Tsifir in the civil service

"Echo of Moscow" published the latest ratings of presidential candidates. The time of the survey is the beginning of February.

According to VTsIOM, if elections were held at that time, Putin would have won 55% of the vote. According to the Levada Center - 43% ...

Yuri Alexandrovich Levada, whose glorious name this sociological service is named, in the middle of the 2000s came on the air of my program on Radio Liberty. We discussed the 2004 Ukrainian elections and compared polling data with official results.

And the classic of sociology confirmed my humanitarian doubts with pure mathematics: the permissible error, the legitimate spread of numbers, live within two or three percent, he assured; anything beyond that is fake.

The spread for Putin between the data of the independent Levada Center and the state-run VCIOM is 12%.

Moreover, these 12%, almost in equal shares, lie on opposite sides of the equator, separating Putin’s clear victory in the first round from his unclear fate in the second, especially unclear given the 23% of Russians who have not yet decided who they will vote for and whether they will go to elections in general.

So Putin's staff officers can be understood: only victory in the first round! Previously, they would have lowered the 70% plan “in place”, but in the light of Bolotnaya they decided not to grumble: back in December, Putin’s headquarters set the level of popular support of 55-60% as a goal ...

And here he is. 12% higher than in the neighborhood at Levada.

VTsIOM is named after Churov ...