With tens of people heading to bleak places as polls open in Russia for 2024’s most useless election, National Zero predicts President Vladimir Putin will safely win his fifth term as President for Life of Russia, mainly because he has no serious opposition with a pulse. Per the Associated Press, even though he’s got a faltering war in Ukraine, had his private mercenary army mutiny, and murdered a popular opposition leader in February, Putin will likely record that he took 65-75% of the vote over the three-day voting period. (Putin has allowed similar vote outcomes to be released in previous “elections.”)
Besides murdering Alexei Navalny, Putin banned two emerging opponents who were running on anti-war policies from appearing on the ballot, and they’re likely planning their exits from the country at this time. Overall the Putin government has taken such a low-key approach to the election, one observer said it was “doing everything so that the people don’t notice the very fact of the election happening.”