United Russia wins record 349 of 450 seats in 2026 State Duma election

Russia held elections for all 450 seats of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, over three days from September 18 to 20, 2026. Central Election Commission chair Ella Pamfilova announced that United Russia, the party aligned with President Vladimir Putin, won 349 seats, according to Meduza's report on the official count. That is the party's largest parliamentary bloc in its history, surpassing its previous record of 343 seats won in 2016.

Official results

The figures come from the English-language Wikipedia summary of the official results and are corroborated by The Moscow Times, which reported the same final seat totals for the five parliamentary parties. No party other than the five listed cleared the 5% threshold required for party-list seats. Of the 450 seats, half are allocated through party lists and half through single-member constituencies decided by first-past-the-post voting, a system that tends to amplify the lead of the largest party.

The Central Election Commission put turnout at 59.8%, more than 67.4 million voters, according to Meduza. The Moscow Times described this as the highest turnout in a Duma election since 2011. The English-language Wikipedia summary of official results lists turnout as 59.58%, up 7.86 percentage points from the 51.72% recorded in the 2021 election — a figure that differs slightly from the 59.8% reported by Meduza and The Moscow Times. Among United Russia's incoming lawmakers, 46 seats went to participants of the war in Ukraine, 41 of them running on the United Russia ticket, Meduza reported.

First election since the 2022 invasion

This was Russia's first national legislative election since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. According to English Wikipedia's article on the election, voting was held for the first time in new constituencies created after 2025 redistricting in the partially Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Polling stations also opened in Transnistria, the breakaway Moldovan region, without coordination with the Moldovan government, which protested the move as a violation of its sovereignty, the same source reported.

Several governments rejected the legitimacy of balloting conducted in occupied Ukrainian territory. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement describing the vote in those areas as a 'sham,' according to English Wikipedia's sourcing on the election. Meduza separately noted that vote-count protocols from some occupied areas, as well as from Russia's Leningrad region, had still not been published by the time final national results were announced.

Limited opposition on the ballot

The election featured no parties openly critical of Putin or the war in Ukraine. Russia's Supreme Court barred Yabloko, described by English Wikipedia as the country's oldest liberal party and the only registered party to call for a truce with Ukraine, from the national party-list ballot on August 10, following a lawsuit brought by the Rodina party. Some of Yabloko's 127 candidates were still permitted to run in individual single-member constituencies, though The Moscow Times reported that even these candidates faced police detentions and disqualifications during the campaign.

The Moscow Times also reported that authorities disqualified dozens of other candidates across the country using procedural grounds. Independent monitors cited by the outlet characterized the election as among the least competitive in Russia's modern history, noting that public criticism of the war remains a criminal offense under Russian law.

What is not yet known

Full regional breakdowns and vote-count protocols for some occupied Ukrainian territories and parts of Leningrad region had not been published at the time of the final national announcement, according to Meduza. The long-term composition of Duma committees and leadership posts had not been finalized in the sources reviewed for this article.