Surprise of the day, Putin's Party Sweeps to Victory Again.

Sounds like just the type of government Obama would cut a deal with.

MOSCOW (AP) -- The pro-Kremlin party dominated an election for Moscow city council and other local votes across Russia, results released Monday showed.With 99 percent of the Moscow vote counted, United Russia won 66 percent and the Communist Party 13 percent. No other party cleared the 7 percent threshold to win seats on the city council.

United Russia is a power base for Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister and party head, who has not ruled out a return to the presidency in 2012. President Dmitry Medvedev congratulated party leaders on their ''convincing'' victory, which he said showed ''the authority the party has acquired from our people in recent years.''

Opposition candidates claim they were hindered from campaigning for Sunday's elections and some were denied places on the ballot. Underscoring the marginalization of Kremlin opponents, police in riot gear swiftly broke up a protest over the Moscow vote in a central square Monday evening, dragging about 20 demonstrators away.

The liberal Yabloko party fell short of the threshold, with less than 5 percent, and will no longer be represented on the council, where it previously provided the only opposition to Moscow's powerful mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.The Communists claimed there were mass electoral violations during the voting, particularly in Moscow. The party's monitors at polling stations nationwide ''said openly that there had never before been such vandalism and barbarity,'' Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told journalists.

Can we reset these elections.