This Duma re-election would not begin until after Wang Ye officially took office.
Normally, the various factions would have started their publicity campaigns long ago. But because of the first two rounds of the general election, everyone's attention had been drawn to the election, so there had not been much activity on the Duma side.
Besides, the situation in the Duma had basically stabilized. The factions had reached an unspoken understanding; everyone knew whose territory was whose, and no one was fighting to seize territory from anyone else. So this Duma re-election was relatively peaceful.
The only truly competitive factions were Wang Ye's faction, which would undoubtedly become the largest faction in the new Duma.
After all, his faction had already been quite strong. It had "merged" with the former Moscow Faction and absorbed part of the strength of other factions that had defected to it, so it had effectively become the First Faction in the Duma already. This election was merely a matter of seeing how many seats it could win.
By Wang Ye's estimate, they should secure between 250 and 270 seats, more than half of the Duma's total seats!
Then there were Zhirinov's faction, Gryzlov's newly formed faction, the former Silovik Group faction, and of course the newly risen Royalist Faction!
At present, these factions appeared to be roughly equal in strength. None was significantly stronger than the others, and they would probably win about the same number of seats—around fifty each.
That meant the new Duma would once again take on a situation of "one dominant power and many strong contenders."
However, Wang Ye would instruct his faction to support Gryzlov's continued tenure as Speaker, since that was the price of Gryzlov's faction supporting him in the general election.
Besides, Wang Ye could not currently find