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Should we believe the polls that show that more than 80% of Russians support Putin? Maybe people are just afraid to tell the sociologists the truth?
The debate about Putin's real popularity has always been going on, but has intensified since the war started. Putin's rating jumped " did people really support him?
Sociologists conducting polls have to constantly justify themselves. Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, listed and then refuted the main arguments of critics as to why Russian polls cannot be trusted: after the war began, people " especially Putin's opponents " began to refuse to participate in polls and to answer questions about the war much more often, and if they did answer, they usually did not answer what they "really" thought.
According to Volkov, in reality, the "unreachability" of respondents has changed little since the war (in 2022 it was slightly higher than in 2019-2020, but lower than in 2021), and the number of interviews interrupted on questions about Ukraine is quite low (from two to seven), as in polls on other topics, which, with a sample of more than a thousand people, is insignificant. As for the honesty of answers, the increase in support for Putin after the start of the war is combined with changes in answers to other questions " about economic behavior and sentiment, Volkov assures.
Alexei Levinson, head of the socio-cultural research department at the Levada Center, responded to another reproach -- that sociologists simply cannot show results with lower ratings: "As long as the authorities are satisfied with the high ratings they receive honestly, they will tolerate us. When it stops being so, I don't think we'll last long."
While the debate is going on, public opinion polls continue to record that Putin enjoys the broadest support of the population. For example, according to the Levada Center, this year Putin's activities were "generally approved" by 85"87% (the poll is conducted every month). ...
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