Putin Gets Poll Boost as Election Approaches

Public trust among Russia's voters in the country's election process has increased in the last three years according to a poll, providing a boost to Vladimir Putin ahead of his anticipated presidential election run in 2024.

The survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) found that public confidence in the results of elections had grown from 46 percent in November 2020 to 61 percent at the same time in 2023.

The proportion of people who did not trust the elections fell from a half (50 percent) to a third (33 percent) in the same period. "Confidence in elections in Russia is growing steadily," concluded the survey. "In less than three years, the level of public confidence in the election results has increased by 1.3 times."

However, Aleksei Miniailo, a Russian opposition politician who founded the research group Chronicles, told Newsweek: "What we see clearly is that people are confident in how the elections will end. It doesn't mean they believe in their honesty or are happy with them."

"During focus groups, we've discussed 2024 elections, and they were the only thing that the groups had had consensus about—the result is already determined, there' s no way to change it, unless the incumbent dies.

"People treat it more like a force of nature than like something that they can influence," he added.

Russia has a history of election manipulation and in keeping with the plebiscites held over Putin's presidency, parliamentary ballots in 2021 were marred by reports of fraud. As well as accounts of ballot stuffing and forced voting, which were dismissed by Russia's electoral commission, Putin's biggest critics were barred from running and candidates from opposition parties have also faced persecution.

It is difficult to determine the genuine mood of public opinion in Russia where a clampdown on media freedoms and dissent has broadened, especially since the start of Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Unlike polls conducted by the independent Levada Center, VCIOM is a state-run sociological research institution that has been accused of supporting the Kremlin's point of view.

Its latest research, which was reported by the state news agency Tass, may point to a concerted push by the government to prepare for the election scheduled to take place in March next year, for which Putin is expected to announce his candidacy. The Russian constitution was amended to allow him to potentially remain head of state until 2036.

The survey of 1,200 Russians of voting age conducted in August 2023 with a 2.5-percentage point margin of error also found that the 70 percent of respondents believe that the results of the elections in the regions are legitimate, held fairly and without serious violations. Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment by email.

Responding to a question about whether Putin would run again, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in October that the president "has no competitors and cannot have any in Russia."

The newspaper Kommersant reported this week that the Kremlin has put together a group of people, for a PR event, to name Putin as candidate. This includes a nationalistic singer named Shaman; the first Russian woman in space, 86-year-old Valentina Tereshkova and the 78-year-old film director Nikita Mikhalkov.

Possible candidates for what is expected to be another carefully choreographed election include longtime Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, who is 79, and the leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Leonid Slutsky, 55.

Miniailo described elections in Russia as "more akin to acclamation" and a test into "whether the state system, which includes electoral manipulations, works and the citizens generally more or less agree with the results."

"No dangerous independent candidates are being allowed to the elections because Putin has built a system where his administration controls who takes part in the election and the courts are controlled by him as well so it's impossible to defend one's right to be elected in the court."

On Tuesday, Putin signed a law enabling the vote to be held under conditions of martial law in the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.