I’m publishing the results of our latest poll with sadness. As promised, we made the Moscow poll completely identical to the previous nationwide one.
For your convenience, each card shows three results: the nationwide poll in June, the nationwide poll in July, and the Moscow poll.
And I say “with sadness” because Moscow accounts for 15–20% of all the votes that democratically oriented parties can hope to win in the country at all. Their result in Moscow is absolutely critical when it comes to clearing any electoral threshold.
The poll focuses on YABLOKO, PARNAS, and the Party of Growth, as well as their leaders.
Here’s what we get:
Awareness of the upcoming election in Moscow is good.
The first key difference from the rest of the country: Muscovites do not want to go vote. The share saying “I will definitely go” is significantly lower, while the share saying “I definitely won’t go” is higher than in Russia overall.
I doubt this has anything to do with Muscovites being especially lazy; most likely they are simply better informed and more keenly aware that these are not real elections.
The second key difference between Moscow and Russia as a whole: United Russia’s rating here is almost half as high.
Still (see above on why this is “sad”), this adds nothing to the democratically oriented parties. YABLOKO is at 2%, PARNAS at 1%.
The Party of Growth effectively does not exist at all. What there is, instead, is a much larger share of “undecided” voters. Muscovites do not want to vote for United Russia, but they do not know whom to vote for.
One option is to remove the undecided and calculate party ratings only among those who are certain to vote and have made up their minds. I should repeat that this is a very rough exercise, because the votes of the undecided are by no means guaranteed to break down the same way as the votes of people who already know whom they will support. But if we do that, the pre-election picture looks like this:
For now, YABLOKO has a chance of reaching only 5% in Moscow, and PARNAS 2%. That translates into roughly 2% and 1% nationwide.
Next come three cards on the party list leaders. Nothing new here: the only one everyone knows is Grigory Yavlinsky.
Swipe through the slides to see the personal ratings of the leaders of YABLOKO, PARNAS, and the Party of Growth. Overall, Moscow and Russia as a whole show a similar picture. We can see that Muscovites are somewhat better informed about democratic politicians and recognize them more readily — but that awareness adds not only to their approval, but also to their disapproval (the reason is obvious: television is doing its job). This is especially noticeable on Mikhail Kasyanov’s slide.
Here is what I want to say about the poll results — or rather, what I want to say to PARNAS and YABLOKO, the parties I sympathize with:
- The election campaign, my friends. Where is it? There is less than a month left until the election, and I cannot see the SLIGHTEST trace of your campaigns. I do see some single-member district candidates (and, as single-member district candidates tend to do, they are hiding their party affiliation in every possible way), but your party campaigns — no.
This way, nothing will work. You probably think: people in Moscow do not like United Russia, so voters will automatically bring us their votes. Forget it. That is not how it works, and you yourselves have seen this many times before — in 2003, 2007, and 2011. You have to have some kind of presence in the political arena. We are all waiting for that from you.
26 days until the vote. It is already very difficult, but it is still possible to try and make a push. Bring in party activists and volunteers. Go out into the streets. Make important statements. In other words, do the work a party is supposed to do a month before an election.
More broadly, I should note that the whole situation is very strange. Deputies are being elected for the next five years, and yet there are almost no signs of an election in the streets. I understand what is going on with the Communist Party and A Just Russia, but what about the democrats?
Still, it is all written about here. The only force that can, wants to, knows how to, and is not afraid to fight for votes is the Party of Progress — which is why it was dissolved.
Elections will become real elections when we secure access for genuine participants.
P.S. The Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) thanks all the volunteers helping us with our polling. Thanks to you, we have survey data we can trust.