Source:
The Moscow TimesAbout 60 percent of the country's 108 million registered voters, an unusually high turnout, cast ballots in a vote United Russia claimed would pave the way for Putin to retain power after his second -- and constitutionally mandated last consecutive -- term ends in May. United Russia got 63.3 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary results released early Monday.
International election monitors did not register any substantial violations at the polls, but opposition parties cried foul and an independent monitoring group collected thousands of complaints about election laws being broken across the country.
Exit polls by the VTsIOM public opinion agency suggested that four parties would clear the 7 percent barrier to make it into the next State Duma: United Russia, with 61 percent; the Communists, at 11.5 percent; the Liberal Democratic Party with 8.8 percent; and A Just Russia, at 8.4 percent. VTsIOM interviewed voters at 1,200 polling stations in 57 regions. The turnout, the agency said, was 59 percent.
United Russia and Putin himself spent the weeks leading up to the elections telling voters that a strong showing by the party would guarantee that the president's policies -- portrayed by the party and the Kremlin as the motor behind Russia's economic growth in the past eight years -- would continue in future.
Read more:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/12/03/001.html
Lots of interesting info in this piece...much more helpful in understanding what really happened than anything I've seen from US newspapers.