I’m noting down a few important points for myself, for the future, about decision-making on political tactics. Maybe you’ll find them interesting too.
Once again, I was reminded how important it is to rely on proper polling data (that is, the surveys conducted by the ACF) and not make up nonsense by reading publicly available polls from other polling agencies, even when various people running around calling themselves “political scientists” are writing utter drivel. One of them writes: “the rather limited set of sociological data available to us indicates with high probability that the distribution of supporters and opponents of the amendments is competitive, i.e. at the very least close to 50-50.”
This isn’t even wishful thinking — it’s just lying, Ella Pamfilova-style (head of Russia’s Central Election Commission). Numbers like that were nowhere to be found. To begin with, a very large share of people — and many still do — did not connect the amendments with the “resetting” of presidential term limits. Our second-to-last poll, which we published in April, showed that 67% of those who had made up their minds about the amendments considered them necessary or somewhat necessary (and 33% unnecessary or somewhat unnecessary). The latest one, from June (we didn’t publish it), gave a ratio of 64% to 36% among decided respondents.
Obviously, even a starting figure of 65 “for” to 35 “against” means that by the end of the campaign Putin will crash and burn. But inventing a supposedly real 50/50 split means building the entire campaign and supporters’ motivation on a lie. And that is exactly what happened. Hence all the nonsense about a “vote that will overturn everything.” And about “just a little more.” And “this is Chile now.”
This always ends the same way: massive disappointment and demoralization among supporters who were promised they were about to “turn everything upside down.” Exactly what Putin needs, since his power rests on the myth that his supporters are in overwhelming control.
Facebook political pundits exert serious pressure, and it’s not easy to resist. In the last days before the vote, Volkov and I were remembering the 2016 State Duma elections. Back then too, all the pundits and activists told each other that everyone needed to go vote for the YABLOKO party. Because — just scroll through your feed — everyone is for YABLOKO. And Lev Shlosberg is such a great guy, obviously he’ll get 80% in Pskov, he’s the most popular person there. Inevitably, YABLOKO will get 7%, maybe even 10%.
We sat there looking at our polling data and wondering: what on earth is going on? It was obvious there was no force in the universe that could push YABLOKO past 3%. But the pressure from the Facebook feed and the “political scientists” was enormous. We genuinely started to doubt ourselves: surely all these smart, pleasant people couldn’t be that wrong.
YABLOKO ended up with 1.99%. And Shlosberg, by the way, came in fifth in his own region.
There was no such pressure during the 2018 presidential election: the venality and shamelessness of the “Sobchak group” were obvious to everyone. As for claims that Grigory Alexeyevich (Yavlinsky) might make it to a second round — and there were such claims — people simply laughed.
But yesterday and the day before, the “political scientists” were once again spreading panic. Had we really been so wrong in our polling and in our assessment of the scale of possible fraud? We hadn’t, though there’s not much joy in that. It’s important to trust the numbers that were obtained without cheating.
We should listen to real political scientists — not columnists, but academics. As Golosov wrote, unfortunately, that is exactly how it turned out:
My own personal mistake, among others, was allowing myself to be drawn into a stupid, pointless, fabricated debate around the imposed and false question: “go or boycott?” That was never the real issue. Our strategy was non-recognition, which included both voting “against” and ignoring the process. But the broader public did not see it that way.
Our polling showed that the issue was not mobilizing the “against” vote, but reducing the “for” vote. We needed to peel away 10% of the wavering “for” voters. That is what our штабs (campaign offices) were trying to do, and I kept saying so constantly.
Obviously, I was using the wrong words and not explaining it clearly enough. Most activists ended up spending their energy preaching to themselves.
An important lesson.
A combined principle of Occam’s razor and the duck test. If it looks like Occam’s razor, works like Occam’s razor, and quacks like Occam’s razor, then that’s what it is. No need to multiply entities or listen to every liar and idiot.
Did Putin and Pamfilova scrap electoral law for this “vote”? They did. Why did they do it? To enable fraud on such a massive scale that it could not be carried out under the old system.
That is exactly what happened. Twenty-seven million votes were stuffed into the count. Golos (Russia’s independent election-monitoring movement) released a statement today that almost word for word repeated what I had been saying for five months: this was not a vote, but a PR stunt. The voting days never mattered from the outset.
I’m very glad we stuck to that principle and immediately stopped listening to all the nonsense about “they won’t be able to do it on such a massive scale,” “there’s a limit,” “they wouldn’t dare in Moscow.” All of that is true when it comes to elections. But this was something else.
