I started this research leaning towards the idea that Nadezhdin was a stooge. I finished it almost positive he is the real deal. The two big thing that influenced me were the reporting from Meduza, which is a really fantastic outlet that has a very useful vantage point into Moscow; and the opinion of Vladimir Milov. I've had the fortune of having dinner with Vladimir a few times, and I know he's a pretty skeptical guy who's been burned before. The fact that he's positive on Nadezdhin is a big green flag for me. (You may be hearing more from Milov on this newsletter in the near-ish future...)

This Kremlinology is probably better left to more plugged-in people than me, but my *feeling* is that falling short of 80% will be bad news for Putin, but it won't be the end of the world. If you start getting below 60%, and if Nadezhdin can surpass the Communists as the 2nd place party, that's a shocking failure for Putin. (Alternatively, if Nadezhdin's results have to be aggressively suppressed and Putin's totals have to be invented, instead of just padded, that's probably equally bad. Russians aren't stupid, they know the difference between a crooked system and a totally rigged one.)