New St. Petersburg Poll Suggests One Russian in Seven will Follow Navalny’s Lead in Duma Voting

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 22 – Fourteen percent of a survey of 2065 residents of the Northern Capital said they would vote for the Duma candidates imprisoned opposition leader Aleksey Navalny suggests they should, an indication that even from his confinement, he will exercise a potentially significant influence on the upcoming elections.

            In the survey, 25 percent of respondents said they don’t like any of the parties which plan to take part in the voting. Fourteen percent said they would not vote for any party, and five percent indicated that they would like to vote “against all,” a chance they had but no longer do (gorod-812.ru/14-gotovy-golosovat-za-tu-partiyu-na-kotoruyu-ukazhet-navalnyj/).

            The party garnering the largest expression of support in this poll was Yabloko, with 12 percent saying they would vote for its candidates. Ten percent said they would vote for the KPRF, with an additional three percent saying “they would like to vote for the Communist Party of China.” Six percent back Zhirinovsky’s LDPR, and United Russia receives only four percent.

            Perhaps most indicative of how some are feeling, seven percent indicated that they would not vote at all for party lists but only take part in majority districts and there select the individual they felt most sympathy for.

            These results, while striking, should be taken with a grain of salt. On the one hand, the poll was self-selected and therefore anything but representative. And on the other, it occurred in St. Petersburg, traditionally a city far more liberal than the Russian Federation as a whole. Nonetheless, even its results are likely to send a frisson through the Kremlin and its backers.