First-time Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin is running second with 15 percent, while veteran nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who first ran against Boris Yeltsin in 1991, rounds out the top three with about seven percent.

None of the other five candidates is on track to receive more than two percent of the vote.

The early results are in line with exit-polls conducted by Russian polling agencies FOM, which predicted Putin would take 77% of the vote, and VCIOM, which forecast a final share of 73.9% for the current president.

Ella Pamfilova, head of the Russian Central Election Commission, has said that there were no major violations during the vote, and that only “minor and local complaints” were received. She also phased Russian system of voting, and calculating the votes “without analogy” in the world.

Meanwhile social media discusses ballots stuffing, carousels, and desert polling stations