| The main pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, has opened
up a substantial lead
over its closest
rivals, the communists, less than two weeks before parliamentary elections,
an opinion poll
released on Tuesday showed.
The poll of 6,000 people in three Russian cities by the state-run VTsIOM
agency put United
Russia in the lead with 32.7 percent, ahead of the Communist Party on
14.3
percent. The
elections are to be held on December 7.
It gave no comparative figures, but a poll a week ago by VTsIOM-A, run
by
analysts who left
VTsIOM following allegations of state interference, put United Russia
only
six percentage
points ahead of the communists.
"The main sensation is the data showing the gap between the two
leaders in
the electoral race
is growing quickly," Valery Fedorov, general director of VTsIOM,
told Ekho
Moskvy radio.
Campaigning has been subdued so far but United Russia - openly backed
by
President
Vladimir Putin - has had the lion's share of coverage on state television.
The latest poll put Vladimir Zhirinovsky's extreme nationalist Liberal
Democratic Party (LDPR)
in third place with 8.7 percent - a similar result to previous polls.
But it showed Yabloko and the Union of Right-wing Forces (SPS), small
liberal parties that
oppose President Vladimir Putin on many issues, passing the five percent
barrier that parties
must cross to win seats in parliament.
The Union of Right-Wing Forces was in fourth place on 7.5 percent and
Yabloko fifth on 5.2
percent, the poll showed. Earlier ratings showed they would struggle to
pass
the five percent
threshold.
The poll showed 9.2 percent of voters would mark the box 'against all'
in
Russia's fourth
parliamentary election since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
See also:
State Duma elections
2003
| 