As part of our mini-series on how Russia’s major parties are preparing for the 2026 State Duma elections, we have already analyzed the positions of Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and United Russia. This installment focuses on the three remaining parliamentary parties: New People, the LDPR, and A Just Russia.
New People
It makes sense to start with the youngest registered party — New People. According to VCIOM, the party has held second place in the polls for four consecutive weeks with 13.4 percent, ahead of both the CPRF and the LDPR. However, FOM paints a very different picture: if elections were held this coming Sunday, New People would get just 6 percent, trailing the CPRF (8 percent) and LDPR (10 percent).
This more-than-twofold discrepancy (unmatched by any other party) is most likely methodological. VCIOM conducts telephone surveys, which are quicker to capture shifts in public sentiment, while FOM relies on face-to-face, door-to-door polling. Be that as it may, New People genuinely appear to be responding more actively than others to the current top voter irritant: mass internet blockings and the crackdown on VPNs. Their momentum should therefore be positive.
The real question is whether the party can sustain this momentum all the way to election day, given its significant structural weaknesses.
New People was founded on March 1, 2020 — just over a year before the previous State Duma elections. No other party has managed to gain registration since then, despite several attempts. Within six months, New People cleared the 5 percent threshold in several regional legislatures, earning the right to run for the State Duma without collecting signatures. In 2021, the party entered Duma with 5.3 percent of the vote. In the 2024 presidential election, its candidate Vladislav Davankov placed third with an official 3.9 percent (these official figures should, of course, be treated with skepticism).
At the same time, New People largely ignores small local elections and barely participates in gubernatorial races. After the unified voting day in 2025, direct elections were held for 30 heads of local administrations (mostly rural settlements). The party fielded just one candidate, who lost, and 48 candidates for 471 local deputy mandates, winning only one seat. This is substantially less activity than that of any other parliamentary party. Even the non-parliamentary Pensioners’ Party shows noticeably greater engagement in such contests. In the 2025 gubernatorial elections, New People nominated only seven candidates across 20 regions — again fewer than the Pensioners’ Party.
The reason for this low activity is obvious: the party has virtually no real regional network or popular local politicians. New People remains primarily a media project sustained by a handful of well-known names. In many elections — including important regional and even federal ones — candidates are often random or incidental figures.
Sometimes, individuals with clearly dubious reputations make it into office under the party’s banner. A striking example is Karelia. This region showed the strongest support for Vladislav Davankov in the 2024 presidential election. In the 2021 regional elections, New People scored 6.35 percent there and won one mandate, which went to Vladimir Kvanin — an entrepreneur from the traditionally «criminalized» sphere of solid waste management. In 2025, Kvanin was arrested on fraud charges. Even in what is essentially the party’s stronghold (and one of the relatively more open regions), New People could not find a candidate with a clean reputation. Notably, Kvanin was not exactly a «new person» himself — he had previously served as co-chair of the regional branch of the All-Russia People’s Front (ONF).
This weakness in regional infrastructure and lack of genuine grassroots work is not the party’s only problem. Another serious issue is the heightened level of control from the Kremlin and, apparently, the security services.
This control is evident in personnel decisions. New People became the only parliamentary party to nominate someone completely unrelated to it for a seat on the Central Election Commission (CEC). Alena Bulgakova, head of the «National Public Monitoring» organization — which is directly managed from the Kremlin — was appointed to the CEC under the party quota.
Relations with the genuine election observation community soured immediately. This was particularly evident during the 2024 presidential election, when New People effectively refused to send observers to polling stations. According to party staff who spoke to the author, FSB officers embedded in the campaign headquarters prohibited party members from engaging in real observation efforts. Political consultants likely understood that this was damaging to the candidate’s image, but the «siloviki» had a different priority: preventing scandals and the documentation of falsifications. This kind of duality probably exists in all parliamentary parties. The difference is that in the CPRF or more established structures, it is managed by the party leadership itself, whereas in New People — an inherently artificial, purely technocratic project — control is predominantly external.
