Russia's ruling party claimed victory in regional elections on Sunday in a show of strength for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 18 months before a presidential poll that could return him to the Kremlin.
The opposition called the vote "dirty" and said fraud had played a part in the outcome.
Partial results indicated that Putin’s United Russia party would retain control of at least five of six regional parliaments by a wide margin and win thousands of municipal polls.
"We can say with confidence we got a majority in all electoral territories," senior United Russia official Boris Gryzlov told journalists, saying early results and exit polls showed an increase in support from elections four years ago.
"The results show everything we have done in the past four years was correct."
The vote was a test for the Kremlin’s political machine ahead of a March 2012 presidential election after several difficult months for the ruling party, culminating with the sacking of one of the party’s founders, the mayor of Moscow.
Strong support for United Russia would point to an easy victory for its chosen candidate in 2012 presidential poll, when either Putin or his protege, President Dmitry Medvedev, is expected to stand for a six-year term.
Regional elections in March showed a decline in support for United Russia in most regions from 2007 federal elections.
The party this summer blocked the reappointment of the Kaliningrad region governor, a United Russia member, after 10,000 people demanded his resignation.
Divisions were exposed by a dispute that ended with Medvedev’s dismissal last month of longtime Moscow mayor and United Russia ruling council member Yuri Luzhkov.
"DIRTIEST ELECTION IN YEARS"
Opposition communists and liberals alike said fraud was rampant. The Communist Party placed a distant second in three regions according to early results after between 17 and 77 percent of votes were counted.
"This was the dirtiest election of recent years," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told journalists in Moscow. "It is sad and shameful."
Russia’s main pro-Western liberal party, Yabloko, which only managed to register in one of the seven regional votes, said it might challenge the results in court, Interfax news agency reported.
"There are no signs anything is getting better under Medvedev," said Grigory Melkonyan, deputy head of Golos, Russia’s leading independent vote watchdog.
Golos registered widespread abuse of absentee ballots and open vote-buying in several regions. The poll was dirtier than regional elections held in March, Melkonyan said.
Other groups critical of the Kremlin say they have been blocked from registering as parties, barring them from elections.
Central Election Commission member Leonid Ivlev said on state television that some isolated violations were reported, but that he believed they did not have any significant effect on the results.
In the violence-plagued North Caucasus, a village administration chief in Dagestan province was shot dead in a brawl that erupted after 4,600 ballots for a district election went missing, Russian news agencies reported, citing police.
