Cadets vote at a polling station. Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won a greater share of the vote than in 2011, with even less space in parliament for any real opposition party | Vasily Batanov/AFP via Getty Images Russia’s election: Free sausages and fraud allegations Vladimir Putin’s United Russia is the big winner with a constitutional majority.

MOSCOW — Two years of economic recession, Western sanctions and wars in Ukraine and Syria haven’t shaken Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.

Instead, Sunday’s election to the Russian state Duma saw the president’s United Russia party win a greater share of the vote than in 2011, with even less space in parliament for any real opposition party.

There was never any doubt about the outcome, and many Russians didn’t bother to turn out. Nationwide, only 48 percent voted compared to 60 percent in the previous elections for the lower house of parliament. The numbers were even worse in Moscow and St. Petersburg, bastions of the educated middle classes and traditionally more protest-oriented. This time, despite some reports of voter fraud, there were no signs of demonstrations.

“They did everything [so] that people would ignore the elections, from holding them just after the summer break, to the most low-key election campaign I can remember,” said political expert Grigorii Golosov.

On Monday, with 93 percent of the votes counted, United Russia had 54.2 percent of the vote, up from 49.3 percent five years ago. Russia’s new electoral system, a mix of party lists and single mandate districts, means that Putin's party wins a huge constitutional majority of 343 seats in the 450-seat Duma — compared to 238 seats in 2011.

With its super majority, United Russia will have free rein over parliament, dropping the need to bargain with friendly opposition parties. It can also change the constitution at will.

In southern Russia a CCTV camera caught a polling official stuffing a ballot box.

On the latest figures, the Communist Party will likely finish second, slightly ahead of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, with the center-left Just Russia fourth. They were all in the previous parliament, and traditionally support the government on many issues and refrain from attacking Putin.

While there is some pressure for the Communists to be more independent— their leader Gennady Zyuganov at one point refused to recognize the results — all three can be expected to remain loyal.

All in all, it was a terrible election for Russia’s liberal fringe, which now faces the prospect of obliteration. They’re down from one seat in the previous Duma to none.

Their best hope, the liberal opposition Yabloko party, scored less than 2 percent of the vote, and will now lose out on government funding. The liberal-democratic PARNAS party failed to get 1 percent, and most of the candidates supported by exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky were wiped out.

The centrist opposition also failed to break through in any of the single-mandate districts. The closest candidate, Yabloko’s Dmitry Gudkov, lost in the Moscow suburbs. As he faced defeat, Gudkov told POLITICO he had battled the full might of the government machine, but said that the result was ultimately down to the passivity of Russian democrats.

"Voters didn't turn up,” he said. “Russia's middle class now is about to get what it deserves.”

Only one independent and two right-wing populist candidates made it into the Duma, but they won’t give much support to the liberal opposition. One of the nationalist winners of the single-mandate run-offs was Vitaly Milonov, a former deputy of the St. Petersburg city government who has campaigned on an anti-gay rights platform.

A questionable poll

Although the outcome was never in doubt, the Kremlin made sure that the voting procedure was cleaned up from 2011, when voter fraud sparked anti-Putin protests. However, there were still questionable incidents, the most obvious being in Rostov in southern Russia where a CCTV camera caught a polling official stuffing a ballot box. In other places, voters were lured to the polls with free sausages and other goodies.

Denis Korotkov, a correspondent for the St. Petersburg news portal Fontanka, managed to vote several times. He immediately wrote about the incident and brought it to the attention of the authorities. Law enforcement subsequently detained Korotkov — who is now threatened with prosecution for electoral violations.

While the opposition faces being wiped out, the upshot for Putin is that his control of Russia is stronger than ever. He is likely to decide to run for a fourth term as president in 2018. As part of the preparations for yet another run, Putin recently reshuffled his closest advisers, weeding out those who might dare to challenge him and replacing them with lesser-known men completely dependent on his favor.

The election also means there is likely to be little change in Russia’s policies on Ukraine and Syria, or in its economic program.

“In practical terms, little will change with the new parliament,” wrote Capital Economics, an analysis firm, in a post-election note. “United Russia already held a majority in parliament, and didn’t face effective opposition. The strong showing for United Russia (and disappointing results for the opposition) suggests that the direction of policy will be largely unchanged.”

This article has been corrected to remove a reference to Vladislav Reznik being on an Interpol list. He was taken off the list in May.