Russians are divided in their views over the legitimacy of polls in the country but those divisions are probably not because of the latest parliamentary elections, the head of the state-run VTsIOM pollster, Valery Fyodorov, said on Thursday.
“We have not noted a trend of growing mistrust towards elections over the last few years,” Fyodorov said, adding that the surveys usually show a stable number of people satisfied with the polls’ results (25-30 percent), those who do not trust the legitimacy of polls (25-30 percent) as well as those who think that violations at the polls do not influence the final results (40-45 percent).
Fyodorov also said that the Central Election Commission, whose chief Vladimir Churov was blamed for mass poll violations during December’s elections, enjoyed an approval rating by 50 percent of Russians.
Mass anti-government rallies have spread across Russia following the December parliamentary elections that the opposition claims were slanted in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia.
The next public protest is scheduled for February 4, just a month before the presidential elections where Putin is expected to win.
The Kremlin-friendly VTsIOM said earlier this week that Putin’s approval rating topped 50 percent, while the independent Levada Center pollster reported only 37 percent supported Putin.
A political expert, Nikolai Zlobin, said that people’s “trust in Russian sociology is not that high."
“Sociology is a kind of science that can easily be manipulated. But I think he [Fyodorov] is not far from the truth,” the expert said.
