Vladimir Zhirinovsky wins Russian 2008 presidential elections

For those who do not know him, he's a right-wing nationalist in Russia. Among other things, he states that Russia should take Alaska from the US by force, nuke the Atlantic Ocean to flood Britain, deport all non-white people from Russia, foment separatism in former Soviet republics using their Russian minorities, etc. Basically, he's a crazy person. He's also racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semetic, and all that good stuff.

I know that you think his chances were slim, but I found an article from before the election of who Russians would vote for. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/11761
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
18%
Dmitry Medvedev
18%
Sergei Ivanov
17%
Gennady Zyuganov
16%
Sergei Glazyev
7%
Vladimir Ryzhkov
5%
Dmitri Rogozin
5%
Mikhail Kasyanov
4%
Grigory Yavlinsky
4%
Against all candidates
35%

As you can see, he was tied with Medvedev, the current president. What would have happened if Zhirinovsky won instead?
 

Onyx

Banned
No. Gennady Zygunaov, the Communist Party leader came in 2nd place.

And Zhirinovsky had a lot less votes than the two, whats even more funny about him is that he has Jewish Heritage, and denies it.
 
Zhirik

As a long-time student of Russian politics, I can tell you that Zhirinovsky has not been a serious contender for the Kremlin since the early 1990s. He and his party were initially created by the KGB to draw support away from the real democrats in the late Gorby era. He became a phenom when his party won big in the 1993 parliamentary elections - because the communists were not on the ballot and he got the big protest vote. After that, Zhirinovsky and his people became in effect a rent-a-crowd for whoever controlled the Kremlin. In return for money and priveleges, he and his fellow deputies would vote the Kremlin's way. This was true under Yeltsin and Putin, and is still true today. Zh. plays the fool and gets a lot of mileage from his antics, but no one in Russia today takes him as a serious politician. He is a combination clown and political prostitute. People refer to him as "Zhirik", btw, just to show how not seriously they take him. Plus everyone knows his father was Jewish, so...
 
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