Russian state officials say ruling party United Russia won 58% in last weekend's parliamentary election. Independent analysts estimate it was really 34–35% without manipulation.

Meduza review, published on 23 September 2026, of what independent journalists and analysts had found, with the count still incomplete. It summarises the Novaya Gazeta Europe and Important Stories estimates of 34–35 per cent for United Russia and sets out the limits of Sergey Shpilkin's method: it estimates only ballot stuffing, needs a substantial core of honestly counted stations, and misses transfers of votes between candidates and protocols drawn up from scratch; Leonid Volkov of the Anti-Corruption Foundation argues that the honest core has been eroded. Analysts put actual turnout at about 40 per cent. It reports A Just Russia gaining 67,000 votes in an hour to pass the threshold and analyst Boris Ovchinnikov's view of it, that remote electronic voting could not be analysed, that Moscow voters went without paper ballots for hours, and United Russia losing in 40 of 152 countries abroad.