Russian Presidential Election 2018

The 2018 Russian Presidential Election was held on March 18, 2018. There were seven candidates running for president, however, the incumbent president, Vladimir Putin, got reelected after the closest presidential election in many years due to what many considered the first real opposition to Putin in an election. Ilya Ponomarev was the biggest protagonist of that opposition. Using the fact he was one of the few Duma deputies who opposed Putin almost all the time, he surged as a proven alternative to Putin. Many thought his opposition of Crimea's anexation and his support for gay rights would be bad for him because of the conservatism reigning in Russia and the enormous support for the anexation of Crimea, but those two issues may have even helped him conquer some of the electorate. In the end, Ilya got more than 20% of the vote with a platform concentrated on fighting income inequality, corruption and improving the living conditions of the Russian people. Vladimir Putin ended up getting below 50% of the votes and the 2018 election marked the start of the end of the Putin and the United Russia unbroken power. The communist Gennady Zyuganov ended up in third capturing his traditional electorate. Other candidates were the far-right Liberal Democratic Party leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the liberal party Yabloko politician, Grigory Yavlinsky, the socialite and journalist, Ksenia Sobchak, and the social-democratic party Just Russia leader, Sergey Mironov.