How to respond to a drop in Putin's approval rating? Russia's state pollsters simply changed their questions. • Медуза • RIMA — архив российских независимых медиа
How to respond to a drop in Putin's approval rating? Russia's state pollsters simply changed their questions.
A May 25 survey by the state-owned polling agency VTsIOM showed that only 31.7 percent of respondents named Vladimir Putin when asked which politicians they trusted. That is the lowest figure since 2006, when the question first appeared in nationwide surveys. After Kremlin officials asked VTsIOM to clarify the survey’s results, its director, Valery Fyodorov, said the agency would soon publish results for a poll that simply asked whether or not respondents trusted Vladimir Putin. Fyodorov noted that “the president’s trust rating there is much, much higher.”
Cover photo: Sergey Ilnitsky / EPA / Scanpix / LETA
