MOSCOW — In an outcome long predicted, Russian voters overwhelmingly granted Vladimir Putin a six-year term as president Sunday, setting the stage for a far more suspenseful post-election confrontation between Putin and opposition groups.
“We have won,” Putin said to a huge throng of supporters right outside the Kremlin walls, a tear running down his cheek. “We have gained a clean victory!”
He added, “We won! Glory to Russia.”
Putin has been Russia’s pre-eminent leader for 12 years, having served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008 before his current term as prime minister. But the prospect of more protests, starting with a rally tonight in Pushkin Square in central Moscow, threatened to undercut his promise of stability.
Some opposition leaders called for protests beyond those allowed by government permits, raising the prospect of a sharp response from the authorities.
Popular anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny said he would lead an unsanctioned march to the Kremlin after a rally scheduled for today. He has called for a permanent encampment of demonstrators like those created by some of the Occupy movements in the West.
“People need to go out on the streets and not leave until their demands are met,” he said in a television interview.
With 77 percent of ballots counted, Putin had won 64.9 percent, the Central Election Commission said, comfortably above the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Not long after the polls closed in Moscow, tens of thousands of Kremlin supporters gathered in Manexhnaya Square for a victory celebration and concert.
The voting took place under heightened vigilance, thanks to a disputed parliamentary election in December that helped set off the huge opposition protests. On Sunday, thousands of election observers took up posts across the country, most of them — in accordance with Russian election law — aligned with a candidate.
By some tallies, there were more than 3,000 complaints of violations, including “carousel voting,” in which the same people cast ballots at multiple locations, and “centralized voting,” in which managers of factories, schools, hospitals and other large organizations pressure employees to vote for a specific candidate. In some cases, ballots were collected at the workplace.
And once again there were statistically improbable results from the North Caucuses, which is home to 6 percent of the Russian electorate and where Putin and his party have previously won close to 100 percent of the vote with abnormally high turnout.
There was no expectation that the complaints or improbable tallies would alter the results.
Even with opinion surveys showing Putin well-positioned to win the presidency, the political playing field has been Russia’s most unstable since 1996, when President Boris Yeltsin was forced into a second-round runoff by Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
Zyuganov, who was a candidate again this year, declared the results illegitimate even before all the votes were counted. “It was illegitimate, unfair and not transparent,” he said. “I will not congratulate anyone.”
Many voters said they were ambivalent, indicating a general sense that there was no viable alternative to Putin.
“He is stable,” said 59-year-old Tatiana Zorina, who voted for Putin. “Life has become a little better. My pension has risen — not much, but it has risen.” She added, “People like him. They know that with him, we shall live as we lived before.”
