Vladimir Putin's ruling party suffered a big drop in support in a parliamentary election on Sunday, exit polls showed, as voters signaled their growing unease with his domination of Russian politics before a planned return to the presidency next year.
Two exit polls suggested Putin's party, United
Russia, would win 45.5 and or 48.5 percent of the votes in the election to the State Duma compared with 64.3 percent in 2007 and that it could struggle even to hold on to a majority in the chamber.
I hope he loses couldnt happen to a better person...but it most likely wont happen..I wouldnt put dirty deals and election fraud and possibly murder of the realm of putin and his allies.
Russian voters deal Putin an election blow | Reuters
Well, this isn't as much of a godsend as it appears to be.
Currently, Putin is the Prime Minister of Russia. If I read Wikipedia right, the PM is appointed by the President with the consent of the State Duma, which is the lower house of the Federal Assembly, the Russian legislature. If the President's appointment to the Prime Minister is rejected by the State Duma 3 times then the President may dissolve the State Duma, call for new elections, and appoint the Prime Minister without the participation of the State Duma. There are a few exceptions to this, however.
So the President has a lot of power in selecting the Prime Minister. But Putin is PM only because nobody may serve as President for more than 2 consecutive terms. So after Medvedev's term Putin plans to run again for President. So how is the President chosen?
The President of Russia seems to be elected by national popular vote. This election seems to have multiple candidates. If none of those candidates get a simple majority, then a second round of the election is done between the 2 candidates with the most votes from the first round.
So since Putin is running for President of Russia in 2012, all he needs is a simple majority of the national popular vote in a two-round system. Since United Russia has a 45-48% of the vote, it is likely that Putin will have a plurality of votes. Which means that if he does not get the simple majority in the national popular vote then he will definitely be a candidate in the second round of the Presidential election.
So in regards to the Presidency the issue will come down to how much people hate Putin over how competent voters think the next most popular guy is. If voters have more in common with Putin than whoever the opposition candidate is then Putin will gain the Russian Presidency again.
On the other hand, even if Putin gains the Presidency his party may still lack a majority in the State Duma. However, it will still likely have a plurality. Which means that United Russia will still have sizable power in the State Duma, though it may have to make some concessions to the other parties in order to get anything passed.
And all of this assumes, of course, that anything the government does actually matters when too much of the country is run by the Mafiya and those gangster will run the country however they want anyways.