(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Dmitry Medvedev will most likely become the next president of Russia, according to a poll by the Public Opinion Foundation. 67.8 per cent of decided voters would back the candidate endorsed by current head of state Vladimir Putin in next month’s ballot.
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Dmitry Medvedev will most likely become the next president of Russia, according to a poll by the Public Opinion Foundation. 67.8 per cent of decided voters would back the candidate endorsed by current head of state Vladimir Putin in next month’s ballot.
Communist Party (KPRF) leader Gennady Zyuganov is a distant second with 16.3 per cent, followed by Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 13.7 per cent, and independent candidate Andrei Bogdanov with 1.3 per cent.
Vladimir Putin was elected to a second term as president in March 2004 with 71.31 per cent of all cast ballots. In April 2005, Putin ruled out seeking a new mandate, saying, "I will not change the constitution and in line with the constitution, you cannot run for president three times in a row."
Russian voters renewed the State Duma in December 2007. United Russia (YR)—whose candidate list was headed by Putin—secured 64.1 per cent of the vote and 315 of the legislature’s 450 seats. Under the country’s recently implemented proportional representation system, only three other political organizations—the KPRF, the LDPR and A Just Russia—elected lawmakers to the lower house.
In December 2007, Putin endorsed Medvedev as a presidential candidate, and Medvedev said it would be of the "utmost importance" to have Putin as prime minister.
On Feb. 21, Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, commented on the current presidential race and condemned the lack of opportunities to hold a real contest, saying, "We have no public accountability, no checks and balances, and actually we don’t have public politics. (…) This election is actually about the incumbent president anointing a successor of his choice, having created a system in which any choice is accepted."
The presidential election in Russia is scheduled for Mar. 2.
Polling Data
Which of these presidential candidates would you vote for if the election took place this Sunday? (Decided Voters)
|
Dmitry Medvedev |
67.8% |
|
Gennady Zyuganov |
16.3% |
|
Vladimir Zhirinovsky |
13.7% |
|
Andrei Bogdanov |
1.3% |
|
Would spoil ballot |
0.9% |
Source: Public Opinion Foundation
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 3,000 Russian adults, conducted on Feb. 16 and Feb. 17, 2008. Margin of error is 2.5 per cent.
