Campane

In September, we conducted the survey of the newspaper’s website: the pre -election behavior of which politicians is the greatest interest? Of the almost seven thousand voted, 77% indicated Alexei Navalny. For us, this meant, among other things, that it was possible to focus exclusively on official presidential candidates approved by the CEC in the framework of the coverage of the current campaign (and, apparently, the parallel of the opposition counter cab). At the same time, the list of participants in the 2018 electoral show, on which they bet in the Kremlin, was far from obvious in September.

Together with the discovery of Presidential ambitions in Ksenia Sobchak, much has become clear. We wrote about the meaning of Sobchak for Russian electoral authoritarianism in one of the recent editorial notes. A second vote about the interest in the election behavior, which we conducted in the last days of October, showed that Navalny lost 17%of reader interest, his rating fell to 60%, and Sobchak instantly took off to second place from 18%. It seems that the Kremlin rate was a success-we all have to talk about the policy of Sobchak until March next year (but, however, hardly anyone will remember these hot discussions in 2024).

At the same time, more than 5% of our readers are interested in the campaigns of “other” candidates who are not part of the political mainstream, therefore, following the wishes of the audience, we will talk about them.

On the eve of the parliamentary elections, we also conducted a survey in the editorial office, and most colleagues spoke in support of Yabloko. Therefore, the presidential campaign of Grigory Yavlinsky will be one of the priorities for us.

The candidate from ultrapatriots remains in question, rumors about the political career of Nikita Mikhalkov, it seems, have come to naught. But as we wrote, this role-a sparring partner on the right-is always ready to fulfill Zhirinovsky.

Regardless of whether new candidates will appear, the season of pre -election promises is obviously open. For example, Vladimir Putin made a traditional statement about the government’s readiness to abandon the draft army. Not allowed to participate in the campaign, Alexei Navalny in parallel, apparently, prepares tactics associated with the delegation of voting results.

We believe that the campaign or rather the campaign began and intend to cover its course in detail, guided by the following principles.

The New Gazeta will inform its readers about election campaigns of all candidates whose activities are of public importance and/or meets the request of our audience.

The list of presidential candidates for us is determined by the requests of the audience, and not just the CEC solutions. If one or more candidates enjoying the support of a noticeable part of Russian society will not be allowed to elections for formal reasons, but will continue to conduct the campaign, the editors will continue the coverage of this campaign.

The New Gazeta provides equal opportunities for conducting election discussions for various candidates.

The New Gazeta will strive to publish a pre -election interview with all the candidates.

If necessary, the editorial office will provide candidates with the opportunity for debate at the newspaper site.