MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. As many as 83.5% of Russians approve of the way Vladimir Putin is handling his job as president, while 52.4% have a positive view of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s activities, the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center said in a statement on Thursday.
"The president’s highest approval numbers were recorded on July 17-23 (84.1%), while in the last week of July, his approval rating was 83.5%," the statement reads. According to the pollster, respondents’ opinion on the activities of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his government haven’t changed much in the past few weeks. In the last week of July, 52.4% of those surveyed commented positively on Medvedev’s activities, while the government’s approval rating was at 57.5%.
The poll shows that as far as national politicians are concerned, Vladimir Putin has been enjoying the highest confidence rating (50.4% of respondents named him last week). Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu (15.7%) and leader of the Russian Liberal-Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky (13.6%) were also ranked in the top-3. At the same time, Zhirinovsky leads the no-confidence rating with around one-quarter of those polled (25.9% according to the recent data) saying they would not entrust him with the job of solving important state issues, the pollster added.
According to the survey’s results, the approval rating of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) dropped from 52.5% in June to 49.4% in July, while the rating of the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) sank from 57.3% to 54.4%.
Parties’ ratings
In July, the electoral rating of the United Russia party ranged from 47.9% to 50.6%, coming to an average of 50.3% in the last week of the month. Other parliamentary parties’ figures did not significantly change over the course of July. According to the data collected on July 24-30, 11.1% of respondents declared their support for the Liberal-Democratic Party, while 9.1% said they supported the Communist Party, and the A Just Russia party’s support rating came in at 5%.
As many as 600 people in no less than 80 Russian regions are questioned every day in nationwide polls. The final results contain average weekly numbers, and the margin of error does not exceed 1.9% at the 95% confidence level.