Putin’s Chances of Winning Russian Election, According to Polls

Vladimir Putin is assured of retaining power in Russia’s presidential election, according to state-run polling firms, the latest surveys of which conclude the only question is how big will be his majority.

Early voting opened on February 26 in the more remote parts of Russia but citizens across 11 time zones go to the polls in earnest between Friday and Sunday when Putin is expected to declare victory and start a fifth term that will last until 2030.

In December, while meeting veterans of the war in Ukraine, Putin made the unsurprising announcement he would stand again in a ballot which his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov had previously said, would see him face “no competitors.”

The prediction of no real competition is turning out to be true, according to state-run surveys. The results are also likely to be skewed by the restriction on freedoms in Russia and a clampdown on dissent, both of which have deepened since the start of the war.

“[T]he numbers he (Putin) gets don’t matter because it’s not elections in a democracy, it’s a special electoral operation in a dictatorship,” Aleksei Miniailo, a Russian opposition politician who co-founded Chronicles, a group of sociologists that conducts independent polling, told Newsweek.

A survey of 1,600 adults conducted on March 2 and 3 by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) found that 75 percent of respondents would vote for Putin.

The other candidates, who are all pro-Kremlin and from parties that have broadly backed his policies, trail well behind.

These are Vladislav Davankov from the New People Party at 6 percent, Nikolai Kharitonov from the Communist Party at 4 percent and the ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky, from the Liberal Democratic Party, who got the support of 3 percent of respondents in the poll that had a sampling margin of error of 2.5 percent.

The firm’s polling from February also saw three-quarters (75 percent) of respondents back Putin while roughly the same support was given to Davankov (5 percent) Kharitonov and Slutsky (both 4 percent).

A survey by the Center of Studies of Russia’s Political Culture (CIPKR) on January 11 and 12 found Putin had 60 percent support compared with 0.3 percent for Davankov, 4 percent for Kharitinov and 3 percent for Slutsky.

The major difference was at the time, former State Duma Deputy Boris Nadezhdin was a presidential candidate, and he got the backing of 7 percent of respondents in the poll of 1,004 people that had a 6.6 percent margin for error.

Nadezhdin was an ally of murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and entered the race as a candidate for the Civic Initiative party and spoke out on the campaign trail against the war in Ukraine.

But on February 8, Nadezhdin was barred from running due to alleged “irregularities” in the signatures of voters supporting his candidacy, according to Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC). Nadezhdin needed to gather 100,000 signatures across at least 40 regions in order to be a candidate.

Kremlin opponents have frequently been prevented from running in elections in Russia on the grounds of supposed technical infringements.

Putin will therefore have an unchallenged run in this weekend’s election, although the Kremlin will want a high turnout so it can claim his legitimacy.

“All potential opponents are removed, jailed or even killed. So what we should look at aren’t the results of March 17, but what Russians aspire to,” Miniailo told Newsweek.

He said his team’s polling in January showed that more than 50 percent of Russians want a political direction “that is totally opposite to Putin’s.” This included 83 percent of respondents who wanted a focus on home affairs and 58 percent who wanted a truce with Ukraine.

“When asked about preferable alternative candidate, participants of our focus groups described them as a person who is able to solve international issues through diplomacy, not war, and who is dedicated to solving social and economic problems of Russia, especially in the regions,” Miniailo added.

Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.

Putin became president in 2000. The previous terms of the constitution allowed only two four-year terms, so Putin stood aside in 2008 for Dmitry Medvedev to take over while he became prime minister.

Putin returned to the presidency in 2012. Changes to the constitution would first extend the presidential term to six years and then allow him to potentially hold office until 2036. This would see him overtake Joseph Stalin as the longest-serving Russian leader in over 200 years. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years before his death in 1953.