Russians getting ever more annoyed about daylight savings abolition – poll

February 20, 2013 JRL Russia List Life in Russia, Culture, Arts, Population Disaster, Demographics

(Interfax – February 19, 2013)

The decision to abolish daylight savings time, taken in June 2011 under then-President Dmitriy Medvedev and hotly debated since its implementation, is becoming increasingly more annoying for Russians, a survey by the pro-Kremlin All-Russia Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) pollster has found, the Interfax news agency reported on 19 February.

The poll, posted on the VTsIOM website (http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=113669) tracked responses about the preferred winter/summer time system at four points in time: August 2010, February 2012, September 2012 and February 2013.

In February 2013, 43 per cent of respondents said they preferred the old system – winter time in winter, and summer time in summer (24 per cent in September 2012, 31 per cent in February 2012 and 42 per cent in August 2010).

The share of people who would prefer winter time all year around dropped to 27 per cent in February 2013 (from 29 per cent in September 2012, but up from 18 per cent in August 2010 and 26 per cent in February 2012).

Meanwhile, there has been a nine per cent decline in the people who like year-round summer time – the system currently in place – from September 2012: 30 per cent then, versus 21 per cent now. This is also a decline from February 2012 (28 per cent) and August 2010 (27 per cent). In February 2013, only 9 per cent of people couldn’t commit to an answer.

Even more telling is the steady decline in the number of people who back the cancellation of daylight savings year-on-year: 73 per cent in February 2011, 44 per cent in February 2012 and 34 per cent in February 2013.

Understandably, this is matched by an increase in those who disapprove of the decision: 6 per cent in February 2011, 22 per cent in February 2012 and 32 per cent in February 2013.

The share of those who are indifferent to it has seen little change in the past year (29 per cent in February 2013 against 28 per cent in February 2012), nevertheless rising by 11 percentage points since February 2011 (18 per cent).

The poll was carried out on 9 and 10 February and involved 1,600 people in 138 settlements across 46 Russian regions. The margin of error does not exceed 3.4 per cent.