Socialist-Revolutionaries The
Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs) emerged as the most voted party in the election, swaying the broad majority of the peasant vote. The agrarian programmes of the SR and Bolshevik parties were largely similar, but the peasantry were more familiar with the SRs. The Bolsheviks lacked an organizational presence in many rural areas. In areas where the Bolshevik electoral campaign had been active (for example, near to towns or garrisons) the peasant vote was somewhat evenly divided between SRs and Bolsheviks. Moreover, whilst the SRs enjoyed widespread support among the peasantry, the party lacked a strong organizational structure in rural areas. The party was highly dependent on peasant union,
zemstvos, cooperatives and
soviets. On the issue of war and peace, the SR leadership had vowed not to enter into a separate peace with the
Central Powers. The SR leadership condemned the peace talks initiated by the Bolsheviks, but to what extent the SRs were prepared to continue the war was unclear at the time. Along with the Mensheviks, the SRs supported the notion of engaging with other European socialist politicians to find a settlement to the ongoing World War. But whilst by the time of the election the Left SRs had constituted a separate party, the split was not completed in local SR party branches until early 1918. This was despite the Left SR's eventual opposition to the closure of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks. Per Serge's account, 40 of 339 elected SR deputies were leftists and 50 belong to Chernov's centrist faction.
Bolsheviks In 1917 the Central Committee of the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) had begun to allow mass membership, without consulting with Lenin. On July 1, 1917 the Central Committee sent out an instruction to local party organizations to build a broad democratic unity ahead of the elections, to reach out to Menshevik-Internationalists, left-wing SRs and trade unions. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) campaigned for bread, peace and a government of Soviets. The election result confirmed the marginalization of the Mensheviks, who obtained a little over a million votes. In a fifth of the constituencies, pro-war Mensheviks and Internationalists ran on competing slates and in Petrograd and Kharkov the
defencists had set up their own local organizations. Nearly half of the Menshevik vote came from Georgia. Kadets campaigned for national unity, law and order, honour commitments to the allies of Russia and 'honorable peace'. The Kadets condemned Bolsheviks in election campaign. Whilst the Kadets emerged as the main losers in the election, they did take a sizable share of the votes in the largest cities. They had also lost a large share of their habitual Jewish intelligentsia vote to Jewish national coalition lists.
Cooperative movement The cooperative societies held an emergency congress on October 4, 1917, at which it was decided that they would contest the Constituent Assembly elections directly.
National minorities Most non-Russian voters opted for national minority parties. In the case of Ukraine, the
Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party dominated the 4 electoral districts of the Ukrainian peasantry. Non-Ukrainian urban populations largely voted for Russian parties. Over half a million soldiers and officers in the army and navy voted for Ukrainian parties supporting the
Central Rada, making the Ukrainians the third force among military voters. However, in Belarus, Belarusian nationalist groups gathered less than 1% of the votes. In Transcaucasus the vote was divided between Georgians (voting for the Mensheviks), Armenians (voting for the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation, also known as ) and Azerbaijanis (voting for
Musavat and other Muslim groups). Tatar and Bashkir lists gathered 55% of the votes in Ufa. In July 1917 the First All-Kazakh Congress was held, establishing the
Alash Party as a national political party. The party called for the 'liberation of the Kazakh people from colonial yoke'. Ahead of the election, party committees were formed in
Semipalatinsk,
Omsk,
Akmolinsk and
Uralsk. In the Semirechie, Syr-Darya and Horde electoral districts Alash did not field lists of their own, but placed candidates of other Muslim lists. Four days ahead of the vote the newspaper
Qazaq published the Alash programme, including a call for a democratic federal republic with equality of nationalities. In 14 electoral districts, 2 or more Jewish lists were in the fray. The Jewish national lists were confronted by the various Jewish socialist parties; the
General Jewish Labour Bund, the
Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party (Poalei Zion) and the
United Jewish Socialist Workers Party (). The Bund carried out 200 electoral meetings in White Russia (with a total attendance of about 127,000), and in Ukraine the party held 2–3 electoral meetings weekly. In Odessa confrontations between socialist and non-socialist Jewish parties led to physical violence. Jewish national lists elected Iu. D. Brutskus, A.M. Goldstein, the Moscow rabbi
Yaakov Mazeh. V. I. Temkin, D. M. Kogan-Bernsthein, N. S. Syrkin and O. O. Gruzenberg (who was then close to Zionist circles).
David Lvovich was elected on SR-Fareynikte list and the Bundist G.I. Lure was elected on a Menshevik-Bund list. The
Buryat National Committee had previously been linked to the SRs, but ahead of the election relation was broken. Buryat SRs were not given prominent places on candidate lists, and the Buryat National Committee ended up contesting on its own.
Others Radical Democrats (rightists) got some 19,000 votes. == Results ==