Putin party suffers big loss in Russia vote

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party suffered a sharp drop in support Sunday in parliamentary elections, winning the most votes but falling far short of the majority it has enjoyed for years and possibly failing to clear the 50-percent mark, early results showed.

With more than one-fourth of the votes counted, the ruling United Russia party had picked up just over 47 percent – a far cry from the commanding two-thirds constitutional majority the party has held in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, for the past four years, according to the official count.

If born out by the full vote count, the result would mark a major electoral setback for the political party that Putin leads and that has been the dominant political organization in Russia for much of the past decade.

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