On air: uncover how Putin’s landslide in 2024 was fabricated
Explore the truth using open, expert-built visualization tools — a live masterclass in data forensics by Roman Udot.
How 22 million votes were rigged for Putin, giving him a record 87% in the election
An analysis of the election results using Sergei Shpilkin's mathematical method showed that Putin received at least 22 million ‘anomalous’ votes. TV broadcast on TV Rain on 18 March 2024.
Denis Kataev: Today, independent analysts, using a method developed by renowned mathematician Sergei Shpilkin, calculated that up to half of the votes in these elections could have been rigged in Putin's favour. We will discuss this, as well as what other conclusions can be drawn from the officially available electoral statistics, with Roman Udot, an election monitoring expert.
Roman, hello, thank you for joining us again in our studio.
Roman Udot: Good afternoon,
Denis Kataev: Yes, and indeed, all the data is from open sources, and it turns out that very interesting conclusions can be drawn, as we discussed before the broadcast. To prepare well, let's also tell our viewers what these methods are and when they were used. The authorities are now reporting a high turnout. Yes, unprecedented turnout in these elections is behind it, and I understand correctly that some kind of manipulation may be hidden behind it?
Roman Udot: Yes, that's absolutely right. We have already started showing "big fraud on big screens" (i.e. on TV-channels). Starting from the very first day of voting, because unlike the results, we have known the turnout from the very beginning. And from the very beginning, we showed in this studio how they were fabricating it in different regions, entire districts, entire republics (Russia has autonomous republics in its composion). That was the first day. Now, after the voting is over, we have the full picture, yes, the full picture of the days, and we even discovered how the authorities are trying to hide and cover up what they fabricated for us on the first two days.
Denis Kataev: Shall we take a look?
Roman Udot: Yes, they dedicated the third day for concealment of evidence.
Denis Kataev: Let's proceed. Did you want the Kemerovo region?
Roman Udot: Yes, yes. It is worth showing. This is one of the famous "electoral sultanates", and we...
Denis Kataev: Let's explain, for those who don't know, a ‘sultanate’ is where people always vote en masse for the government.
Roman Udot: Let's just say that the elections there are rigged to the max.
Denis Kataev: Yes, yes, yes. They don't vote, they “draw” the results.
Roman Udot: They put down made-up figures, they stuff the ballot boxes, they send teams that votes several times (Carousel voting). Sometimes, for example, in Chechnya, it's even dangerous to visit the republic in order to find out what's going on.
Denis Kataev: There, 98.9% vote for Putin.
Roman Udot: Perhaps, but we see a completely abnormal picture in the electoral graphs.
Denis Kataev: Let's take a look.
Roman Udot: Yes, of course. I was just about to show you our favourite Kemerovo region. If you see these, these little stripes here are what we call ‘anomalies’. See what I mean? In neat rows!
The election commissions are presenting their results. If you want, I can explain that each dot is an election commission. They are arranged in numerical order, meaning they are neighbours. The Central Election Commission numbers the polling stations so that they are next to each other with the same numbers, and then their higher commission (the DEC, or district election commission) sets the plan. Let's say the Novokuznetskaya Election Commission set a plan of 50%.
Denis Kataev: And they did it.
Roman Udot: And all as one!
Denis Kataev: Everyone has the same result, right?
Roman Udot: Yes! That can't be! If there is a dispersion among neighbours in Prokopyevsk, for example. If there is a dispersion among neighbours on the left in Novokuznetsk, then in Novokuznetskaya they "draw it with a ruler", without "taking their finger off the calculator". And this tradition continues in the following reports. They reported it at 3 p.m. on the first day, they reported it, as you can see, at 8 p.m. on the first day, then they forgot to fabricate at 3 p.m. the next day, but by evening they recalled and this time they drew this line again, this time how many they had there... this time it was 86%.
Denis Kataev: They already had 86%?
Roman Udot: Well, the turnout has to grow every day. But then the trickiest part happened. They didn't falsify on the third day, they leave it for camouflage, because, of course, the people who come covered the artificial lines with normally distrubuted, chaotic voting.
So they come at 10:00, 12:00, 15:00, and then 18:00. You see, they come at different times, and all the fake votes, all these ‘rows’ are hidden behind the real votes of the people.
