Analysis of the governors' elections using the Shpilkin method. Part one

On September 10, 2023, regional elections were held in 21 regions of the country. Since Sergei Shpilkin did not analyze the results of these elections this year, I decided to join this important part of the post-election activity. I graduated from the Moscow Phystech, that is, I also have a specialized education and can analyze data using a mathematical apparatus, namely the Kisling-Shpilkin method.

Republic Khakassia

I’ll start with Khakassia, where for the second election cycle in a row, elections are taking place in an extremely unusual and sad way for United Russia.

The graphs show a beautiful familiar distribution without anomalies, without “tails” and without double Gaussian bell curves - the current communist governor Valentin Konovalov took his fair 63%, we see the usual distribution of one bell curve and only one cloud for Konovalov on the right graph. In fair elections, one candidate on the result-turnout graph creates one cloud of points, each polling station creates one point. At the top of the right graph is Konovalov’s cloud, below are the clouds of other candidates. This is what fair elections usually look like.

Moscow region

Graphs from the Moscow region, where United Russia member Andrei Vorobyov was re-elected, require careful analysis. The fact is that the analysis is always based on a large number of honest sites. If there are vanishingly few honest areas, this breaks the Shpilkin algorithm.

Notice that on the left chart, at around 25% there is a small rise in the bell curve visible. The telegram bot @uik_protocol_bot, which observers created to receive copies of protocols, received several dozen protocols from observers confirming that 25% is the real turnout in the region. The bold dots on the right and the huge peak on the left are electronic distant voting.

However, we also see a huge rise in the bell curve on the left graph with a maximum of about 60% in turnout and a dense cloud of results on the right. In a word, there are so many falsifications that the main results are practically invisible, and the conclusion of the algorithm that Vorobyov has almost no anomalous votes should not be trusted.

Not only the evidence of observers speaks in favor of the fact that the numbers are fictious, but also the empty areas on the right graph in the area of ​​round numbers. For example, before 85% - vacuum, after - compaction. The reason here is psychological, falsifiers, when they make numbers up, they tend to choose numbers that are slightly larger than the key numbers, that is, 85.5% is preferable to 84.9%.

But it should not be confusing that the “honest” cloud is in the region of 70% for the incumbent. This does not mean that in a fair election he would have taken his 70%. When the institution of elections is destroyed, those who have lost faith in it simply stop going to the polling stations, realizing that they will falisify everything. And this is precisely why such powerful falsifications are used, in order to maintain this mood among voters, and, well, to maintain a pleasant feeling of complete control.

Voronezh region

An amazing region split into two bell curves. The official turnout of 51% is created from the actual turnout of 15-20% and the huge blatant drawing of turnout at 80%, marked by the shading of anomalies.

On the right graph you can see two clouds, the left one was made by voters, and the right one was made by falsifiers. Before the 80% turnout, a thinning is visible in the clouds of results; the scammers tried to cross this psychologically important mark.

Here there are still enough honest polling stations for the algorithm to correctly detect a cloud of correct results, and the current governor, Alexander Gusev from United Russia, has more than half of the anomalous votes. That is, formally, the fake Gusev won in the Voronezh region, a kind of ghost for whom falsifiers voted, and the real Gusev scored less than him, and, apparently, will be a kind of servant of the fake, illegal one.

And if in the Moscow region there were so-called “falsifications of intimidation,” then in the Voronezh region the falsifications were made clearly out of a desire to survive. The cloud of fair results is very close to 50%, the governor risked getting a second round. In 2020, I saw the same thing with our governor of Kuban; at a polling station with 200 voters, I discovered the stuffing of 1000 votes for Kondratiev, and also his true result was about 50%.

It is approximately by these methods, by stuffing hundreds and thousands of ballots, that incumbents are re-elected, eliminating the risk of a second round. The 2018 Primorye scandal is still having an impact.

City Moscow

We have never seen such graphs from Moscow. Electronic voting simply killed any attempts to carry out analysis. Only 10% of voters voted with paper. And the “electronic voting” point combines everything: voting via the Internet, voting through terminals at polling stations, and home-based voting using portable terminals. Electronic voting is a huge mistake, it has lumped so many disparate types of voting into one big pile that we can no longer draw confident conclusions.

I observed voting in Estonia, where more than half were also electronic votes, but with a huge difference: their system is subject to a thorough audit by a large company, and what is especially important is that voters from hundreds of polling stations are not combined into one protocol! Despite the principle of transparency prescribed in paragraph 5 of Art. 3 FZ-67, the organizers of opaque, uncontrolled electronic voting did not provide for the possibility of at least publishing data on PECs, so that at least something good could be learned from Estonia.

If we remove the electronic voting, analyzing only voting with a paper ballot, there are almost no anomalies; Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin takes 68%. This is not the official 76%, but it is also quite a lot. For the first time, voters voted electronically directly at the polling stations; which part received paper ballots, and which electronic ones were not published in the results, that is, in fact, most of the voting process was hidden from observers who came to the polling stations

Samara region

For the sake of Governor Dmitry Azarov, about half of the commissions left the cloud of fair turnout in the region of 30% to the right side, creating noticeable clouds with rarefaction before psychological marks and compactions after them, peaks on round numbers - this is the usual drawing protocol with a calculator 

About a quarter of his votes were anomalous, but apparently, these were falsifications of intimidation; there was no competition in the elections. Like, voters, don’t get used to fair distribution and counting, and falsifiers, don’t lose your grip, you’ll still need it.

To be continued. The remaining governors and unified districts for regional elections to legislative assemblies will also be published.

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It is worth noting that it is now quite difficult to obtain data from the CEC website: it is a whole battle with several obstacles such as captcha, restrictions on the number of requests and data obfuscation. The data was received and posted on the Nevybory telegram channel. At the time of analysis, the completeness of the data is about 99%; some sections were not downloaded, but they will not significantly affect the result of the analysis.

Updated on 18.10.2023: plots updated to correspond new parsed data obtained on 27.09.2023.