Putin has lost election in Switzerland by a large margin according to post-election poll
Published: Monday, Mar 18th 2024, 20:00
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Vladimir Putin has lost the Russian presidential election by a landslide, at least in Switzerland. This is shown by exit polls in Bern and Geneva. The result was the opposite of the 87% approval rating claimed by the official side in Russia.
In Bern, Putin received 16% of the vote, in Geneva 20%. In both cities, hundreds of Russians were interviewed in front of the embassy and the consulate general by members of the Russia of the Future/Switzerland association and volunteers. This was coordinated by the organization Vote Abroad, as Polina Petushkova from Russia of the Future/Switzerland explained to the Keystone-SDA news agency.
According to the results, 40-year-old Vladislav Davankov from the New People party, deputy head of the Duma parliamentary chamber, received the most votes. Alongside Leonid Slutsky and Nikolai Kharitonov, he was one of the three candidates running for election in addition to Putin.
Davankov received 45% of the vote in Bern and 29% in Geneva, meaning he clearly outperformed Putin nationwide according to the post-election survey. Around a fifth of voters made their ballot papers unusable.
Although the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation in Moscow already had the exact results on Monday afternoon, the Russian embassy in Bern was not in a position to announce them for Switzerland until the evening.
Mock election without competition
Thousands of Russians around the world went to their embassies at lunchtime on Sunday to protest against Putin's election. Even in Russia, hundreds expressed their displeasure at the election farce with disruptive actions in various cities. They had responded to a call from Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who recently died in the Russian gulag.
The presidential election in Russia was considered neither free nor fair. Several representatives of Western countries described it as a sham election because no candidates critical of the Kremlin and opposed to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine had been admitted. Election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were also not allowed to take part.
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