Public opinion poll highlights Russians’ expectations from upcoming elections

The autumn’s political activities will eventually culminate in the elections of new legislators to the State Duma on Dec. 4, 2011 and the next Russian President on March 4, 2012. In other words, the electoral campaigns starting in September will lead to a complete overhaul of the composition of the federal government organs by mid-May 2012, when the next Russian president-elect will be officially sworn into office. 

This helps explain, why the commencement of the electoral campaigns, at first to the State Duma, and later for the Russian presidency, and the associated hype in the media have given rise to lots questions about the future of the country, its path of development, etc. Under such circumstances it would be an unrewarding task to analyze and make conclusions on these and other related issues without having the facts and figures about the real situation prevailing in the society today. 

It is, indeed, such considerations that prompted the experts at the Center for Strategic Estimates and Forecasts (CSEF) and the Sociological Studies Center affiliated with the National and International Security Foundation (SCC-NISF) have decided to conduct an extensive public opinion survey and subsequently assess the results obtained so as to find scientifically justified answers to the questions raised above about the country’s and development strategies in the upcoming electoral campaigns. 

“The analysis of the recently conducted public opinions poll results has shown political apathy as the general mood prevailing among the Russian electorate ahead of the upcoming elections.”

Here are the results of the sociological studies carried out jointly by the CSEF and SCC-NISF public opinion researchers. According to these experts, the impetus for this research and the detailed analysis of its results stemmed from the ambivalent political situation in the country ahead of the elections of the State Duma legislators and the Russian President. The questions and answers from the respondents in the opinion poll on the electorate’s expectations from the State Duma and presidential elections are shown in this below in this publication.

Study data sources and Russians' political apathy  

The public opinion survey designed to explore the nation’s expectations from the upcoming elections to the State Duma and Russian presidency was conducted from May 1 to  June 7, 2011 in 16 Russian cities by SCC-NISF. In all, a total of 1,522 respondents, aged 18 and above, took part in the nationwide poll. The respondents were specially selected for this opinion poll via a random sampling technique. During the poll, the respondents were asked the questions indicated in this publication.  

Thus, the analysis of the results of the opinion poll has shown political apathy as the general mood prevailing among Russians at the beginning of summer of 2011. Mass media’s recent active information policy, aimed at intensive coverage of different aspects of the upcoming political tussle, has instead of whipping up interest in the electoral process, has, in fact, resulted in the contrary. This is because the electorate, having grown tired of such ‘information glut,’ started to immerse itself further and further into a world of its own, thus further ‘atomizing,’ or fragmentizing, an already loosely bound society.

Specifically, this is evident in the fact that a substantial percentage of the respondents (41%) do not plan to participate in the upcoming elections at all. According to the CSEF estimates, this negative trend, which has been gathering momentum over the previous electoral cycles, will drop further by about 40% at the coming elections. “This highlights a yawning gap between the political elite and the electorate that is widening further and further. The regime is increasingly estranging itself from the electorate, preferring instead to focusing its attention on dealing with the infighting among the different elite groups elite,” the experts noted. 

Similarly, the electorate is also ‘drifting away’ from those in power and ignoring all appeals for any active involvement in the nation’s political life. Practice over the recent years has shown that elections are incapable of exerting any serious influence on the society’s political life, and consequently, citizens prefer to solve their own problems themselves instead of participating in public issues resolutions via electoral processes. In this regard, the answer to the question about the possibility of changing the situation in the country for the better via elections is of particular importance, as almost half of the respondents (48.2%) said they did not see election as an effective mechanism for changing the situation in the country for the better, while 45.5% said they were undecided on the issue.

Politicians and electorate live in different worlds

The respondents’ answers to the poll questions, which characterize the situation in the society as a whole, are of special interest, as they indicated a gorge between the politicians and the electorate. Specifically, the analysis of the respondents’ answers shows that citizens are mostly concerned about issues that are under the competence of the authority such as rising prices, standards of living; pensions and medical insurance, where the government has yet to achieve desired objectives  (see Question and variants of answers No. 2). The voters are convinced that they will be deceived again, as has been repeatedly done in the past. 

The citizens are often incapable of properly understanding what is happening in the spheres of social security and welfare policy that are of utmost importance to them, such as what will happen to people’s pensions, the latest scandals with the pension funds, etc. These negative have only deepened the uncertainty and further undermined people’s trust in the authorities. The same is also true about healthcare, since scandals and internal squabbles within the Health and Social Development Ministry have only helped to further reduce the citizens’ trust in the government. 

All these negative factors have significantly reduced the general level of trust in those in power, thus discouraging the citizens from participating in elections. The question about children’s future is also of particular concern. All the political measures aimed at increasing birth rate in the country, which have been pursued in recent years, are beginning to encounter the problems that had been set aside. These include a stark shortage of nursery schools, effective pediatric medical care, etc. The fact that these problems would arise in the nearest future was evident immediately after launching the official initiatives aimed at stimulating birth rate, but no appropriate steps were taken at the time. 

The poll respondents’ overall negative assessment of the outgoing State Duma’s the activities is another confirmation of the general poor performance of the nation’s current political regime. Thus, about 36% of the respondents have negatively assessed the legislators’ activities, while 27% showed a total indifference to their work. In other words, over 60% of the respondents do not see any ‘usefulness’ in the activities of the legislative branch of power in their country. The reaction of the public to the current events have also been affected by the Fukushima disaster and the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe, evident in ecological threats coming third, after health and government issues, in terms of the most important events on the citizens’ minds. 

Another interesting trend noted by the respondents was the problem of illegal immigration. If several years ago, this problem was very acute, today the situation has slightly changed. Most likely, this change stems not so much from the loss of relevance of this topic, but rather by the growth in significance of other more pressing matters that cause much deeper concern among the citizens. For example, about 28% have noted a dramatic growth in information pressure that has nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism. 

The intrigue over the Russian presidential election 

The main intrigue of this survey was in the question relating to the upcoming presidential election, and specifically, which public figure would have become the president, if the election was held at the time of the survey. The most popular answer was quite predictable, as 21% of the poll respondents named Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as their clear favorite. But the next two positions were full of surprises, as Alexander Lukashenko, the president of the neighboring Belarus, came in second with 11% in terms of popularity, pushing the incumbent Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, to the third spot.

Another significant observation is that  the powerful information flow, which has turned into “information noise,” has not only failed to ensure the consolidation of the voters’ positions, but has actually even further estranged them from the issue of reshaping the political power structure in their country. Therefore, the respondents’ replies to the question, ‘what group or political is capable of positively changing the situation in the country for the better’ is of a special interest, as only a quarter of  the  respondents believe this can be done United Russia. The Russian Communist Party came second; however, over half of the respondents said there was no such party in Russia or were undecided on the issue.

The Prokhorov phenomenon

Another point of special interest in the survey was the phenomenal breakthrough made by the new Right Cause Party leader, Mikhail Prokhorov, who came fifth on the presidential candidates rating, giving way only to the seasoned politicians named above, and also Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. This means that Prokhorov, who only recently officially entered public politics, has a huge potential, which he could well use in the future. 

However, some respondents wanted to see other public figures, such as famous film director and Oscar laureate Nikita Mikhalkov, scandalously famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, etc. as the next Russian president. The upcoming elections will show whose choices were right and whose forecasts were wrong. 

This publication was based on the CSEF and SCC-NISF’s data.