On 1 July, Russia finished voting on its constitutional referendum. This plebiscite will see, among other things, Vladimir Putin able to rule until 2036 through a constitutional change that will nullify the number of terms the president has served.
One result of the campaign is already clear, and it concerns public opinion polls. Surveys traditionally play a key role in Russian politics: they are effectively “daily plebiscites”, as polling industry founder George Gallup christened them. If not every day, then at least every week, opinion polls demonstrate the level of support enjoyed by president Putin and his policies, guaranteeing him legitimacy in return. After all, if these surveys do actually reflect the public mood and an overwhelming majority do support the Russian president, then there is no alternative to Putin, and his opponents are left demoralised.
Whether the polls reflect the will of the Russian people is another question, and an interesting one. It’s more accurate to say that opinion surveys manufacture public opinion. But what can be done if even “managed polling numbers” don’t contribute to the president’s legitimacy, but undermine it? When the political situation changes, opinion pollsters suddenly find themselves under enormous political pressure.
This was already clear last year, when the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) faced undeserved criticism from the presidential administration because the president’s ratings were worryingly low. In specialist polling circles, it’s well known that Putin’s popularity has been gradually falling over the past two years. It would be dangerous, however, to reveal this publicly, which is why VTsIOM had to keep trying to wiggle out of trouble, replacing one indicator with another – a clear sign of how polling agencies can produce the figures a client wants to see without necessarily falsifying them.
The situation has become even more complex in 2020. Against a backdrop of growing public fatigue with Vladimir Putin, the president decided to hold a vote in difficult circumstances, as well as effectively putting the question of his lifetime presidency on the line. How has the polling industry reacted to this?
In the three months since 10 March, the day that the last and most scandalous amendment to Russia’s constitution was announced, Russians have been left practically in the dark about their own reaction to the proposed reforms. All this time, the Public Opinion foundation (FOM) has not published literally nothing on the constitutional amendments, and VTsIOM published openly confusing information – the mysterious “amendment ratings” where respondents were asked to judge how important each amendment was.
This was, of course, a meaningless polling question from a methodology point of view. Respondents don’t think in terms of “rating the amendments”, nor in terms of their “importance” – a construct that is impossible to interpret. (Example: if Ivan is categorically opposed to Putin being in power forever, is this an “important” amendment for him or not?) At the same time, this question fulfills another task – disorientation – all too well. Thus journalists did not consider the phrasing too closely, and pushed out headlines claiming that “the number of people supporting a nullification for Putin has risen”.
Anyone who has the faintest idea of how Russian pollsters work knows that surveys on key issues (attitudes to constitutional amendments and, separately, attitudes to resetting Putin’s term) take place regularly, and that this information is gathered at least at the regional level. Why then are the results not published? The assumption is clear: because their publication would give an extra measure of optimism to opponents of the reform and could lead to their mobilisation. Russians are, in fact, divided on constitutional reform – especially on whether Putin should rule for life – and we know this from rarely published survey results.
The Levada Center has published surveys to this effect, which found similar levels of support for resetting Putin’s term count and opposition to it (47-48% in both cases). The center, however, brings out its publications only rarely and with a clear delay – their first one here was only available three and a half weeks after the announcement about Putin’s reset – i.e. after politicians and the public had already formed their opinions and intentions. There were no new figures on the eve of the vote either. We can’t exclude the possibility that the Levada Center sees these results as dangerous. At the very least, the agency, which is under pressure from the Russian Ministry of Justice, is the last organisation which can be blamed for leaving the general public ignorant.
Other published surveys (a nationwide telephone poll by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, and a Moscow street survey, conducted by the Russian Field agency, commanded by independent politician Roman Yuneman and paid for through crowdfunding) confirm this picture.
According to the telephone poll, more than 40% of those surveyed do not support Putin’s monarchical ambitions, while in Moscow this number is heaven higher (48% vs 40% supporting it). Street surveys are less reliable than telephone ones, although they are used successfully in political and marketing research. The professionals, of course, find the representativeness of street sampling less reliable. Yet if the Russian public had a reliable answer to the question of “What are people’s attitudes to the amendments in Moscow?”, then there would be no need for street surveys. But, as it stands, it doesn’t.
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Greg Yudin | Radio Free (2020-07-02T00:00:00+00:00) In Russia, opinion polls are being used to cover up a divided society. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/07/02/in-russia-opinion-polls-are-being-used-to-cover-up-a-divided-society/
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