All of this undoubtedly constrains the party’s capabilities. However, in the current environment, a federal campaign depends far less on a broad network of local activists. It will be primarily a media and administrative effort. With the support of media outlets controlled by the Presidential Administration and regional authorities, New People should have no trouble clearing the threshold to enter the Duma.
That said, the party list will likely be almost entirely sterile: a few recognizable names at the top, followed by virtual unknowns or figures virtually indistinguishable from United Russia elsewhere on the list. In truth, this is already roughly what the faction looks like today. Besides the frontmen Alexey Nechayev, Sardana Avksentyeva, and Vladislav Davankov, it has just 12 members. Some are barely visible (such as Georgy Arapov), others could easily fit into United Russia (actor Dmitry Pevtsov), and some are already looking for a new party home (Roza Chemeris, for whom the LDPR could become her fourth party).
LDPR
The LDPR, Russia’s oldest party, has been going through difficult times for the past five years. One might have expected it to benefit from the war alongside United Russia, given its long-cultivated militaristic-patriotic image. However, just a month and a half after the start of full-scale military operations, in April 2022, its founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky died.
His successor, Leonid Slutsky, falls noticeably short of his predecessor in charisma. Moreover, he immediately launched large-scale purges, removing influential and popular party members. In the summer of 2025, the party expelled Yaroslav Nilov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy, and Veterans’ Affairs. In 2023, Vasily Vlasov was stripped of his deputy mandate and expelled from the party. That same year, Nilov and Alexey Didenko, chairman of the Duma Committee on Regional Policy, were removed from the party’s Supreme Council. Didenko, who had been elected in a single-mandate district in Tomsk Oblast, received almost no support from the party when that district was eliminated during the latest redistricting in spring 2025.
In addition, the party has failed to protect several of its prominent figures from law enforcement. The popular Khabarovsk Governor Sergei Furgal was arrested back in the summer of 2020. Despite massive public support that extended far beyond the region, the party not only failed to capitalize on the surge in sympathy but effectively ceded ground. In Furgal’s place, another LDPR member — Mikhail Degtyarev — was sent to head the Khabarovsk Territory. His behavior from the very first days sharply contrasted with the image of the «people’s governor.» Locals immediately dubbed him «Zhirinovsky’s bathhouse attendant,» while he compared Khabarovsk residents protesting his fellow party member’s arrest to «overfed pigeons.»
In 2021, another strong regional branch — in Krasnoyarsk — came under attack. The party’s main «wallet» in the region, regional parliament vice-speaker and former State Duma deputy Sergei Natarov, was detained. He was accused of eight counts of embezzlement or misappropriation (Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code). Natarov has been in custody for over four years without a conviction. While imprisoned, his health deteriorated sharply: he suffered a severe case of COVID-19, underwent heart vessel surgery, and experienced significant declines in vision and musculoskeletal function. He has now been assigned Group III disability status.
Following the 2023 gubernatorial elections, Alexander Gliskov, leader of the LDPR faction in the Krasnoyarsk regional legislature, was arrested. In October 2024, the court found him guilty of taking a large bribe and sentenced him to ten years in a strict-regime penal colony, a 10 million ruble fine, and an eight-year ban on holding elected office. However, on February 25, 2026, the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court unexpectedly overturned the verdict and sent the case back to the prosecutor. Gliskov’s pretrial measure was changed to house arrest until May 24, 2026.
Pressure on the Krasnoyarsk LDPR branch did not end there. In March 2026, Alexey Boykov, Gliskov’s successor as faction leader, was put on the wanted list. He is suspected of stealing property from PJSC Rosseti Siberia — Krasnoyarskenergo through deception by a group acting under prior conspiracy, in especially large amounts (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).
This year, elections to the Krasnoyarsk regional parliament will coincide with the federal elections. After five years of relentless pressure and the successive arrests of three key leaders, the regional LDPR branch has almost no serious politicians left. The branch’s finances have been badly damaged, and its organizational and campaign capabilities have been largely destroyed.
The party has lost the charisma of its founder. On top of this, on May 2, Putin signed a law prohibiting the use of images or voices of deceased individuals in campaign materials. This is a direct blow to both the LDPR, which heavily exploited Zhirinovsky’s image, and to the CPRF.
