The popularity rating of the centrist conservative United Russia party has reached this year’s high so far of 51.1 percent, with nationalist party LDPR and Communists taking second and third places respectively, according to VTSIOM.
“United Russia’s electoral rating fell to 48.7 percent in early February but it was on the increase throughout the month and in February 20-26 reached 51.1 percent,” reads the state-run polling agency’s report released on Thursday.
On the same week the average electoral rating of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia was 12.9 percent and for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in was 10.9 percent, the report reads.
In the same research, VTSIOM evaluated the public’s trust of politicians. President Vladimir Putin ranked first with 52.6 percent, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was second with 21.1 percent and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ranked third with 18.4 percent.
Opposition politicians, such as the head of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov and the leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky topped the ‘anti-trust rating’ – 10.6 and 26 percent of respondents respectively said they did not find their statements credible.
Meanwhile, 86.1 percent of Russians said that they approved of the president’s work and this was the highest value in this category in 2017. Also, 60 percent of respondents said that they approved of the prime minister’s work and 64 percent approved of the work of the cabinet as a whole.
In late December 2016, Putin’s approval rating was the highest recorded in that year, reaching 86.8 percent. The only higher rating Putin has achieved was registered only in December 2014 – back then it reached 89 percent.
Also in December 2016, 48 percent of Russians said they supported United Russia party with its closest contenders being LDPR with a 12 percent rating and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with 8.8 percent.