Size of Putin’s win is election’s only unknown

MOSCOW — Russian voters are gearing up for a presidential election Sunday that Vladimir Putin is guaranteed to win. They are facing unusually intense pressure to vote, to grant him a convincing new mandate to pursue his nationalist strategy.

Candidates were barred from campaigning Saturday, but the message to voters was clear from billboards celebrating Russian greatness — a big theme of Putin’s leadership — and Kremlin-friendly media coverage.

Putin urged Russians on Friday to “use their right to choose the future for the great Russia that we all love.” He warned that failure to cast a ballot would mean that “this decisive choice will be made without your opinion taken into account.”

While Putin has seven challengers on the ballot, none is a real threat. The last time he faced voters in 2012, he confronted a serious opposition movement. But since then he has boosted his popularity thanks to Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria.

More than 1,500 international observers are joining thousands of Russian observers to watch the vote. The government wants to ensure elections are clean after ballot stuffing and fraud marred the last presidential election.

This time the outcome is so certain that authorities are investing in get-out-the-vote efforts to ensure a decent turnout across the world’s biggest country. A strong showing would further embolden Putin domestically and internationally.

A Russian election monitoring group said Saturday it registered an “alarming” rise in recent days in complaints that employers are forcing or pressuring workers to vote.

Grigory Melkonyants, cochair of the independent Golos center, said Saturday that the group also recorded smaller complaints, such as gimmicks like discounted potatoes for people who vote.

Turnout-boosting efforts have been the most visible feature of the campaign — and all come from taxpayers’ pockets. In Moscow alone, authorities are spending $870,000 on balloons and festive decorations at polling stations.

Yevgeny Roizman, mayor of Russia’s fourth-largest city Yekaterinburg and a rare government critic, said in a recent video blog that local officials and state employees have all received orders “from higher up” to make sure the turnout is over 60 percent.

“They are using everything: schools, kindergartens, hospitals — the battle for the turnout is unprecedented,” Roizman said.

Putin has traveled across Russia, pledging to raise wages, pour more funds into crumbling health care and education and modernize dilapidated infrastructure.