Professional Affiliation

Independent Election Analyst; Journalist

Expert Bio

Sergey Shpilkin is Russia’s leading independent election analyst, collecting, publishing and analyzing precinct-level election and other data on federal elections in Russia. He has developed a unique method to estimate ballot stuffing based on vote-turnout histograms, which allowed to provide first nationwide numerical estimates of electoral fraud. For his work he has received the prestigious PolitProsvet prize from the Liberal Mission Foundation and an “Advocate of Free Elections” medal from the Golos Association.

Major Publications

Academic publications:

• Dmitry Kobak, Sergey Shpilkin, and Maxim S. Pshenichnikov. 2012. “Statistical anomalies in 2011–2012 Russian elections revealed by 2D correlation analysis.” Physics and Society [physics.soc-ph], last revised May 17, 2012.
• Dmitry Kobak, Sergey Shpilkin, and Maxim S. Pshenichnikov. 2016. Integer percentages as electoral falsification fingerprints. Annals of Applied Statistics 10 (1), 54-73, doi: 10.1214/16-AOAS904.
• Dmitry Kobak, Sergey Shpilkin, and Maxim S. Pshenichnikov. 2016. “Statistical fingerprints of electoral fraud?” Significance 13 (4), doi: 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2016.00936.x.

Publications in the general press (in Russian):

• Sergey Shpilkin, “Statistical analysis of 2007–2009 Russian elections results.” Troitskij Variant, October 27, 2009.
• “Physicist, political scientist, and political geographer discuss electoral falsifications.” Esquire Russia, December 1, 2011.
• Sergey Shpilkin, “Elections under statistical scrutiny.” Gazeta.ru, December 10, 2011.