The “yes” vote to return to Russian rule was a massive 97.3%, on the back of a huge voter turnout of 81.2%, according to the data given by the head of Crimea’s hastily set up referendum commission, Mikhail Malyshev.
The figures reported by Malyshev indicate there were 1,844,589 registered voters in Crimea and Sevastopol (legally a separate entity), of whom 1,495,043 turned up at the polls and voted “yes,” with the total of valid votes being 1,536,290.
That does indeed yield a “yes” vote of 97.3%, so the figures given by Malyshev do seem to be consistent with each other.
However, there are still reasons to be wary of taking these referendum results at face value.
For a start, we have to judge the accuracy of the figure for registered voters.
Unfortunately, there are no hard figures readily at hand. The last major vote in Crimea was the 2010 parliamentary election, at which the number of registered voters was around 1,250,000, according to data from the Main Statistical Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
The complication is that this figure does not include voters in Sevastopol, who numbered perhaps another 320,000. But still, the total of approximately 1,570,000 we get here is still well short of the 1,844,589 reported by Malyshev.
Is it possible that growth in the Crimean population could account for the discrepancy here?
Well, no – the last census data for Crimea comes from 2001, when the total population of the peninsula was stated at 2,033,700.
Since then, according to demographic data, the population has been falling by about 0.4% a year, and is now certainly below 2 million.
Add to that the fact that of this less than 2 million only those over the age of 18 would have the right to vote. Frustratingly, there are no firm figures for the number of Crimeans over the age of 18, but if we take the figure that we do have for numbers of Crimeans that are over 14 (85.1% of the population), we can estimate that the highest possible electoral roll figure is certainly lower than 1,702,000.
It thus seems very likely that in the latest referendum some extra voters were added to the electoral roll – perhaps as many as 150,000, and perhaps even a lot more.
Euan MacDonald, a former Kyiv Post editor, is now an editor with Interfax-Ukraine news service.
