Authoritarian Electioneering in Real Time: Evidence from Russia’s 2024 Elections

• In Event: Authoritarian Statecraft 2.0

Abstract

How do autocratic regimes build public support during elections? A challenge in existing research on authoritarian elections is that scholars typically rely on surveys taken at a limited number of intervals around an election. Given their infrequency, traditional surveys struggle to document how voter attitudes develop over time during an election season. We address this shortcoming using data from the Russia Watcher project, a daily public opinion survey that tracks Russian attitudes toward important domestic and international political issues. By analyzing data collected every day before, during, and after Russia’s 2024 presidential election, we can assess the factors that drive voter behavior in the run-up to and aftermath of the election. This high-frequency data presents an unprecedented opportunity to observe the dynamics of Russian public opinion in real time as the election season unfolds. Our paper will provide empirical insights into a highly consequential election and a theoretical contribution to our understanding of how elections in authoritarian regimes play out in the eyes of ordinary citizens.

The majority of modern autocracies hold some form of elections (Guriev and Treisman 2020). Consequently, a fairly large body of research has developed around studying the role of elections in these regimes (see Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009 for one review). Most scholars accept that authoritarian elections are not merely window dressing, but rather serve important functions like distributing patronage and legitimating the autocrat’s claim to power (Magaloni 2006). Elections in autocracies are often characterized by fraud and manipulation, as ample research from Russia attests (e.g., Enikopolov et al. 2013; Frye, Reuter and Szakonyi 2014; 2018; 2019; Robertson 2017). Yet while they certainly cannot be equated to their democratic counterparts, it would be wrong to suggest that authoritarian elections are entirely based on coercion, patronage, and fraud. Indeed, authoritarian leaders often marshal major resources to increase their domestic popularity, especially in advance of an election (Guriev and Treisman 2020). To what extent are the results of authoritarian elections a product of outright fraud versus genuine support – even if it is maintained through manipulation?

Our paper will use time series and panel data to assess the factors that drive voter behavior during Russia’s upcoming presidential election, which will be held in mid-March 2024. Since the Russia Watcher project launched in May 2022, we have been conducting daily surveys among a nationally representative sample of Russians. The regularity of the survey allows us to observe trends in public opinion in real time – an advantage that few other surveys have (and, to our knowledge, none in an authoritarian regime). We designed a battery of questions related to the presidential election, including intended vote choice, perceptions of candidates, attitudes toward specific issues, media consumption, and fraud observations. We plan to field these questions alongside our usual indicators in the two months ahead of the election. We will then run an adapted series of questions in the wake of the election. An additional advantage of our survey is that due to its frequency, we have a large number of repeat respondents. We can thus assemble a quasi-panel of respondents who are surveyed multiple times before and after the election, allowing us to track shifts in attitudes within individuals.

Using this time series and panel data, we will evaluate how different factors influence voter behavior, including (a) the role of friend and family support for Putin (Buckley et al. 2023); (b) media manipulation (Rozenas and Stukal 2019); and (c) voter mobilization and electoral fraud (Frye, Reuter and Szakonyi 2014; 2018; 2019; Aarslew 2023). We also plan to compare the results from our survey to official voting results to construct regional estimates of electoral malfeasance (see e.g., Bratton et al. 2016). While the conclusions of our analysis will, of course, depend to a large extent on events that take place over the next several months, we are confident that our research design will enable us to make a valuable contribution to the study of Russian politics and broader scholarship on authoritarian regimes. The 2024 election is likely to be highly consequential to Russia's political landscape, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. Looking more broadly, we expect that our research will yield insights into the different methods autocrats use to build public support during an election – and how the public responds.

Authors

• Isabelle DeSisto, Princeton University

• Jacob Tucker, Princeton University

• Laura Howells, Princeton University

• Grigore Pop-Eleches, Princeton University