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Russia’s polling industry is gravely wrong. Here’s how to change it

By:   []

Date: 2021-09

Public expectations ahead of Russia’s parliamentary elections this month are, reading between the lines, low.

For many, the elections to the State Duma seem to have little bearing on what comes next. But while an opposition politician can respond by revealing evidence of election manipulation designed to reduce people’s interest in the vote, it falls to sociologists – of which I am one – to analyse and often criticise how the public opinion data was collected in the first place.

Alas, the basic tools used by Russian sociologists are imperfect even for measuring superficial public opinion – let alone capturing public sentiment.

Indeed, it is people’s deeper moods, not opinions – which are often superficial and distorted out of fear of giving a socially unacceptable response – that can signal the potential for political action, and how events in Russia may develop in the future.

A regularly used catch-all term for these “moods” is public sentiment. And to describe and analyse these sentiments, mass polls can be useful. As a rule, they produce a lot of quantitative data but are not, in fact, sociological research on their own. However, they can be used as a tool to test a sociological idea.

Socially desirable responses

Indeed, by observing how these polls are carried out in Russia today, we can come to the conclusion that mass polls are “corrupt” – in the sense of their institutional depravity.

This description can be applied for two reasons. First, the Russian state exercises excessive control of the country’s polling industry. Second, there are defects in the polling industry itself.

While the Russian presidential administration pressures pollsters to help respondents produce socially desirable responses, state propaganda conditions public opinion in various ways – from lies about Russia’s international “partners” and the country’s past to promoting a cult of Vladimir Putin.

With an undercurrent of fear hindering expression of socially undesirable opinions, respondents cannot provide sincere and informed answers. Thus the “absolute” numbers that Russian pollsters claim about public moods in the country – for example, the famous claim that 70% of Russians have a positive attitude towards Stalin’s role in history – hardly inspire confidence.
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