Interfax: Mood of Russians does not improve over past year – poll

MOSCOW. Nov 19 (Interfax) – Most Russians describe the current economic status of the country and their families as mediocre and the number of negative opinions is rising, Levada Center told Interfax.

Fifty-four percent of the 1,603 respondents polled in October said that the country’s economic status was mediocre, 32% said it was bad, and 11% claimed that the Russian economy was in good shape.

Opinions about the economic status of home regions of the respondents did not differ much: 47% said it was mediocre, 39% said it was bad, and 13% said it was good.

More than a half of the respondents (59%) said that the material status of their families was average, 26% said it was bad, and 14% claimed to be living a rather good life.

Twenty-two percent of the respondents argued that the life of their families deteriorated over the past year, 21% said there had been an improvement, and 56% did not notice any change.

Same as the year ago, most respondents felt all right but their number decreased. Some 76% of the respondents said in 2012 they felt “normal” or even “wonderful”. The indicator dropped to 71% this fall.

Meanwhile, the share of respondents who feel tense, irritated, sad or even fearful has grown from 21% to 27%. Sadness and fear are mostly felt by pensioners (12%), citizens older than 55 (10%), people with primary education (6%), people with a low consumer status (13%) and Muscovites (6%), the sociologists said.

Most respondents who said they felt wonderful are students and schoolchildren (26%), businessmen (24%), housewives (19%), Russians younger than 25 (28%), people with secondary education (17%) and people with a high consumer status (20%).

The stable and normal mood was declared mostly by housewives (66%), businessmen (64%), students and schoolchildren (62%), men (61%), Russians aged from 25 to 40 (64%), people with higher and secondary education (60% each), people with a high consumer status (61%) and residents of cities with a population of 100,000 to 500,000 (61%).

[featured image is file photo of random crowd in Russia, not necessarily directly related to article subject matter]