Negative Voting against Opposition Helps Putin Maintain Support, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – People in many countries often vote against someone rather than for him or her by casting their ballots for those they dislike less. That phenomenon has now come to Russia, Abbas Gallyamov argues, where popular attitudes toward opposition figures are helping Vladimir Putin to consolidate his support.

            On the one hand, this means that much of Putin’s reported support may be negative: people support him because they don’t like the opposition. But on the other, it is a resource for the Kremlin leader that is often ignored despite the fact that it helps him win his electoral majorities, the political analyst and former Putin speech writer says.

            Gallyamov says that popular reaction to Aleksey Navalny is one indication of this.  The opposition leader has been making the same charges for so long and the lives of Russians have not gotten better that many voters see him as part of the political order and not an agent for change. Thus, they decide to stick with Putin (echo.msk.ru/blog/gallyamov_a/2421747-echo/).

                “In general,” the analyst says, “one cannot be a key political player and remain at the same time an outsider. After one or two campaigns into the role of the latter, you either pass from the scene or begin to be transformed into a ‘systemic’ politician.”  And that changes how people assess you and gives advantages to the incumbent.

            The radicalism of the declarations of many opposition figures, Gallyamov continues, adds to this. Many Russians who would like to see real change instead see in the current constellation of opposition figures people who raise the specter of revolt and disintegration, things they don’t want. And so they continue to vote for Putin, even if with less enthusiasm.

            “Until the opposition recognizes this,” he says, “it with one hand will be taking votes from Putin and with the other giving him votes.”

            A major reason for this failure on the part of the Russian opposition, Gallyamov argues, is that its members have no confidence that they can ever win an election. And so they behave in radical ways that make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they actually sought to win by appealing to voters on issues of concern to them, the opposition would have a better chance than it thinks.

            Such “’breakthrough’” elections in which the opposition defeats the incumbent even in authoritarian regimes are not as rare as all that. They’ve even happened in Russia, in 1989 and close in 2011 when the regime despite all its powers could not orchestrate a victory for United Russia.

            “The possibilities for authoritarian powers to secure the necessary result in fact are strongly exaggerated,” Gullyamov says. One can beat them. But to do so, one must talk less about revolutions which people don’t want and will vote against than about specific changes that will win over those who otherwise will continue to vote for Putin.