Kremlin Pollsters Use Means Other than Falsification to Boost Reported Popular Backing for Putin’s War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 5 – VTsIOM and POM, the two Russian polling agency the Kremlin controls, are not falsifying the data they are collecting about popular support for Putin’s war but rather other means to ensure that the numbers they give out are higher than are really the case, Aleksey Bessunov says.

            The Russian sociologist at the University of Exeter says that the two make use of other factors to ensure that what they report is what the Kremlin wants to hear and project to the world (meduza.io/feature/2022/03/05/esli-verit-gosudarstvennym-sotsoprosam-bolshinstvo-rossiyan-podderzhivayut-voynu-v-ukraine-no-mozhno-li-im-verit).

            Bessunov points to three such factors: how these polling agencies ask questions, the gap between when they conduct their surveys and when they release the results, and the fact that many Russians are reluctant to express opinions to pollster that they know are at variance with the views of the bosses.

            All three of these factors especially in combination mean, the sociologist says, that one should treat their claims about support for Putin’s war with skepticism -- even if one concludes that neither VTsIOM nor POM are actually cooking the numbers before they release them to the public.

            Bessunov also discusses how various groups of Russians feel about the war. Among those over 70, ninety percent back Putin’s “’special military operation,’” while among those under 30, “about half” are against. Given that Putin and his regime are in the former category; and those in the latter are the ones who actually have to fight, this is telling.

            According to these pollsters, women are more likely than men to oppose the war, especially among those between 30 and 50 who form the cohort most likely to have sons who will be sent to fight.

            The divide between those who watch television and those who rely on the Internet is large for two reasons. On the one hand, the former get only government news while the latter get a broader range of information. And on the other, Bessunov says, those inclined to support the government choose the one and those inclined against it choose the other.

            “Among those older than 45, and especially among pensioners,” he continues, “the majority watches television every day. Among the young, almost no one does that.”

            And finally, Bessunov says, there is an enormous gap between metropolitan centers where people are against the war and smaller cities and villages where the reverse is true. Differences in support for the war on the basis of educational attainment are notable in the first case but not in the second.