MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Vladimir Putin's ruling party could see its vast parliamentary majority cut back on Sunday in elections widely seen as a test of his popularity ahead of an expected return to the presidency early next year.
Voters turned out from the Pacific to the Baltic coasts in the world's biggest country where Putin restored central control and revived the economy in a 2000-2008 presidency. He remains by far the most popular politician in the country but there are signs Russians may be wearying of a cultivated strong man image.
Some voters expressed disgust with a parliamentary poll they said was likely to be rigged. Others said they backed the United Russia party of Putin, who has continued to exert influence as Prime Minister since yielding the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev under a constitution forbidding more than two consecutive terms.
"I support United Russia. I like Putin. He is the strong leader we need in our country," said Nikolai, a 33-year-old customs officer in Vladivostok, a port city of 600,000 people on the Pacific and the biggest city in Russia's Far East.
Some said they would vote for Just Russia or the Communists, who retain support largely among poorer sections of the population two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of a free market system.
Polls show Putin's party is likely to win a majority but less than the 315 seats it currently has in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, known as the Duma.
"It is time for something to change so I am going to vote for the (nationalist party) LDPR. So far this seems the only party that can resist United Russia," 24-year-old event manager Yekaterina Makarova said in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
If Putin's party gets less than two-thirds of seats, it would be stripped of its so called constitutional majority which allows it to change the constitution and even approve the impeachment of the president.
HACKING ATTACK
Opposition parties say the election is unfair because the authorities support United Russia with cash and television air time. They also predict vote rigging to boost United Russia.
The independent Ekho Moskvy radio station said its website had been shut down by hackers early on Sunday morning.
"It is obvious that the election day attack on the site is part of an attempt to prevent publishing information about violations," the station's editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on the radio's Twitter account.
Independent election watchdog Golos said it was excluded from several polling booths in the Siberian Tomsk region, according to Interfax news agency. Moscow prosecutors launched an investigation last week into Golos' activities after lawmakers objected to its Western financing.
Supporters say the former-KGB spy saved Russia during his presidency from the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet era and supplied the longest and steepest economic expansion in a generation. He also used military force to crush a rebellion in the southern Muslim region of Chechnya that tested the fabric of a federation spanning 9,000 Km (5,600 miles).
Russian customs officers held the director of an independent election watchdog for 12 hours at a Moscow airport on Saturday. The United States said it was concerned by "a pattern of harassment" against the watchdog.
PUTIN'S PARTY
Putin remains by far Russia's most popular politician and the 59-year old leader is the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer.
But his party has had to fight against opponents who have branded it as a collection "swindlers and thieves" and a growing sense of unease among voters at Putin's grip on power.
"I shall not vote. I shall cross out all the parties on the list and write: 'Down with the party of swindlers and thieves,'" said Nikolai Markovtsev, an independent deputy in the Vladivostok city legislature On the Pacific seaboard.
"These are not elections: this is sacrilege," he said, adding that the biggest liberal opposition bloc had been barred from the vote by the authorities.
Opponents say Putin has crafted a brittle political system which excludes independent voices and that Russians are growing tired of Putin's cultivated tough man image.
An outburst of boos and whistling at Putin by fans at a Moscow martial arts fight and a sharp fall in opinion poll ratings during the election campaign had raised concerns Putin may be losing his renowned political touch.
Putin is almost certain to win the March 4 presidential election but signs of disenchantment are extremely worrying for the Kremlin's political managers. Putin's self-portrayal as the anchor of Russian stability hinges on his popularity.
In an attempt to reinvigorate his party, which President Medvedev is leading into the election as part of a job swap announced in September, Putin has sent his closest allies to lead United Russia in some of Russia's 83 regions.
Russians in the Far East region braved temperatures as low as minus 41 degrees Celsius (minus 42 Fahrenheit) to vote eight hours before polls opened in Moscow.
Chukchi reindeer herders living across the Bering Sea from Alaska voted in late November as did some oil workers on rigs pumping the lifeblood of Russia's $1.9 trillion economy, with their ballots taken out by helicopter to be counted.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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