In the second round of the Irkutsk region governor election, turnout is higher than two weeks ago, and voting is calm and without serious violations. Experts Konstantin Zhukov and Eduard Yarotsky say the candidates and their teams have already had an effect, and the final result will show a more accurate picture of voter sentiment.

The second round of the Irkutsk Region governor election is coming to an end. Konstantin Zhukov and Eduard Yarotsky shared their thoughts.
Konstantin Zhukov, head of the Laboratory of Humanitarian and Political Technologies at the Faculty of History of Irkutsk State University.
It is encouraging that our fellow countrymen have shown higher electoral activity today than two weeks ago. Apparently, the more targeted efforts of the candidates for Governor, their headquarters, and their teams played a role. But predicting the results of this work two hours before the end of the election, as they say, is not worth it. I only want to repeat what I said at the briefing on September 13: “The most important thing for our large Russian family, for our regional family, is not dividing people into party-political compartments, but a coalition of all political forces with the most important goal of consolidating our society. After all, the main goal of political activity today, I am firmly convinced of this, is a higher level of organization of people’s lives, to make our life prosperous and more comfortable, that is, work for a concrete result.”
Eduard Yarotsky, co-chair of the regional branch of the ONF, chairman of the council of the Irkutsk regional branch of the public organization “Opora Rossii”.
On September 27, the voting is taking place somewhat differently than it did in the first round. The difference is that by noon, around one o’clock, almost twice as many voters had already turned out. I want to say that everything is going very routinely and calmly. I was at four polling stations, looked at the observers, everyone is sitting amicably, there are no remarks, and at only one polling station were the house numbers not indicated. Our organization has information on 14 municipalities. These are representatives of our organization “Opora Rossii,” who are entrepreneurs, they are interested, they worked in the electoral systems. And today there were no special signals, not even any signals at all, related to any violations. That is, I think that today there will be a more accurate cross-section of the electorate’s assessments of one candidate or another, since there will be significantly more voters. That is the first thing. And second, I think that by training a little on these electoral matters, we can assess who is worth what.