The LDPR has tried to find new ways to attract protest voters, but it has failed to develop a coherent new positioning. Against the backdrop of the weakening of the CPRF and A Just Russia, the party consistently polls around 10 percent. Formally, the LDPR has even overtaken the CPRF — something the Presidential Administration has long desired (though the difference falls within the margin of error).
Given its deep organizational and personnel crisis and image problems, the party cannot realistically expect significant growth in popularity. The only plausible scenario for a substantial increase in its result is artificial vote inflation from above. The Presidential Administration may indeed want to push the CPRF into third place, in which case the LDPR would be a convenient tool. The problem is that the party itself would need to do at least something and project a clear public image for this to work. In reality, recent years have seen only internal infighting, battles over posts and budgets. When internet blockings became a major issue for many voters, the most the LDPR could manage was to expel a deputy who had suggested tightening the screws even further.
A Just Russia
Over its 20 years of existence, Just Russia has undergone the most radical image shifts: from «second party of power» to ally of the Bolotnaya protests, to a left-wing regional party, and after February 2022 — ultra-patriotic «Prigozhinites» (after the 2023 mutiny, it had to distance itself from that image as well).
The latest transition — from a moderately socialist party to an ultra-patriotic one — proved particularly unnatural and painful. It led not only to a deep image crisis but also to an exodus of well-known and popular regional politicians. Unwilling to be associated with «Prigozhin’s sledgehammer,» an entire faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly left the party. Almost simultaneously, Oleg Shein, head of the Astrakhan branch and one of the most prominent Just Russia figures, stepped down.
Not all departures were voluntary. On November 1, 2023, the State Duma stripped one of the wealthiest SR deputies — Vadim Belousov, co-owner of Makfa (Russia’s largest and the world’s fifth-largest pasta producer) — of his mandate. Earlier, in August 2022, the Moscow City Court had sentenced him in absentia to ten years in a strict-regime colony and a 500 million ruble fine. In December 2023, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and sent the case for retrial. While the proceedings were ongoing, the Prosecutor General’s Office filed a lawsuit to nationalize Makfa. Ultimately, the company came under the control of Rosselkhozbank, whose board chairman is Dmitry Patrushev — son of former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.
As a result, a party that always relied primarily on strong regional branches now has almost none left. Of course, Valery Gartung remains in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Alexander Terentyev delivers decent results in Altai Krai, the colorful Oryol Just Russia figure Vitaly Rybakov stands out, along with a few other relatively prominent politicians. Overall, however, Just Russia is significantly weakened — financially, organizationally, and in terms of image.
The party’s ratings across all sociological services hover near the threshold for entering the Duma. In these conditions, the fate of the Just Russia (even more so than that of the other parliamentary parties) depends on the Kremlin’s goodwill.
At the same time, the outcomes of recent regional elections, the relative stability of election legislation (usually far more amendments are introduced before elections), and even the planned «renewal» of the Central Election Commission (which has barely changed) all point to a bet on managed stability in domestic politics. The main task for election administrators is to reduce the CPRF’s result as much as possible and boost United Russia’s performance. Therefore, the Just Russia will most likely be helped across the threshold, and we will once again see a five-party Duma.
What to Expect?
The only party currently showing potential for growth compared to 2021 is New People. They are trying to appear relatively reasonable in an unreasonable situation and offer cautious criticism of the most egregious restrictions (naturally, under tight control). But this is about appearances rather than substance. In reality, the New People faction supports virtually all bills: its members vote «yes» 96.3 percent of the time. The figures for the other parliamentary parties are not significantly different.
In such conditions, tracking party ratings is not particularly useful for predicting the future composition of the State Duma. Control over candidate admission is strict, opportunities for falsification are greater than ever, and wartime censorship is operating at full capacity. Nevertheless, the trends in public sentiment and the authorities’ reactions to them reveal a great deal about how the Kremlin perceives the current state of society, what it fears, and what goals it seeks to achieve in domestic politics.
