those who responded to the survey. Some of the opposition leaders encouraged voting for Davankov as the least bad option, while others called for the ballot to be tampered with.
The opposition’s support in Finland is also indicated by the fact that a very long queue formed at the polling place in front of the Russian embassy in Helsinki on Sunday afternoon. The opposition had invited its supporters to fill the election offices in protest right at noon both in Russia and abroad.
Big differences in surveys
The door-to-door survey was carried out by an independent volunteer network, which also organized similar surveys in many other countries outside of Russia. There were large differences in the results between different countries.
For example, in Greece 59 percent said they voted for Putin, while in the Netherlands two percent registered as Putin voters. In Sweden, 14 percent said they voted for Putin.
In Estonia, eight percent of respondents said they voted for Putin, but 64 percent did not want to say their candidate.
According to the Central Election Commission, Putin won the election with more than 87 percent of the vote. The Russian presidential elections were not fair or free, as the administration had prevented Putin’s real opponents from participating in the elections.
Official results: A third voted for Putin
The Russian Central Election Commission announced the official results of the votes cast at the Russian Embassy in Helsinki on Monday evening.
Putin got 32.67 percent of the votes of Finno-Russians, Davankov got 45.3 percent of the votes.
Out of a total of 3,447 ballots, 649 were declared invalid. Tampering with the ballot was considered among Russians as a form of protest during elections.
The Russian Embassy in Helsinki was the only polling place where Russians could vote in Finland. There were still four polling stations in the 2018 presidential election: in Helsinki, Turku, Lappeenranta and Mariehamn.
News updated on March 18, 2024 at 6:02 p.m. Added information about the official results to the story.