We are publishing the results of our latest nationwide pre-election opinion poll. In it, we paid special attention to the “democratic forces” — both the real ones and those merely pretending to be.
As you may recall, we conducted one poll before the pre-election party congresses, and this one came afterward, when all the names were already known and it became possible to assess how well they might attract voters.
This lets us see whether the names on the party lists have affected the pre-election landscape.
The Party of Growth is trying to draw voters in with Titov, Khakamada, and Potapenko.
Yabloko is relying on Yavlinsky, Shlosberg, Slabunova, Shirshina, Gudkov, and Ryzhkov.
PARNAS is relying on Kasyanov, Maltsev, Zubov, and Pivovarov.
We first asked respondents open-ended questions: whom do you know on the party list? (They could name as many people as they wanted.) Then we asked about specific individuals.
Let’s take a look at the results.
The election still isn’t exactly highly visible:
Of course, the most active phase of the campaign is still ahead, but according to the current data, the same four parties will be represented in the State Duma: United Russia, the Communist Party, A Just Russia, and the LDPR. The latest Levada Center poll showed strong growth for the LDPR, but we are not seeing that so far.
At the moment, neither Yabloko, nor PARNAS, nor the Party of Growth has any chance of even dreaming of clearing the threshold for the State Duma. Clearly, what is needed here are vivid, energetic election campaigns — but so far there is not even a hint of that.
The share among respondents who have made up their minds looks like this, but there is no need to pay much attention to United Russia’s alarming 68%. In real elections, undecided voters are more likely either to vote against the authorities or simply not show up.
Now for the open-ended questions about individual politicians. The only person voters clearly remember and identify as a “Yabloko politician” is Grigory Yavlinsky.
The Party of Growth is interesting: despite its generally very low name recognition, Khakamada is mentioned more often than Titov, the party leader. In fact, the biggest surprise of this poll is connected with Khakamada — more on that below.
As for PARNAS, people do not really know anyone there at all. No one particularly associates PARNAS with Kasyanov. More broadly, the party itself is unknown to almost everyone and, unfortunately, is not really running an election campaign yet.
Now to specific politicians. We named a surname and asked for respondents’ views. Scroll through the gallery.
The most recognizable politician among all the leaders of parties with a democratic orientation turned out to be Irina Khakamada (disclaimer: personally, I do not consider the Party of Growth democratic; it is an ordinary Kremlin spoiler, an artificial construct filled with venal, unprincipled people).
Only 17% of respondents do not know who she is, and a 28% favorable rating looks downright sensational. I do not know what explains it. Probably some combination of television exposure, an exotic appearance, and her surname. Khakamada’s latest interview in Novaya Gazeta (an independent Russian newspaper) is monstrous — impossible to read without shuddering — but ordinary people do not read Novaya; they watch television, and Khakamada gets airtime there.
The Party of Growth clearly should have put her at the top of the list — or Dmitriyeva, who is also better known — rather than Titov, whom virtually no one knows.
Also enjoying at least some name recognition are Yavlinsky and Kasyanov, and to a lesser extent Vladimir Ryzhkov.
The politicians with favorable ratings above the margin of error are: Ryzhkov (12%), Yavlinsky (14%), Kasyanov (10%), and Dmitriyeva (8%).
The rest are simply not known at all. Not at all. “I don’t know who that is” ranges from 73% for Gudkov to 93% for Shlosberg.
I will repeat once again: no one can save these drowning people except themselves. This is not a matter of “Why won’t you support YABLOKO/PARNAS?!!” You can support them all you like, but if they and their candidates are not running an extremely active election campaign themselves, it is about as useful as a poultice for the dead.
We have now launched a similar poll, but this time only in Moscow, to see how much the situation differs in a city that exists in a somewhat different information environment.
And as usual, I want to end by thanking those without whom none of us would have sociological data we can trust.
Thanks to our volunteers: Anya, Lyosha, Lyalya, Vanya, Petya, Alexei, Sofia, Maria, Masha, Georgy, Anastasia, Valeria, Andrei, Ivan, Dmitry, Vladimir, Maxim, Andrei, Tatyana, Gleb, Yuri, Galina, and Igor helped us.
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