What a good idea these questionnaires turned out to be. Huge thanks to everyone who filled them out and helped make this happen. Special thanks to Sergei Guriev, Michael Nacke, Galina Timchenko, and Tikhon Dzyadko (the TV Rain/Dozhd broadcast summing up the questionnaire results is here).
It turned out to be very instructive. There were endless discussions about the opposition constantly fighting among itself, but once everyone answered questions about the subject of the dispute, it became clear that there was no real dispute at all.
The overwhelming majority, both among opinion leaders and ordinary citizens, do not hold any kind of totalizing position:
Depending on the situation, they do not rule out boycotting the election, voting for “anyone but” the preferred target, or supporting a single united candidate:
When asked, “Who could be the united candidate?” people answered as follows:
This is hardly a groundbreaking discovery. This part of the questionnaire shows that as the election date approaches, tactics will be determined not by dogma but by the situation and by common sense.
We also obtained very important information about how the campaign should be conducted.
As it turned out, far from everyone is willing to use their YouTube channels for campaigning. For example, Nacke (1.5 million subscribers), Shulman (1.15 million subscribers), and Guriev (344,000 subscribers), whose channels are among the most popular “opposition” channels, said they would not do so—just like many of the YouTube channel owners surveyed.
All in all, that makes sense.
If someone uses their channel for political campaigning, then they are most likely a politician rather than a journalist, political scientist, or economist. And honestly, let’s admit it: we already understand what views the audiences of these channels hold. There is no need to campaign to them. And there is no doubt that the creators will be able to explain their position on the election clearly to their viewers.
The conclusions to draw from this part of the questionnaire are these: there will be no easy, simple campaigning formats with broad reach, especially when it comes to undecided voters. We will have to be inventive. In that sense, it is great that we started building DMP-2 back at the beginning of the summer. By the way, join the team of campaign volunteers (to do so, write to antiwar@navalny.com if you are outside Russia).
Once again, thank you to everyone who filled out the questionnaire. I think this is something worth repeating regularly.
The English translation is here.