1993 Russian legislative election

← 1990 12 December 1993 1995 →
State Duma election
All 450 seats in the State Duma 226 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	54.34% (22.66pp)
Party Leader % Seats LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky 22.92 64 VR Yegor Gaidar 15.51 62 Communist Gennady Zyuganov 12.40 42 ZhR Alevtina Fedulova 8.13 24 APR Mikhail Lapshin 7.99 38 YaBL Grigory Yavlinsky 7.86 27 PRES Sergey Shakhray 6.73 22 DPR Nikolay Travkin 5.52 15 RDDR Anatoly Sobchak 4.08 4 Civic Union Arkady Volsky 1.93 7 BRNI Vyacheslav Laschevsky 1.25 1 DM Konstantin Frolov 0.70 3 Independents – – 135 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Most voted-for party by region Chairman of the Supreme Soviet before Chairman of the State Duma after Ruslan Khasbulatov[a] Independent Ivan Rybkin APR
Federation Council election
All 178 seats in the Federation Council
Turnout	54.34%
Party % Seats Independents 100 171 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Chairman of the Federation Council after Vladimir Shumeyko Independent

Parliamentary elections were held in Russia on 12 December 1993.^[1] They were the first parliamentary elections in post-Soviet Russia and the only time to the Federation Council,^[2] with future members appointed by provincial legislatures and governors.

Background

The 1993 general election was taking place in the aftermath of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, a violent confrontation on the streets of Moscow which resulted in the dissolution of the previous Russian parliament by military force. Boris Yeltsin hoped to resolve the political turmoil by decreeing for the election to the new Russian parliament and the constitutional referendum to take place on 12 December 1993.

Electoral system

The new election law adopted for the 1993 Duma election stipulated half the 450 Duma members were elected by a party-list system of proportional representation, and half were elected as individual representatives from single-member districts. Every Russian voter thus received two different ballots. The proportional representation ballot required each voter to endorse an electoral organization or vote against all of them. By contrast, the single-member district ballot required a voter to endorse an individual, whose party affiliation, if any, could not be given on the ballot.

In order to nominate a list of candidates in the proportional representation ballot, a party or electoral organization had to gather 100,000 signatures from the electorate, of which no more than 15% could be from any one region or republic. The method used to calculate the number of seats won by each party was the Hare method, with a threshold of 5.0 per cent of the valid vote, including votes cast against all, but excluding invalid ballots. To secure a place on a single-member district ballot, candidates had to gather the signatures of at least 1.0 percent of the constituency electorate. The winner in each single-member districts contest was simply the candidate with the plurality of votes, regardless of the number of votes cast against all.

Political blocs

Results

State Duma

Party		Party list			Constituency			Total seats
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats
	Liberal Democratic Party of Russia	12,318,562	22.92	59	1,604,785	3.04	5	64
	Choice of Russia	8,339,345	15.51	37	3,608,497	6.84	25	62
	Communist Party of the Russian Federation	6,666,402	12.40	32	1,848,888	3.50	10	42
	Women of Russia	4,369,918	8.13	22	309,378	0.59	2	24
	Agrarian Party of Russia	4,292,518	7.99	22	2,879,410	5.46	16	38
	Yavlinsky–Boldyrev–Lukin	4,223,219	7.86	20	1,854,447	3.52	7	27
	Party of Russian Unity and Accord	3,620,035	6.73	19	1,433,158	2.72	3	22
	Democratic Party of Russia	2,969,533	5.52	14	1,142,830	2.17	1	15
	Russian Democratic Reform Movement	2,191,505	4.08	0	1,038,068	1.97	4	4
	Civic Union	1,038,193	1.93	0	1,591,476	3.02	7	7
	Future of Russia–New Names	672,283	1.25	0	411,426	0.78	1	1
	Constructive-Ecological Movement "Kedr"	406,789	0.76	0	301,266	0.57	0	0
	Dignity and Charity	375,431	0.70	0	445,168	0.84	3	3
	Independents				26,171,737	49.61	135	135
Against all		2,267,963	4.22	–	8,117,106	15.39	–	–
Vacant seats[b]							6	6
Total		53,751,696	100.00	225	52,757,640	100.00	225	450
Valid votes		53,751,696	93.16
Invalid/blank votes		3,946,002	6.84
Total votes		57,697,698	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		106,170,835	54.34
Source: Nohlen & Stöver, University of Essex, Boschler

Federation Council

Although the Federation Council was contested on a non-party basis,^[2] 11 were members of the Communist Party, six were members of Russia's Choice and nine were members of other parties.^[5]

Aftermath

The results of the polls proved to be disappointing for the Kremlin: the two competing pro-government parties, Russia's Choice and the Party of Russian Unity and Accord, gained 15.5% and 6.7% of the vote respectively and won 123 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. Neither party was able to control the parliamentary agenda nor impose the will of the president on the Duma. Lacking legislative success, both parties rapidly lost membership.

Parliamentary groups

The use of the mixed system for the election of the Duma produced a large number of deputies which were unaffiliated with any electoral bloc. By joining other parliamentary groups or forming groups of independent deputies, they could significantly influence the balance of power in the Duma. Hence, the parliamentary groups in the first two-year term of the Duma showed lack of stability and its numbers may be given only with approximation.