(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The vast majority of people in Russia would support the pro-Kremlin candidate in this year’s presidential election, according to a poll by the Yury Levada Analytical Center. 82 per cent of respondents would vote for Dmitry Medvedev in the March ballot, up three points since late December.

Communist Party (KPRF) leader Gennady Zyuganov is a distant second with nine per cent, followed by Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky with eight per cent, former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov of the Russian People’s Democratic Union with one per cent, and independent candidate Andrei Bogdanov also with one 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." The next presidential election in Russia is scheduled for Mar. 2.

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 Communist Party (KPRF), the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and A Just Russia—elected lawmakers to the lower house.

Last month, Putin endorsed Medvedev as a presidential candidate, and Medvedev said it would be of the "utmost importance" to have Putin as prime minister.

On Jan. 23, Medvedev officially launched his campaign, telling an audience of Kremlin supporters that Russia needs "decades of stable development." The presidential frontrunner also talked about the need to loosen state controls over the media, saying, "A modern, prosperous state can now exist only in the free flow of information, and influential and independent media is an inseparable part of it."

Polling Data

If the following candidates participated in the 2008 presidential election, who would you vote for?

(Likely voters)

Source: Yury Levada Analytical Center
Methodology: Interviews with 1,600 Russian adults, conducted Jan. 18 to Jan. 21, 2008. No margin of error was provided.

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