Putin, Kim, Assad and their most fantastical election wins

In case you missed it, Russian President Vladimir Putin secured another six years in power for himself over the weekend, “winning” a rigged election with virtually no real opponent.

Shocking, right?

In a feat of generosity, Putin only gave himself 87 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results, the biggest share he has claimed in any of his five presidential election wins since 2000.

In Putin’s (dis)honor, we compiled a list of leaders who claimed smashing success at their own elections.

Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un succeeded his father as “supreme leader” of North Korea in 2011, the third member of his family dynasty to rule the country. Since then, the country has held largely symbolic elections for the parliamentary body — which usually feature 99.99 percent voter turnout and where people vote “yes” or “no” on a single-candidate ballot. Each candidate usually scrapes home with, err, 100 percent of the vote in their constituencies, including Kim Jong Un in 2014 and his sister Kim Yo Jong in 2019.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko won 80 percent of the vote in the country’s presidential election. | Vyacheslav Prokofyev/AFP via Getty Images

Alexander Lukashenko

In August 2020, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko won 80 percent of the vote in Belarus’ presidential election, securing himself another mandate. The result of the election — widely considered fraudulent and which came after he’d jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, the husband of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya who assumed his mantle — triggered a wave of mass, futile protests across the country, with pro-democracy groups and opposition leaders calling for Lukashenko’s ouster. Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has taken several pages out of Putin’s book on leadership, cracking down on opposition and amending laws to grant himself lifelong immunity. 

Joseph Stalin

Before Putin, there was Stalin. The Soviet dictator stayed in power in Moscow for three decades before dying in 1953. Elections during his reign went as one might expect: high turnout and 100 percent of the votes for the unopposed communist autocrat. With his victory over the weekend, Putin moved one step closer to nudging out Stalin as Russia’s longest-serving ruler.

Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad has been the president of Syria since 2000, following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled for 30 years. During his reign, Assad has brought home multiple thumping electoral “victories,” securing nearly 89 percent of the votes in 2014 and over 95 percent in 2021, all in elections widely regarded as fraudulent. Those big wins came during a devastating civil war in which Assad (with Putin’s help, incidentally) crushed multi-sided opposition, killing hundreds of thousands of people in a conflict that has lasted more than a decade.

Ilham Aliyev

Caviar all round! Just last month, Azebaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev received close to 94 percent of the vote in a tainted election in the South Caucasus. Aliyev, whose country will host the U.N.’s COP29 climate summit later this year, secured his fifth term leading a nation that is ranked as one of the least free in the world. Outside observers said the election was marred by a harsh crackdown on opposition activists and journalists.