The acting President, according
to the readers of our site, would lose the first round
of presidential elections to Yabloko’s leader
A new Internet poll of the
NG readers cauased a real sensation: the presidential
rating of Grigory Yavlinsky rose abruptly last week –
our readers called Grigory Yavlinsky the most popular
presidential candidate, the favourite of the presidential
race Vladimir Putin was left behind.
The readers of the computer
version of our newspaper virtually doubled the political
weight of the Yabloko leader, which last time amounted
to 20.5% and now reached 40.7%.
Grigory Yavlinsky’s success
may be attributed, first, to the refusal of Eugeni Primakov
to participate in the presidential race.
Obviously, it was Primakov,
who “presented” Yavlinsky almost 8%.
Secondly, the continuing fall
of the acting President’s rating also played its role.
This time only 39.8% of the
respondents placed their political preferences with Vladimir
Putin, which is 8% less than his previous result.
Although the Internet audience
of the “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” is specific (it is quite
young and clearly oriented towards democratic values and
cannot provide a full picture of public opinion in the
country), the results of the poll demonstrate that the
successor of the Kremlin has been losing his standing
at least with certain layers of our society.
Politicians from the opposition,
and Yavlinsky is such a person, has real chances to become
dignified competitors to the "non-alternative” presidential
candidate.
However, we cannot say the
same about Gennadi Zyuganov. Although he gained some 0.8%
in a week, this result can be considered an ordinary statistical
error. Who will be elected the next President in Russia?
Dates of polls and the number
of participants
Candidates
Putin
Primakov
Yavlinsky
Zyuganov
1st poll October 23-25, 1999
(880 respondents) growth in the result compared to the
previous poll fall in the result compared to the previous
poll
