Fake of the Time program: in Russia, support for amendments to the Constitution is growing

The Sunday program "Time" devoted one of the plots to criticism of Russia in the Western media. The main idea of ​​the plot of the plot of Yevgeny Baranov is that in the Western countries “bumpy healthcare, a sophisticated system for forecasting, planning and making decisions - all this obviously gave a synchronous failure”, and in this situation the press there only remains to come up with fake information about Russia.

However, Baranov managed to give only two examples: critical articles about the Russian assistance of Italy, which, according to a number of newspapers, turned out to be almost useless, and the publication of The Wall Street Journal on the transfer of a military parade in Moscow from May 9 for an indefinite period. Why this last article, in which, in essence, does not even criticize the Russian authorities, caused such rejection to the correspondent of the Time program is impossible to understand. Baranov claims :

“Against the backdrop of mutual reproaches in Europe, protests against the helplessness and carelessness of the authorities in the UK, disagreements between the White House and the Governors in the States, a separate block of publications that do not hide gloat and related to the transference due to the epidemic of the Victory Parade in Moscow.

“According to analysts, the celebrations this year occur at a delicate time for Mr. Putin, who needs the support of Russians in his desire to make such changes to the country's constitution that would allow him to remain in power for a long time. The referendum on this issue, on the way to these changes, was originally outlined for April 22, but now moved to a later date, and a new date is not yet. Defined, ”writes The Wall Street Journal.

We will leave conversations about the Constitution on their conscience. Polls show that the growth of support for the Russians of amendments to it is affected by a real struggle against the epidemic, which is now conducted throughout the country. ”

At the last words, the survey results appear on the screen.

Those who conducted this survey do not indicate the time, but the numbers coincide with the VTIMO survey published on March 31. It’s just that it is impossible to judge the growth of support for these results: the question of whether the respondents supported the VTsIOM at all, he only proposed to choose from the list of amendments those that seem to be the most important. VTsIOM also does not give comparison with the results of previous similar polls: there were simply no such polls.

But how the attitude of Russians towards amendments is changing, one can judge the surveys of the Levada Center. In February, 25% of respondents were going to vote for amendments, 10% - against them, 37% did not decide how to vote, and 23% decided not to vote at all. Based on the results of a survey published on March 27, there were already 27%of those who did not want to take part in the vote.

It is natural that they did not decide how to vote by the end of March became much less: 26% (in February it was 37%). The most interesting thing is that the gap between the options for "for" and "against" was reduced in the most radical way: for - 40%, against - 34%. However, this is the answer to the question “if you take part in the vote, you will vote for or against the proposed amendments?” Dailed to all respondents, regardless of whether they are going to vote at all. Among those who are going to vote, 52%for amendments are 28%, that is, supporters of the amendments are still more, but not two and a half times, but less than doubled.

It is difficult to understand what was more affected by the mood of Russians-the Covid-19 epidemic or an amendment to “rely” Vladimir Putin’s presidential terms, which appeared between the two polls of the Levada Center, but the data testifies not to increase the support of the amendments.

However, we can indirectly make an assumption of the influence of “zeroing”. During the March survey, the Levada Center conducted an experiment: the question of supporting amendments was asked to the respondents in two different wordings-with the mention of the possibility of a new Putin presidential term and without such mention.

At the mention of the new term, the number of difficult to answer is almost doubled, the number of supporting amendments increases by 5 percentage points, which is approximately equal to the statistical error for this survey, and the number of opponents of the amendments increases by 7%. So, it seems, The Wall Street Journal is right, speaking of "delicate time for Putin."