Roman Udot: And if we didn't have this regular reports, we would never have found this. Fortunately, our specialists parse and collect data regularly. We caught them at 3:00 p.m., at 8:00 p.m., and the next day at 8:00 p.m. And now the most interesting part. If we look at the results on the evening of the second day, on the evening of the second day and on the evening of the third day, we see: first, dispersion, but we see that the difference is about 9–10%. In one day. That gives , in three days, 30%. But, gentlemen, it is definitely not 90%!
Denis Kataev: That's not possible.
Roman Udot: So we have proof on our screen that the turnout in the Kemerovo region was inflated threefold: instead of 30% over three days, they manufactured for us a figure of almost 100%! Upt to 94%.
Denis Kataev: And this turnout is precisely where the manipulation is hidden. I see.
Roman Udot: Yes, exactly, and we found it thanks to these ‘lines.’ Thanks to these meticulous commissions, which fabricate everything as one.
Denis Kataev: And we are talking about paper ballots, of course. 80%...
Roman Udot: I don't know, I don't remember, yes. In general, the REV (the Remote Electronic Voting) was invented for rebellious cities, for Moscow...
Denis Kataev: For Moscow. Let's move on to that.
Roman Udot: Yes, but Kemerovo is this electoral sultan...
Denis Kataev: That's why the REV is not necessary there. They fabricate via old ways. Yes, let's take a look at that famous Shpilkin graph, shall we?
Roman Udot: Yes, by the way, we've just finished with the large-scale turnout rigging, and the results of the voting itself are starting to come in, and the whole Internet is in turmoil.
Denis Kataev: About the fact that half of the votes were fabricated?
Roman Udot: Yes. It started with Novaya Gazeta, basically, we, analysts, all use the same data set. It's just that some people do it more beautifully, some more interactively, some in other ways, but basically, we all agree on these figures.
We have to understand that this is more or less an estimate, a mathematical projection. And when we take... how can I put it... The way the fraud is organised is that people either stuff the ballot boxes, which increases turnout, or they use the carousel method, which also increases turnout. Or they just add votes to the ruling party or candidates, which also increases turnout. All fraud is associated with an increase in turnout. And naturally, assumptions arise that polling stations with low turnout are "honest". Even without being there, we suspect that it is unlikely that anyone would falsify the numbers ‘downwards.’ Everyone falsifies ‘upwards.’ And then we say, okay, fine, let's look at the lower side of the turnout axis, here we take Shpilkin's graph, and this part — the lowest turnout zone — here we have the turnout... This is a low turnout of 30-45%.
Denis Kataev: Just what you can more or less trust.
Roman Udot: With a certain degree of probability... See this jump, this step? We all heard that the Kremlin set a target for the regions of ‘70 to 70’ or ‘80 to 80.’ (turnout and Putin's result which were signalled to be 'ok', acceptable).
That's how commissions tried, what we call ‘pull up to 70’: to fabricate turnout at the PECs to 70% and above. It grows smoothly (in the beginning), then they sharply increase (at and beyond the benchmark of 70% of turnout)
And this can be considered the ‘watershed point.’ The point where the honest zone is separated from the dishonest zone. Let's say that vertically, this entire zone is suspicious. We take this zone of honest polling stations and determine the percentage, the ratio of Putin's votes to the others cadidate votes, and see how much the ratio is distorted in the dishonest zone. And this distortion is the red area of the Shpilkin diagram. If we look at it, it accounts for a third of the votes. Did the winning candidate win? That is the question. Because a third is a pretty big chunk. If we take his official final result of 76.2 (million of votes), then the zone is 22 million votes. What do my findings say now? This, by the way, is an interactive graph that is deployed on the Internet. Everyone can make their own findings. I think you will have a link under this video on your YouTube channel [insert link], and everyone will be able to look at their regions and build their own personal Shpilkin's graph. Secondly, Novaya Gazeta came up with 31 million in the very beginning. This can be called an ‘top possible estimation.’ We have 22 million. Another group of analysts led by... Shpilkin's students also got 22 millions. I just saw their conclusion. It has just been published. We had a kind of ‘space race’ going on: who would get the results faster and how accurate they would be. And, as you can see, everyone agrees on this numbers.
Denis Kataev: at least 22.
Roman Udot: Yes, from 22 to 31 million. This is mass fraud. This is a massive crime.
