Holders of most booming confidence ratings (Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov) are traditionally viewed the candidates to succeed the holder of the highest confidence score (Vladimir Putin).
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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An Equation with Two Known Values
// The Struggle for Presidential Succession Kicks Into High Gear
The year 2007 is shaping up to be a decisive one when it comes to resolving the "problem of 2008." If Vladimir Putin listens to the voice of the people as expressed in public opinion polls, then the leading contender for his seat in 2008 is now Dmitry Medvedev, who at the end of 2006 finally overtook perpetual front-runner Sergey Shoigu in the confidence-ratings game of Russian presidential succession.
The question "Who among Russian politicians do you have most confidence in?" is regularly put to the Russian people by experts from the country's three leading national sociological research bureaus: the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), and the Levada Center. For the past seven years, the answer has unwaveringly been Vladimir Putin, though the absolute magnitudes of the results have varied somewhat due to the different polling methods used. In other words, VTsIOM and the Levada Center ask respondents to pick from a group of no more than five or six popular politicians, while FOM gives its respondents freedom to name any politician they choose. As a result, President Putin, confidence in whom VTsIOM and the Levada Center consistently rate higher than 40%, never received more than 35% in the rankings prepared by FOM this year. However, his massive lead over his pursuers is more than impressively obvious in all three versions of the polls: Putin's numbers are always two to three times higher than those of his nearest competitors.
Meanwhile, the more interesting side of the struggle is for the second and third spots in the ratings, which, according to the logic of "Operation Successor," should be occupied by the main aspirants to the presidential seat. However, last year saw significant changes in these two positions. Most importantly, in November First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev overtook the eternal runner-up to Mr. Putin, Emergencies Minister Sergey Shoigu, for the first time.
Favorites
At the end of 2005, only two politicians other than Putin could boast of confidence ratings in the double digits: Sergey Shoigu (according to VTsIOM and the Levada Center) and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky (according to FOM). But in 2006, if the sociologists are to be believed, popular opinion began to shift with the entry into the race of two newly-appointed government deputies, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov. They are now the politicians whom experts consider to be the most likely candidates for the position of presidential successor.
At first it was Sergey Ivanov who surged ahead. The jump was most pronounced in VTsIOM's ratings, where Mr. Ivanov initially received a paltry 4% at the beginning of the year. By April the defense minister had more than doubled his confidence rating, to 10%. By that time FOM was reporting a statistically-sound 50-percent increase, from 2% in January to 3% in April, while his ratings from the Levada Center remained steady at 10%. During that period, Mr. Medvedev clearly posed no threat to his colleague: according to VTsIOM, public confidence in him rose from 2% to only 7% in the first four months of 2006, while FOM, which only added him to its rankings in March, awarded him an initial rating of 2%. Meanwhile, both VTsIOM and the Levada Center showed Mr. Shoigu with a firm grip on the lead: in April VTsIOM gave him a 16% confidence rating, and the Levada Center put him at 18%. According to polls carried out by FOM, Vladimir Putin was followed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky (at 11% in April). Slowly but surely, however, Dmitry Medvedev has been climbing through the rankings. According to VTsIOM, by August 8% of Russians expressed confidence in the first deputy prime minister, while 9% were satisfied with the defense minister's performance. In the Levada Center's ratings, throughout the summer Mr. Ivanov was never able to distance himself from Mr. Medvedev by more than three percentage points, and in FOM's rankings, by August Mr. Medvedev had overtaken Mr. Ivanov and led him 5% to 3%. Nevertheless, according to the FOM rankings, at the end of the summer both potential successors were still far from catching up with LDPR leader Zhirinovsky (10%) and Emergencies Minister Shoigu (7%).
The turning point came in the fall. In October, VTsIOM posted its first double-digit numbers for Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov: 10% and 11%, respectively. In the same month, the Levada Center reported an 11% confidence rating for both politicians. At the beginning of November, a poll conducted by VTsIOM showed that Vladimir Putin's nearest competitor was no longer Sergey Shoigu (11%), but Dmitry Medvedev (13%). Several weeks later, the deputy prime minister's confidence ratings reached an all-time high of 17%, and less than a week later the emergencies minister, after almost losing his hold on third place, found himself sharing the spot with Mr. Ivanov. The Levada Center's ratings show Mr. Shoigu still in second place behind Mr. Putin, but with three close competitors breathing down his neck: Messrs. Medvedev, Ivanov, and Zhirinovsky. Even the November poll by the conservative FOM recorded a record-high result for Dmitry Medvedev, putting him in third place behind Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Motives and Marks
The sociologists occasionally supplement the confidence ratings with special polls focusing on the activities of individual politicians. For example, in November VTsIOM carried out a research project called "Political Portrait," which elucidated the opinions held by ordinary Russians about several politicians, including Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Ivanov. The project revealed that the average citizen's level of confidence in Mr. Putin's potential successors is not directly tied to his or her familiarity with the politicians' work in practice. Of the respondents, only 20% closely follow Dmitry Medvedev, while 24% said they paid particular attention to the work of Sergey Ivanov. On the other hand, there was a sharp drop over the last six months in the number of respondents who said they knew nothing about the politicians in question. In April, a poll by VTsIOM found that 23% of respondents had not heard of Sergey Ivanov, and 42% had never heard of Dmitry Medvedev. By November, however, those numbers had dropped to 8 and 9%, respectively. Apparently the efforts of the state television channels, whose news broadcasters and political analysts relentlessly report on the doings of both potential successors, have been successful.
