Putin’s Fake Popularity. Evidence

Hi, this is Navalny. Everywhere I turn, I hear

groaning and lamenting, and wherever you look

you’re bound to see someone who

is practically in tears over the fact that Putin

got such a huge percentage and managed

to produce the highest turnout for his

sham election. As many have already said,

these were the most transparent, the purest

kind in our country’s history. My God,

“Alexei, can you imagine it? Putin got

so much support. It’s a disaster. Fighting

is pointless.”

“That’s just the kind of country we have. Everything is lost.” And all this

nonsense sometimes has to be heard

even from people who seem intelligent, who

get their information not from television but

from independent sources. People somehow

get hypnotized by the sheer magic of numbers and

the words “Putin won,” “he got a lot

of votes,” “he’s an insanely popular politician,”

so resistance is useless. And Putin himself

very much wants to prove this to us too:

“Look how popular I am. Everyone

supports me.” He even released

a special address to the nation,

which is actually a rare thing—only the third time in

all 18 years of his rule—specifically to

underscore it,

to emphasize: “I won. I really

won. This is an unprecedented, the highest

level of support in the history

of our country. More than 50.6 million

citizens voted for the sitting head of state—over 50.6

million citizens, more than 76 percent

of voters.”

“This is the highest level of support in

the history of our country.” Oh really—the highest?

Well, right now I can easily prove to you, with documents

and mathematically, that Putin is not at all

the most popular politician in the country, and there is no

such thing as

“highest level of support.” More than that,

if you take this whole Putin

mafia—its top tier and even the middle ranks—

you’ll see that the so-called nationwide guarantor and

darling, Vladimir Putin, ought to be

placed on the list of the least popular

politicians. Don’t be surprised. So, what exactly

is Putin bragging about with his percentage? Let’s listen

one more time: “More than 76

percent of voters. This is the highest

level of support in the history of our country.”

Seventy-six percent. We didn’t put those words in his mouth.

If he wants to boast about his percentage,

then let’s go to the election commission’s website, because that’s where

the percentage measuring stick for elections across the country

is. Elections are constantly being held, and we’ll take the ones where

people vote not for a party but for a person.

Gubernatorial elections fit best.

Sure, obviously the president has the whole

country, while a governor has only a region.

But for years we’ve been told that

Putin is the most popular politician in the country,

which means that in any region he should also be the most

popular. In any case, Putin is supposed to have

a champion’s rating. So let’s compile a ranking

of the highest election results, and of course

we expect to see in first place none other than

Putin.

After all, he told us it was the highest

level of support in history. Oh—Putin isn’t in first

place. All right, all right, Kadyrov is

a special case. So Putin must be in second

place.

Oh—not in second place either. Well then, in

third, probably? No, not in third either. Fourth

place? No. All right then, let’s

jump straight to tenth. No, Vladimir

Vladimirovich doesn’t even make the top ten.

What is this, some State Department plot?

In 15th place we have Sholban Kara-ool

Valeryevich. Who even is that, and how can he

be ahead of Putin himself, who supposedly got the

highest result in the country’s history?

“This is the highest level of support in

the history of our country.” Anyway, I could

keep going down this ranking,

but I don’t want to torture you, so I’ll just say this:

when television shows the State Council

and gatherings of similar officials and governors,

you can point your finger at almost any one of them and

he will almost certainly be more popular than

Putin, because in the ranking of the biggest

election results over recent years,

Putin comes in 39th place. But why are you

laughing over there now and waving your

hand dismissively? If you believe the nonsense of

Putin’s 76 percent, then

please, believe the rest of the numbers too,

because they’re counted by the very same

election commissions. The truth is,

my friends, that right now there are two main

factors in any election: TV

brainwashing and falsification. And thanks

to them, our country is now set up in such a way that

as soon as just about any

idiot is appointed boss, he

automatically gets a 75 percent

approval rating and can proudly brag about it.

You could catch a monkey in the jungle,

announce on TV that this is Victor

Orangutangovich Ivanov, your new mayor or

governor, and the very next day

our Orangutangovich would have a rating

higher than Putin’s. A concrete example—almost

a monkey, really—they took this guy,

Vadim Vladimirovich Potomsky. He wasn’t even

from United Russia, but from the Communist Party, supposedly

an opposition figure. It was just that the Communists needed

to be given one gubernatorial post, and

Putin said, “Fine, let Potomsky run

in the Oryol Region.”

So that you understand this man’s intellectual

capacity, let me tell you

that once he declared that Ivan

the Terrible and his son were traveling from Moscow to

St. Petersburg.

Ivan the Terrible once uttered the phrase, “I

responsible for his son's death because

he did not get him to a doctor in time, and when they

were traveling, he fell ill, and they...

St. Petersburg—so what? Then this man went to

run in the elections in Oryol Region,

where he had never even lived before,

and got 89 percent of the vote.

Seventh place in our ranking, far

above Putin. I'm sure most of

you have never even heard that surname,

and yet this is one of the most

popular politicians in the country—if, of course, you

choose to believe

the election commission and its numbers. Tomorrow

they could take someone—the most insignificant of

those who ran as candidates in this

presidential election, some nobody,

someone with his half-percent

result—and announce on TV that United

Russia

is nominating that nobody for governor

of Krasnodar Krai, and I guarantee you that

our nobody will become

governor there with the same 76

percent, because a couple of months before

the election, everyone will be thoroughly brainwashed,

no real competitors will be allowed onto the ballot,

and people will be told that there simply are no

other candidates. And the rest

will be finished off by the magic of election commissions and

thick stacks of ballots. So, dear friends,

all of you—these figures and results

should make absolutely no

impression. That is why Putin stages all this:

he feels that the people do not believe, they are wavering.

The people are wavering...

It was timely and necessary at a fully

staged fake election.

Putin got less than the average

governor gets in the same kind of

Remember this yourselves, and tell everyone who does not

know: in his entire life, Vladimir Putin

has taken part only twice in elections with

real competition—as

the head of Anatoly Sobchak's campaign staff in

the St. Petersburg mayoral election—and they

lost badly. And once he

managed the election campaign

of the party Our Home Is Russia in

Leningrad Region.

Back then, they got 10 percent of the vote.

That is his real level

of support in our country's history. Do not

believe the propaganda. Argue with people

who talk about Putin's high approval ratings.

In general, get involved in any

political argument. Always act in a way

that inflicts the maximum political

damage on this gang of crooks and thieves.

Campaign, vote—always against them.

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