Sobyanin Support Falls 11% in Latest Poll

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 16, 2013) The latest poll shows that support for acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin slid 11 percentage points, a substantial fall that accompanies better showings from his opponents in the upcoming mayoral election.

A survey conducted by Synovate Comcon between Aug. 8 and 14 found that Sobyanin’s support fell from 74.6 percent to 63.5 percent among Muscovites that have already decided who they will vote for on Sept. 8. RPR-Parnas’s Alexei Navalny’s expected percentage of the electorate rose to 19.9 percent, five points higher than the previous week.

The Communist Party’s Ivan Melnikov is the third most popular candidate and his support rose two points to 7.8 percent. Just Russia’s Nikolai Levichev and Mikhail Degtyarev of the Liberal Democratic Party saw similar small increases, each receiving 2.3 percent.

Yabloko’s Sergei Mitrokhin has maintained a constant 4.2 percent.

Despite having the second-highest level of support, Navalny was also the most controversial candidate in a survey published by VTsIOM on Aug. 14.

Sixty percent of voters ruled out the possibility of choosing Navalny, while only 25 percent said that they could potentially support him. Comparatively, 72 percent of voters would considering supporting Sobyanin.

VTsIOM predicted that Sobyanin will win in the first round of voting with 67.4 percent, Navalny will come in second with 13 percent and the remaining four candidates will each earn 6.5 percent or less.

The VTsIOM and Synovate Comcon surveys each questioned 1200 Muscovites and carried 3.9 percent and 2.5 percent margins of error respectively.