Preliminary results show the United Russia party, led by President Vladimir Putin, has swept majority votes in Sunday's parliamentary elections, but the Communist Party threatened to challenge the results.
The pro-Kremlin party won 62.3 percent ballots in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, authorized exit polls conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation showed.
The Central Elections Commission said the United Russia is topping the 11 parties in the race with 63.6 percent of ballots, according to 30.4 percent of counted votes till 2000 GMT.
The other parties, which have cleared the seven percent threshold to enter the parliament, include the Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and the Fair Russia, authorized exit polls showed.
Fair Russia leader and Speaker of Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov said President Putin had congratulated United Russia on the victory.
"Putin congratulated the United Russia on the victory and thanked the State Duma members for their work in the past four years. He said this work is efficient," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
"In fact, United Russia owes the large support it has gained to Vladimir Putin," he said.
Gryzlov said the United Russia will focus on eliminating poverty and raising pension in the new State Duma.
Putin, who refused to be a party member but led the United Russia in the run-on, has called on the 108 million eligible voters to cast their ballots for the party, saying the elections will set tune for next March's presidential election, when he is expected to step down due to constitutional ban on a third continuous term.
LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has also expressed satisfaction over the initial results.
"At any rate, we are already happy that it is more than seven percent, and we were sure it would be like that. Because these are just initial figures, we are certain they will rise to 12 to 13 percent," Zhirinovsky said in an interview with national television Channel 1.
Russia's Communist party, however, has pledged to contest the results.
"I wish to appeal to the government -- stop it, you are simply abusing the entire country," Interfax news agency quoted party leader Gennady Zyuganov as saying at the Communist Party headquarters.
Zyuganov accused Russia's government of manipulating the elections, in which his party has won some 11 percent of votes according to preliminary results, more than the seven percent threshold for entering the State Duma.
"It's clear already that the results for Siberia and other regions are being manipulated on the basis of schemes agreed in advance," he said, adding previous polls conducted by his party showed it will gain some 20 percent.
"Our lawyers have already begun preparing a complaint to the Supreme Court to challenge the results of the elections," Vadim Solovyev, head of the party's legal office, was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.
The United Russia, given it forms constitutional majority, may grasp 306 of the 450 seats in the State Duma according to its ballots, Public Opinion Study Center Chairman Leonid Davydov said.
The Communist Party may get 57 seats, the LDPR get 45, and the Fair Russia party may get 42, he said.
Voting was held in the 96,000 polling stations scattered across the vast country from 2000 GMT on Saturday in the far eastern region of Kamchatka to 1800 GMT on Sunday in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located between Poland and Lithuania.
The elections' turnout has topped 60 percent, Central Elections Commission Chairman Vladimir Churov said. The turnout was 55.75 percent in the elections of 2003.
Exit polls by another two official organizations, Nashi Vybory and the Russian Public Opinion Study Center, yielded in similar results.
The final results will be published in three weeks.
Source: Xinhua
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