Moscow: Russia's dominant ruling party United Russia was leading regional elections but suffered a string of surprising setbacks against the background of the economic crisis, results showed on Monday.
United Russia, whose overall leader is Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, won less than half the vote in some polls for regional parliaments and in a stunning reverse lost the election for mayor in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.
The polls yesterday only involved some of Russia's regions but were being closely watched by the authorities after unusual displays of discontent in recent weeks rattled the Kremlin.
United Russia won over 48 percent of the vote in elections for the local Parliament in the Khabarovsk region, a key economic hub in the Far East on the border with China, results published by the central election commission showed.
In the region of Sverdlovsk that includes the Urals economic capital of Yekaterinburg it polled just 40 percent of the vote. However, in the sparsely populated Yamalo-Nenets
Autonomous Region it won 86 percent.
The most unsettling news for United Russia was in Irkutsk, a city of over half-a-million people, where its candidate in elections for mayor was thrashed by a candidate supported by the Communist Party.
PTI
First Published: Monday, March 15, 2010, 20:35