“The number of Russian citizens who support Russian President Vladimir Putin has risen to 86 percent, while a month ago it was 85 percent, according to the results of a survey carried out by the Levada Center, an independent Russian polling and sociological research organization” Ukraine Today reported.
Poll date: February 2015
Number of questioned people: 1,600
Number of regions: 46
The 86 percent support is a spectacular result, if you take into account that the number stood at 65 percent two years ago, well before the Crimea annexation and the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West.
In early December, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov commented on the surge in the president’s popularity in an interview with RT. Peskov said that in his opinion, `Putin did not need any publicity, bad or good, and the people’s love for Putin was a manifestation of their love for Russia’. [Putin’s Approval Rating Hits New Record High Of 85%, Poll Shows]
It’s also worth noting that Chinese President Xi Jinping has an approval rating of 94.8 percent!
Last year “The Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation co-sponsored a survey on global perceptions of international leaders (…) Both Putin and Xi had astonishingly high domestic approval ratings, with Xi at 9 out of 10 and Putin at 8.7 (for comparison, U.S. President Barack Obama scored 6.2). International perceptions, however, set Xi and Putin apart. The Russian President scored only a 6 when being evaluated by foreigners, dead last among the 10 leaders included in the survey. Xi got a 7.5, just edging out Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 7.3. Xi was viewed particularly favorably in Asian countries (except Japan and Vietnam), as well as Africa,” The Diplomat reported on December 20, 2014.
The Washington Post made the following note on the results:
It might be more surprising to some that Xi is well received abroad, especially in the West, where China’s efforts to project its soft power are often mocked. But as Anthony Saich, of the Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, concludes “responses are influenced by geopolitics.”
The extremely strong support results of the non-democratic leaders raise questions about their genuineness and whether they could be politically skewed by the local governing agencies impacting the polling research organizations.
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