Opinions vary among Russians concerning the values that each potential successor is seen as upholding. For example, both candidates are generally considered supporters of "strengthening the state, stability, and order," but 47% of respondents have confidence that the defense minister shares their values, while only 34% think so about the first deputy prime minister. Thus, if the president thinks that his successor should be a man more inclined to rule with an iron hand, then Sergey Ivanov's chances increase considerably. On the other side of the values spectrum, representing themselves in the elections as defenders of the poor and downtrodden is not likely to be a successful strategy for any of these politicians: only 8% of Russians would call Dmitry Medvedev a champion of social equality, and that number is still lower for Sergey Ivanov – around 5%. In general, respondents found it difficult to evaluate the ideological outlooks of the two potential successors: 41% of respondents who preferred Dmitry Medvedev and 32% of those who focused on Sergey Ivanov replied that they could not answer this question. Of those who had concrete opinions on the matter, 13% believe that Dmitry Medvedev represents the left side of the political spectrum (i.e., that he makes social equality a priority in government), 28% consider him to be on the right (a supporter of the free market and democracy), and 5% called him a "Russian patriot" (a defender of Russia's national values). Sergey Ivanov is considered to be on the left by 14% of respondents and on the right by 35%. He is described as a Russian patriot by 7% of those who spoke in his favor.
From such a variegated picture, two main conclusions can be drawn. First, the presidential candidates' ideological viewpoint and party affiliation remain uninteresting to the majority of the electorate. In the elections, the voters will be led chiefly by other, more tangible considerations: for example, popular beliefs of who will govern with a firm hand. Secondly, by all appearances, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov are exceptionally far-sighted men who do not kowtow to either of the ruling parties, although the political rumor mill has repeatedly pushed them as members or even leaders of either United Russia or A Just Russia.
Outsiders
In the year to come, the wide gap already separating both potential successors from their nearest competitors will undoubtedly continue to grow. In any case, not one of their competitors has thus far given the pundits any reason to think that his confidence ratings are likely to climb any time soon.
The numbers for Sergey Shoigu, for example, remain stagnant: VTsIOM gave him around 15%; the Levada Center, slightly higher at 18%; and FOM an abysmal 7%. In principle, Russia's top "first responder" in emergencies could still have a shot at presidential succession, but only because he possesses the reputation, dear to many among the electorate, of being a man of action and the most apolitical minister. In 1999, he turned down the leadership of the pro-Kremlin Unity party, and in 2001 he similarly refused an offer to become co-chairman of the high council of United Russia. But given that Mr. Shoigu does not have a background in the intelligence services and did not study on St. Petersburg State University's faculty of law with the current president, he has no chance of overtaking his former colleagues from the Emergencies Ministry.
The 10-13 percentage points regularly garnered by Vladimir Zhirinovsky in confidence ratings also could potentially serve as a minimum basis from which to launch a bid for the presidency. But the leader of the LDPR has different goals in mind: periodically he argues quixotically for initiatives that, on first glance, seem destined to fail (such as direct appointment of governors or a shift to elections to the State Duma by party lists alone) but that later turn out to be textbooks for action for the Putin government. Also, in any election the leader of the liberal democrats consistently garners a respectable number of votes from protesting factions in the electorate whom he has lured away from less amenable opposition figures. Mr. Zhirinovsky himself will presumably cast his role in the 2008 elections as a "model of an alternative candidate" – assuming, of course, that the circumstances of the elections do not require the party to put a simpler candidate on the ballot, such as 2004's Oleg Malyshkin.
There is nothing much to be said about any of the other politicians who appear in the confidence ratings. The ratings for Russian Communist Party (KPRF) First Secretary Gennady Zyuganov hover somewhere around 6 to 8%. At the beginning of 2006, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov – capitalizing on a period when he was one of the sharpest critics of Kremlin politics – received between 11-13%, but he soon began to be viewed by the public as the "Father of All Muscovites," an ironic reference to the now-deceased dictator of Turkmenistan, whose pervasive cult of personality painted him as Turkmenbashi, the "Father of All Turkmen." As a result, Mr. Luzhkov is no longer seen as the potential president that he was in the late 1990s.
With regard to the remaining politicians in the rankings, only two stand out at all, and then only on the strength of the authority they wield, which automatically means they are included in the list of possible successors. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov returned consistently stable results in the ratings game throughout last year, but at an exceptionally low level (4-5%), which solidifies his reputation as the "technical" prime minister – a populist he is not. Meanwhile, the leader of the ruling United Russia party and speaker of the State Duma, Boris Gryzlov, who has also sometimes been included by analysts as a potential presidential candidate, cannot even boast of consistency: according to different poll versions, confidence in his performance among the Russian electorate wavers between 2 and 6%.
Dmitry Kamyshev
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