Putin really does have over 80% popularity. There were six other people running in the latest election. Anyone could have voted for them, but few did. A lot of the opposition is not coming from a much different place than Putin is. The Communists are Left-Putinists and Zhirinovsky is a Nationalist-Putinist. Two others are more or less Putinists.
There were two pro-Western liberals running. Anyone could have voted for them. But only 2% did. That’s because about 2% of the country supports the pro-Western liberals.
State TV put both of these liberals on debate shows all time during the campaign. In fact, state TV puts anti-Putin people on all the time. The format is debates. Now, it is argued that Putin puts these people on these TV debate shows so his supporters can show how idiotic the liberals are, but they are definitely on TV.
The Russian opposition is all over the Internet, and I think all those sites are free for Russians to browse. There is a lot of opposition press published, mostly in Europe in places like Finland. It’s just that Russians don’t want to go to those sites.
Anti-Putin newspapers publish every day and are on sale in Moscow every morning.
There are many anti-Putin people writing in magazines and especially in opinion journals. There are anti-Russian websites you can go to that quote opposition people writing in some journal the most outrageous anti-Putin nonsense. A different opposition person is quoted in a different journal every day on those sites.
Look, if you give the people what they want, you get massive support. Putin gives the Russian people what they want. He’s a Russian nationalists. The pro-Western liberals are seen by most Russians as traitors. Those opinion surveys are conducted by good Western firms and are anonymous and completely reliable. No one knows who talked to some pollster, and no one worries about being persecuted for talking to some pollster.
The latest election was free and fair. Navalsky was forbidden from running because he’s a criminal. I think last time he ran he won ~1%. The Opposition called for a boycott of the elections, but that’s helpful. The voting was fair, the ballot is secret, and the votes are counted accurately. There are cameras in polling places to guard against fraud. There was a bit of fraud this time around, but the Election Council threw most of those votes out. Putin got 73% of the vote, and he gets 82% approval in polls. His election totals and his popularity line up very well.
