Moscow (Xinhua) : Elections to Russia’s State Duma or the lower house of the country’s parliament kicked off Sunday amid tight security.
Voters in the far eastern region of Kamchatka were the first to cast their votes, as elections began there Saturday evening while other parts of the Russian territory had to wait for several hours to vote.
The people in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located between Poland and Lithuania will be the last to cast their ballots at 1800 GMT Sunday.
A total of 107 million people nationwide are eligible to vote to elect 450 new parliamentarians to the State Duma, for which about 11 political parties are contesting.
Some 4,600 candidates have been registered on the federal lists with an average of 10 candidates for each seat.
The first overseas polling stations opened in New Zealand at 10 p.m. (Moscow time) Saturday, while the last ones will open in Seattle and Los Angeles of the US.
Earlier, opinion polls have predicted that only four of the 11 parties – United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Just Russia – could clear the 7-percent threshold to enter parliament, and the United Russia party led by President Vladimir Putin will get an overwhelming victory.
The other contending parties are the right-of-centre Right Forces Union SPS, Yabloko, the Patriots of Russia, the Democratic Party, the Civil Force Party, the Agrarian Party and the Party of Social Justice.
Three organisations – the Public Opinion Foundation, the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre and the Our Elections organisation – have been permitted by the CEC to conduct exit polls.
According to officials, details about the polls will be given to media around 9 p.m. Moscow time.