Prague, June 17 (RFE/RL) - Although President Boris Yeltsin has come out slightly ahead of Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov in the overall Russian vote total, analysts say his support is far more narrowly based than Zyuganov's.
Zyuganov led Yeltsin in the vast majority of Russia's regions - from the southern agricultural belt right across to Siberia. Even in the independently-minded republic of Tatarstan, Zyuganov beat Yeltsin by 47 to 30 percent.
Yeltsin's support was based in Moscow, St. Petersburg and a handful of other large, industrial and intellectual centers. Yeltsin trounced Zyuganov in Moscow, picking up over 60 percent of the vote to Zyuganov's 15 percent. Yeltsin received half the vote in St. Petersburg, and led decisively in his home region of Sverdlovsk and the industrial Ural region of Chelyabinsk.
Analysts say that the high population densities of these pro-Yeltsin "pockets" ended up balancing out Zyuganov's votes in this first round.