Exactly the same goes for the idea that “the authorities are trying to suppress protest turnout.” Just look with your own eyes at Facebook and VK, packed with ads. They bought up half of Instagram to lure young people to the polls. That means they simply needed turnout. They were going to fabricate the result anyway, and there’s nothing to discuss there.
Under no circumstances should we underestimate how little even good people around us understand about how elections work. That’s why things have to be explained constantly and in detail. This was fully on display yesterday in the “exit poll case.” I won’t even discuss YABLOKO’s exit polls — they were fake — but some of the polling was conducted by Yudin, and I have no doubt that those results were reliable.
And then, starting around midday, posts began appearing: the exit polls show that we’re winning! 55% “against.” Run!
You read this stuff and can only marvel. It says right there in big letters: early voting was 60% in St. Petersburg and 45% in Moscow. That means the exit polls were showing things correctly — but only for 10% of those who took part. The rest was already sitting in the boxes (and falsified).
And all these genuinely smart, decent people are writing: hurry, let’s go. And they run precisely because they are decent people. It’s just that they have their own work, their own areas of expertise. They simply do not understand how any of this actually works.
A major mistake was stopping the constant explanatory work. As if everyone already knew. They don’t. And in every zone of ignorance, swindlers are always waiting.
Now for the part with some harsh words. I hesitated over whether to write this, but it has to be said. The main failure and mistake — an example that must not be repeated — was the so-called “NO movement”.
From the start, “NO” was not something I supported. It was a pointless attempt to follow the script of the good film *No*, about the referendum in Chile. But that referendum had nothing in common with our “vote.” Still, like anyone else, I had no desire to see the “NO movement” collapse so spectacularly. The idea was that they would — following the script of the film they copied everything from — launch some kind of mass public campaign. Persuade broad sections of the public to vote against Putin-Pinochet.
What did they do instead? They took me back to my 2006. A few decent people and a few crooked political consultants created an organizing committee. And held meetings. And called it the “NO movement.”
They did nothing else. Literally nothing. Their organizing committee met. Videos? NO. Campaigning? NO. Trips to the regions? NO. Did they try to recruit lots of observers? NO.
Maybe that’s why they called it that — because it was their answer to the question: are you going to do anything?
Why am I speaking about them so harshly, when there are very capable people there, like Andrei Pivovarov? Because this is an instructive example of how not to do things.
Yesterday they supposedly “brought people into the streets.” I checked on purpose. The chief rebels — Azar, Galyamina, and Pivovarov — each wrote exactly 1 (one) tweet about it.
There is, however, one thing they did manage to do. At the end of the campaign. Apparently as a grand finale. They wrote an open letter to me, Dud, and Yavlinsky.
This is not how it can be done. All the political events of recent years — the 2012 protests, the 2013 mayoral campaign, the nationwide “He Is Not Dimon to You” rallies, the 2018 campaign and protests — all of it was the result of enormous work by hundreds and thousands of people. Person-hours, money, days spent in jail cells, thousands of texts, and hundreds of videos.
The worst thing that could happen would be a return to the main opposition format of 2003-2008: a gathering of idlers and loafers sitting in an organizing committee. We need to condemn that practice with all our strength and never repeat it.
The main problem, still unresolved, is the simplicity of the message. Our simple and successful 2011 campaign — “Vote for any party except United Russia” — taught the Kremlin a lesson. And now simple formulas no longer work: just vote, or just don’t vote.
The formula I proposed — we take part in elections, we do not take part in non-elections — obviously does not work. It immediately turns into an argument over whether something is an election or not.
Smart Voting is a tactic that works brilliantly, but it is also fairly complicated. It has limited applicability in gubernatorial elections. It is completely inapplicable in presidential elections. It’s not just “go vote” — it’s go to the website, enter your address, write down the name, and then vote for that person.
That’s too complicated for many people. And it’s going to get even more complicated. Seven-day voting could be introduced as early as this September. They will almost certainly try to bring it in for the State Duma elections.
The Kremlin is terrified of Smart Voting after the Moscow City Duma elections, so we are going to see tricks, schemes, and manipulations. The full arsenal. All the people who went from “let’s go vote for Sobchak” to “we’re against Smart Voting” to “let’s go vote on the term-limit reset” will do another somersault and spend all day writing that Smart Voting 2020 is terrible. Look, there are Communists on the list.
Developing a call to action that is simple and understandable to everyone is an important problem we need to solve. Strategically, though, everything is clear: Putin and his regime spend millions of person-hours shoring up their power. We will bring them down only if we spend tens of millions of person-hours. Campaigning, monitoring, voting, legal work, rallies, campaigning, more campaigning, rallies-rallies-rallies. There is enough work for everyone.