Alec Luhn of The Telegraph notes that Putin may have padded his total vote tally in Sunday’s election by as much as 10 million votes. The pink area in the graph shows the extra votes in the high turnout areas.

Putin’s autocracy is fairly under-institutionalized, but insights from Magaloni’s canonical study of Mexico’s PRI can explain Putin’s desire to win big. For more on why dictators hold elections in the first place see here (Blaydes, 2011), here (Gandhi, 2008), and here (Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009).