Russia's election chief put a number on the record: United Russia is on track for 355 of the Duma's 450 seats. Polymarket's own seat-count market, still live hours after the headline ran, prices that exact outcome under 10c. Numbers below are from Gamma and the CLOB, fetched 2026-09-21 13:04 UTC.
01The headlineA record majority, a record turnout - and a number the counting hasn't finished
Russia's three-day State Duma vote, held September 18-20, 2026, was the country's first parliamentary election since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began - and the first to include ballots from seven new single-mandate constituencies carved out of occupied Ukrainian territory, a detail this blog covered September 19. On Monday, September 21, Central Election Commission chair Ella Pamfilova told reporters that with 95% of ballots counted, United Russia had taken 57.83% of the party-list vote and was leading in 208 of the 225 single-mandate constituencies - enough, she said, to put the party on track for around 355 of the Duma's 450 seats, beating its previous record of 343 set in 2016. Turnout hit 59.32%, itself a record for this kind of election and well above 2021's 51.72%.
Two numbers from that briefing map cleanly onto Polymarket contracts. The "Russia Parliamentary Election: Turnout" market's 59-62% bracket, which was still a live question through the three days of voting, now prices at 95.9c - almost exactly matching the reported 59.32% figure. And the "Which party will gain most seats in Russian Parliamentary Election?" market, the one this blog covered two days ago at a $4.85M-a-day pace, closed out entirely: United Russia resolved Yes at 12:43 UTC today, with KPRF, LDPR, New People, and the rest resolving No within the same two hours. The underdog bet from that earlier post - New People priced at 21.3c to out-gain United Russia on the strength of its small seat base - did not come in. United Russia just won outright, the same way the 76.5c favorite implied it would.
02What still disagreesA separate market prices United Russia's exact seat total - and it isn't buying 355
The party-gain question is settled, but a different Polymarket event asks a narrower one: how many seats will United Russia actually hold, sorted into brackets from under 280 up to 355 or more. That market didn't close when the "355 seats" headline hit the wires. Instead it reacted the way a thin, skeptical order book reacts to a number it isn't sure will survive to the official count.
The 355+ contract spiked as high as 90.45c around 08:20 UTC this morning, right as the "355 seats" framing spread through wire coverage - briefly, the market looked ready to agree with the headline outright. It didn't hold. By 10:50 UTC the 340-354 bracket had retaken the lead, and the gap kept widening through the morning. As of 13:04 UTC, 340-354 prices 91.3c (1.3c-wide book, 42 shares bid at 90.6c against 77 offered at 91.9c) while 355+ prices 8.75c (a 0.9c-wide book with only about 5 shares resting on either side) - a market that thinks the final certified count lands just short of the number in this morning's headlines, not at or above it.
03Why the market is holding out"Leading in" 208 districts with 95% counted isn't the same as a certified 355
Pamfilova's own framing explains the gap. "Leading in 208 of 225" constituencies with 95% of ballots counted is a snapshot of an incomplete count, not a final tally - and Russia's own election timeline doesn't point to certified results until later in the week, well after this morning's preliminary briefing. A handful of close single-mandate races flipping the other way as the last ballots and any recounts are processed would be enough to knock United Russia from 355 into the 340s, which is exactly the band the market's book is defending.
The Duma's 450 seats split evenly: 225 by party list, 225 by individual single-mandate race. Pamfilova's 355 figure needs essentially every one of those 208 "leading" districts to hold up through the rest of the count - and with 5% of ballots still uncounted and no certified number expected until later in the week, the market is pricing real odds that a handful of the closer districts move once the last ballots and any recounts are in, enough to drop the total from 355 into the 340s the book currently favors.
UNITED RUSSIA SEATS YES BOOK
<280 0.15c resolution proposed
280-294 0.05c resolution proposed
295-309 0.05c resolution proposed
310-324 0.05c -
325-339 0.30c -
340-354 91.30c 90.6c / 91.9c
355+ 8.75c 8.1c / 9.0c
The lowest four brackets already carry a "proposed" UMA resolution status - the oracle process for marking them No has started, since 355 projected seats obviously clears 324 - even though the market as a whole stays open until a final number is certified. The event has traded $856,889 over the past 24 hours and $1.65 million over the past week against $466,267 in liquidity, real size for a market whose headline question - did United Russia win control - was answered two days before polls even closed. What's left trading is the much narrower, much thinner argument over the last fifteen seats.
04What else the count confirmedThe rest of the field lined up with pre-election polling
The lower rungs of Sunday's coverage held up too. Polymarket's "Russia Parliamentary Election: 2nd Place" market prices KPRF at 99.95c and its "3rd Place" market prices LDPR at 96.1c - both matching the PolitPro aggregate (KPRF 15.8%, LDPR 12.8%) cited in the September 19 post, and both still short of certified since the same 95%-counted caveat applies to every party's total, not just United Russia's. New People, the small-base long shot this blog flagged as priced well above its fourth-place polling on the seat-gain question, resolved No there - a reminder that a low seat base can make a party's proportional gain look dramatic without making it the biggest gain in the room.
The throughline across both posts is the same: Polymarket's markets don't wait for certification to move, and they don't all move at the same speed. The party-winner question was effectively over a week before votes were counted. The turnout bracket snapped to match the official number within hours. The exact seat count is still being fought over a full news cycle after the number appeared in headlines everywhere else - polymarket-tui puts each contract's own resolution wording next to its book for exactly this reason, so it's obvious at a glance which of a dozen related markets on the same event has actually been settled and which is still a live argument.
$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui
No account is needed to browse markets, books, and charts. The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options.