Opinion poll in the North Caucasus: before december 2007 Medvedev’s rating was 10%

Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Madvedev with 10% support throughout the region shared the third place. Sergei Ivanov enjoys the highest popularity in the capital of Karachaevo-Cherkessia (21%) and in the capital of Chechnya (14%), where Mevedev has only 10% and 2% of supporters respectively. In his turn, Dmitry Medvedev is more popular in Kabardino-Balkarian Nalchik (16%), where Ivanov has 10% support, and in Ingushetian Nazran (15%), where only 1% supported Ivanov. In the North Ossetian Vladikavkaz Ivanov (11%) is much more popular than Mevedev (5%). It should be noticed that S. Ivanov as presidential candidate beat Medvedev in Chechnya, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and North Ossetia while Medvedev beat Ivanov in Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan and Ingushetia.

The fifth most popular presidential candidate is Dmitry Kozak (3%), long-term federal center representative in the North Caucasus region. Kozak is the most popular among the residents of Vladikavkaz (10%) and Cherkessk (6%). Leaders of CPRf Zyuganov and LDPR Zhirinovsky, in spite of high awareness and noticeable popularity of their parties in the region, are not perceived by the overwhelming majority of the North Caucasus residents as suitable to be presidential candidates.
Quite interesting finding of the polls is high popularity in Chechnya of the former speaker of Russian Supreme Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov (13%), who beat Putin (11%). Only Zubkov (32%) and Ivanov (14%) proved to be more popular than Khasbulatov in Grozny. R. Khasbulatov enjoys some popularity also in Ingushetian Nazran (3%).

Results of the opinion polls suggest that before Medvedev was proclaimed Putin’s official “successor” his popularity in the North Caucasus region was just 10%, which was significantly lower than popularity of Putin and Zubkov.

Attitudes of almost half of those polled towards the presidential elections can be characterized as indifferentsince 47% are sure that elections are not going to have any impact on their republic. At the same time, 24% demonstarte cautious optimism thinking that elections would have positive (11%) or “rather positive” (13%) impact. 18% of respondents believe elections would have negative or “rather negative” consequences.

The most pessimistic attitudes towards presidential elections are characteristic for Dagestani Makhachkala, which is the capital of the most densely populated and ethinically diverse republic in the North Caucasus. Almost one-third (27%) of the population in Makhachkala think elections would result in negative or rather negative consequences while only 13% are optimist or rather optimistic about the impact of the elections.