As stated in the legislation, ‘it is impossible to determine the will of the citizens,’ and in such cases, the elections should be cancelled altogether. That's a third or half of the vote. By the way, this graph also helps us to show another case of fraud. If you look at these strange regular peaks: on the left, in the honest zone, there are no such peaks. On the right, we suddenly see 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90% and 95%. This is the so-called ‘Churov saw,’ when, like the teeth of a saw, the peaks are drawn by the commissions at regular intervals of round percentages.
Denis Katayev: The Churov inheritance lives on! (Mr. Churov was the chairman of the CEC of Russia when large-scale falsifications began to be detected and mass anti-fraud protests flooded the streets).
Roman Udot: Yes!
Denis Katayev: Well? We also wanted to say that this shows that voter turnout correlates with the winner's share of the vote.
Roman Udot: This indicates that this area is a zone of large-scale fraud.
Denis Katayev: You wanted to prepare something for St. Petersburg.
Roman Udot: Yes, this comprehensive tool is versatile. You can look at all sorts of parameters here. If I switch, for example, to the city of St. Petersburg. This is a different diagram, but it is called a ‘scatter plot.’
Each point is a district. Putin's results are here, Davankov's results are here, by the way. Kharitonov's results are here. And an interesting fact, if we look closely at Davankov's results, they are in low turnouts, which we assume to be honest in these precincts, they are around 11-15%. Here is his cloud.
But if we go beyond the critical 70% that we have defined as the ‘suspicious zone’...
Denis Kataev: He immediately loses.
Roman Udot: (Laughs). His numbers drop sharply! Which, by the way, does not happen with Kharitonov.
Denis Kataev: (Laughs). Kharitonov's numbers are stable.
Roman Udot: No one took votes away from Kharitonov. But with Davankov, they started stealing his votes at high turnouts and lowered him to about... 5%. So what the Nadezhdin's polls said, and Maxim Kats' polls did, was that Davankov had 10%. Davankov had 15%. Here you can see how they (the commissions) stole votes from him at rigged polling stations. And interestingly, I'll finish with Moscow then.
Denis Kataev: Yes, go ahead.
Roman Udot: Moscow is good because the CEC publishes this data without the REV, so they cleverly figured out how to hide their REV in a huge single territorial commission (for the REV of all Moscow). Therefore, here we see paper votes, and we see, I would say, a perfect distribution. Yes, we don't see huge numbers of falsified votes, we see that everything is normal, with paper ballots accounting for around 35-40% of the total. Davankov has a good 20% here with paper ballots.
Denis Katayev: In Moscow
Roman Udot: ...we were just talking about paper voting: it is more honest, it is verifiable, it is controllable. As you can see, we do not see any anomalies in the turnout, we do not see any anomalies in the steps, we do not see anything in the growth. Everything is beautiful, as it should be, but then the REV comes in and the whole picture...
Denis Kataev: Approximately 73%...
Roman Udot: ... 70% of Muscovites voted through the REV by the end of the third day.
Denis Kataev: Electronic voting...
Roman Udot: And the whole picture distorted.
Denis Kataev: So we see two main conclusions from this. First, it is clear that during the increase in turnout, especially at its peak, some kind of manipulation is taking place. And second, that the REV is, of course, also plays its role.
Roman Udot: We can see how votes were stolen from Davankov.
Denis Kataev: In favour of Kharitonov.
Roman Udot: We don't know... Or Putin...
Denis Katayev: (Laughs). Or Putin,
Roman Udot: Because we don't see any change in Kharitonov's results. Well, Davankov's results have dropped sharply in the zone of high turnout (i.e. falsified zone) in St. Petersburg and other cities where I looked.
Denis Kataev: Yes, that's right, actually.
Roman Udot: Here we see... this step... the critical 70%. After 70%, everything changes.
Denis Kataev: I see, that's very interesting, and viewers will really be able to familiarise themselves with this toolbox. We have a link in the description. It's really intriguing, and it took me 20 minutes of talking to you to understand it all. And now the viewers listened to our conversation...
Roman Udot: When you do it yourself, it's much easier to understand.
Denis Kataev: Thank you, Roman, thank you very much for taking the time for this analysis. It's very important. Roman Udot, an election monitoring expert, was with us in the studio.
The electoral data of all the elections from this article has been uploaded into
the Lab . Now, you can see the elections with your own eyes™.
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