Hello everyone, this is Leonid Volkov. Despite all the twists and turns involving the “extremism” label and the blocking of our resources, we are continuing to prepare for the autumn elections to the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament). And preparing for an election is impossible without polling data—without honest, high-quality sociological research commissioned and verified by us.
We do not usually publish the data from these studies; as I explained in a recent video, that is because poll numbers by themselves can often create a misleading impression. However, in a recent study we came across a very interesting phenomenon, and decided to share it.
You have no doubt noticed how chaotic the Russian authorities’ actions have been in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. In recent months, they have been even more chaotic than before. Since the beginning of May—for three straight months now—more people have been dying of coronavirus every day in Russia, even by official figures alone, than in all the other European countries combined; we are talking about tens of thousands of lives. At the same time, vaccination rates remained very low, and so, in early June, the Russian authorities declared mandatory vaccination to be inevitable. And then… then President Vladimir Putin devoted a significant part of his June 30 “Direct Line” call-in show to saying that mandatory vaccination was absolutely out of the question. Well, unless the regions decided otherwise. In other words, he tried to dump responsibility for an already adopted decision onto the governors.
We know perfectly well that things like this do not happen in Russian politics for no reason. The Kremlin is deeply worried about the results of the autumn elections, and apparently its wavering on vaccination policy was also connected to Putin’s desire to make sure that the fight against coronavirus did not hurt United Russia’s ratings. For Putin, election results matter far more than Russians’ lives—the whole world has known that for many years. Two studies conducted at our request in June and July—one before and one after Putin’s “Direct Line”—show that this is exactly what is going on. See for yourselves:
One look at this and it is immediately obvious: who lost ground over the course of just one month? United Russia. (A rare case, by the way: here our results almost exactly matched those of VTsIOM, the state pollster.) It is clear that United Russia is rapidly losing votes to the other parliamentary parties, especially to the Communist Party, which is actively trying to capitalize on the issue of mandatory vaccination. And one more thing: this slide alone is the best possible argument for Smart Voting—United Russia has only 29 percent support, and its candidates are easy to defeat, but only if protest votes are not spread thin and are instead united.
And is there anyone who lost even more support than United Russia? Yes. President Vladimir Putin:
We have not seen anything like this in many, many years of observation. First, it is Putin’s lowest rating since 2013; second, it is the fastest one-month drop on record. No wonder the presidential administration was alarmed and started scrambling. So why did Putin’s and United Russia’s ratings fall so sharply? The answer is simple:
This chart, in fact, explains all their zigzagging—and why they rushed to roll back the newly announced mandatory vaccination policy, doing so as loudly as possible through Putin’s appearance on the “Direct Line.” And even so, it did not work out very well. They were unable to prevent their ratings from falling. After all, the July poll was conducted after Putin had already tried to shift all responsibility onto the governors. Russian voters are not fools, and they understand perfectly well who is responsible for everything happening in the country, and whose will the governors obediently carry out. What is also interesting is this. Ahead of the September elections, in an effort to somehow pull United Russia out of the mire, Putin began publicly supporting his party. In Kremlin terminology, this is called “sharing his rating.” He had never done this before: United Russia is a deeply shameful brand, and Putin personally tried not to stain himself with it. But this year the situation is so bad that he feels compelled to, and so we see the president loudly declaring his support for the party of power. But to “share your rating,” you need to have something to share, right? And what we see is that Putin, with 41 percent support, is of course still ahead of United Russia with its 29 percent—but that gap is nowhere near as large as it used to be. And, most interestingly of all, Putin is no longer even the most popular politician in the country:
Here is another important finding from our research: Shoigu and Lavrov turned out to be significantly more popular than Putin. How can that be? They are his loyal soldiers, the executors of Putin’s policy at home and on the world stage. How can a puppet be more popular than its master? (And are Shoigu and Lavrov comfortable in such a role? Do they sleep soundly at night, or do they worry that Putin may not like this gap in the ratings?) In our view, this is a sign of important changes in Russian society: although propaganda continues desperately to extol the greatness and wisdom of the national leader, voters are no longer willing, as they once were, to forgive him everything. Falling living standards, the failed response to the pandemic, the unpopular pension reform, and other problems can no longer be pinned on “inept officials.” The old paradigm of “the tsar is good, the boyars are bad” is ceasing to work. At the same time, from a political-technology standpoint, United Russia seems to have done the right thing: Shoigu and Lavrov really are well suited to serve as star names at the top of the party list. United Russia hopes to use their high ratings to fool some voters. The choice of the other three “leaders” on the list looks stranger: almost nobody knows Protsenko, Kuznetsova, or Shmeleva. But at least they have no negative ratings, so they can be promoted—that, apparently, is what the political strategists in the presidential administration were thinking. But will the Kremlin’s political strategists manage to fool everyone again? Not necessarily. Take a look:
Nearly 40% of respondents say they are “not afraid of catching coronavirus,” and about the same share say they “do not plan” or “probably do not plan” to get vaccinated. With this attitude toward the pandemic, there is little reason to expect anything good when it comes to the prospects for achieving herd immunity in Russia. (As an aside, the answer to the last question indirectly confirms the high quality of the pollsters’ work: on the days when the survey was conducted, official statistics showed that more than 33 million people in Russia had received a first vaccine dose, which corresponded to 30% of the country’s adult population—and exactly 30% of respondents told us they had been vaccinated.) So the Russian authorities will continue to face a very unpleasant and painful choice. Either they do nothing about the pandemic (and people keep dying), or they increase the pressure (but citizens react negatively, and that drives down the ratings of Putin and United Russia):
We can see that only 40% of voters are inclined to support mandatory vaccination, while 52% do not support it or are more likely not to support it. A significant share oppose it so strongly that they will do everything they can to avoid vaccination:
And that means the issue of vaccination will remain one of the central themes of the political campaign. Conclusions. The authorities’ ratings have fallen significantly, which increases the effectiveness and prospects of Smart Voting. The Kremlin is watching public sentiment very closely, which is why Putin abruptly reversed himself on vaccination. Political forces—both at the federal level and in the regions—that genuinely try to peel votes away from United Russia will make use of the vaccination issue.