It may seem rather strange to say that we identified the starting point of the #Twenty campaign more than a month after it began, but that is indeed the case.
We are not doing all this just to “do something,” nor simply because the campaign ends with collecting 100,000 signatures.
What we really need is to ensure that millions of people actively support us and put forward a political demand: we want the criminalization of illicit enrichment and the ratification of Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption.
Various trustworthy studies show that for everyone to want something, it first has to be wanted very, very, very strongly by 10% of the active population. (The original study in English). During the preparation stage, we even referred to this campaign among ourselves as “the search for the 10%.”
That 10% must clearly understand the demand, be able to articulate it, and not forget about it. Then, in the course of everyday life, they will be able to persuade everyone else as well—especially since, as we remember, there is not much persuading to do: the first poll showed 87% support for the initiative.
However, there is one important thing here: people cannot support something they know nothing about. So from the very beginning, we decided that after a month we would conduct a public opinion survey and find out how many Russian citizens were even aware that this Article 20 existed and that this approach to fighting corruption existed.
That number would become the campaign’s starting point. We would be able to assess the effectiveness of our actions by measuring how much our message was filtering into public consciousness.
Here are the results of the latest nationwide poll by ACF’s sociological center (the Anti-Corruption Foundation). Our starting point is at “zero.”
Why zero rather than four or eleven? Because the hard science of sociology tells us that in “do you know about this?”-type surveys, about 5–7% of respondents falsely claim that they do. They simply feel awkward and ashamed to admit they do not know.
In other words, if you ask, “Did you know that actor Mikhail Porechenkov will play the lead role in the film adaptation of the book "Fifty Shades of Grey"?” you will get at least 4–5% of people saying they know about it.
We trust the science of sociology, we are not going to pad the numbers, and we say honestly: the starting point is zero. So far, ordinary Russians know nothing about Article 20.
The picture is the same when we ask about our campaign: 5% false claims.
After respondents understood what this article was about, we asked whether they liked it and—hooray!—once again recorded a huge level of support: 86%:
The same 86% want State Duma deputies (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) to vote for it:
Nobody likes officials caught engaging in illicit enrichment, like our recent Drozdov case:
In response to an open-ended question (that is, no answer choices are offered; the person says whatever they want), citizens describe the enemies of our campaign quite clearly:
Clearly, 88% of citizens would not agree with someone like Golikova pretending not to notice anything and simply remaining in her position:
Almost no one has heard of officials being punished for illicit enrichment. People recall only Luzhkov and Serdyukov:
This is interesting. As many as 53% of citizens themselves know some facts about officials’ illicit enrichment:
And finally, a question about which specific corruption scandals people remember. One in three recalls Oboronservis and Serdyukov. That says a lot about the fight against corruption in Russia: people remember only the case in which the main defendant was not merely amnestied, but even got a government job again.
These are the results we got. I like them very much—yes, there is a huge amount of work ahead, but once again we have seen that this work is in the interests of all citizens, and the level of support for our ideas is no less than the notorious “Putin’s 84%.”
It is just that Putin has the zomboyashchik (a slang term for propaganda TV) and media outlets on which tens of billions are spent, hammering away every second, while we will have to work in guerrilla mode—hand to hand, person to person, stickers, leaflets, links, tweets, posts, status updates. That actually makes it more interesting.
A reminder that you can sign up as a campaign volunteer here, and the most important support you can provide at this stage of the campaign is by voting for our bill and/or persuading a couple of your friends or relatives to vote as well.
Our voting momentum has dropped a little—the most active people have already voted, while the rest are taking a long time to get moving. Do not put it off; let’s get this done faster.
And, as usual at the end of posts like this, many thanks to everyone who helped us conduct the survey: Mikhail, Darya, Galina, Sergei, Elena, Anya, Elena, Olga, Masha, Pavel, Liza, Misha, Liza, Kristina, Nadya, Anna, Irina, Margarita, Alla, Angelina, Lidiya, Polina, Marina, Elena, Oksana, Timur, Lev, Elena, Alexei, Sasha, Olga, Sergei, Anna.
Sign up as a volunteer for our social research service! Thanks to it, we get real information about public opinion in Russia instead of listening to the fake stuff put out by FOM/VTsIOM (state-linked polling organizations).