Resistance at the polls: coordinated anti-regime voting in Russia’s transition from competitive to hegemonic authoritarianism, 2019–2021

Is it possible for dissenting citizens in modern-day autocracies to challenge the non-democratic status quo through regular elections? Scrutinizing the smart vote, a voting coordination strategy proposed by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, this article examines the efficiency and limitations of collective anti-regime voting in a regime on the edge of transition from competitive to hegemonic authoritarianism. The analysis is based on the official electoral data covering the period 2019–2021, a list experiment conducted after the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia, and an original survey of Russian wartime migrants. We find that the smart vote strategy significantly boosted the electoral results of targeted candidates regardless of their party affiliations. This article provides empirical evidence that both instrumental and intrinsic factors brought the dissenting voters to the polls. In the end, however, Russia’s transition to hegemonic authoritarianism, with an increased level of control over the electoral process in combination with outright repression of the opposition, rendered the smart vote strategy impossible.