COMMUNISTS WIDEN LEAD AS VOTE COUNT NEARS END…

Communist Party candidates gained at least 49 seats in the single-mandate districts, according to election returns from 195 out of a total of 225 such constituencies. The runner-up is the Agrarian Party, which prevailed in 19 single-mandate constituencies despite its failure thus far to overcome the 5 percent threshold in the voting on party lists. The Agrarians are potential allies of the communists in the new Duma. Trailing in the constituency tally are Yabloko with twelve seats, "Russia is Our Home" with ten, Russia’s Democratic Choice with eight, the Congress of Russian Communities with five, and Women of Russia, Power to the People (Nikolai Ryzhkov’s) bloc, and Ivan Rybkin’s Bloc with three seats each, out of the 195 adjudicated as of this moment. Other parties obtained one or two mandates each, while candidates with no party affiliation were elected in 68 of the districts counted so far. (1) Zhirinovsky’s party captured only one constituency seat. Prior to the election, some commentators speculated that both the communists and Zhirinovsky’s party would do poorly outside the party list context, owing to the weak caliber of their individual candidates. That proved to be the case solely where Zhirinovsky’s troops were concerned.

…And May Take One-Third of Duma.