You're reading: Poll: Over 40 percent of Russians do not believe elections are fair

Moscow - More than 41 percent of Russians think that elections in their home country are not fair. The percentage reaches 58.8 percent in St. Petersburg, General Director of the Institute for Priority Regional Projects Nikolai Mironov said.

A rather high percentage, 41.4 percent, believes that Russian elections are not fair. Notably, 58.8 percent of St. Petersburg respondents called the elections unfair and only 3 percent claimed the opposite,” Mironov said at a press conference on Feb. 26, presenting outcomes of an opinion poll about public trust in opposition forces. The poll was held in view of the March 1 rally of the opposition.

Yet 54.3 percent believe that elections are absolutely fair or rather fair than not, he said.

“Most believers in fair elections are middle aged respondents while the younger generation tends to call elections unfair. People with secondary general education have faith in fair elections (57.5 percent), their faith is shared by fewer people with higher education,” he said.

As to whether the government should resign, most respondents support a partial reshuffle of the cabinet, Mironov said.

Some 6.5 percent of the respondents said a government resignation was a necessity, 15.4 percent declared the government should not resign because it was effective enough, 27.6 percent claimed that a government resignation would change nothing or would even destabilize the situation, and 46.2 percent called for dismissing particular ministers rather than the entire government. A total 3.5 percent were undecided.

“At the same time, 56.9 percent of respondents supported the appointment of opposition party members to the government, and 30.8 percent opposed that idea,” Mironov said.

Respondents mostly mentioned Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov (45.3 percent), Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky (43.2 percent) and A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov (23.1 percent) amongst candidates for the government they would support.

United Russia was mentioned by 6.7 percent, opposition activist Alexei Navalny by 2.3 percent, Grigory Yavlinsky and the Yabloko party by 2.1 percent, and businessman Mikhail Prokhorov and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin by 1.9 percent. Less than 1 percent mentioned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Nemtsov and RPR-PARNAS, Irina Khakamada and others. The answer “all parties” was given by 2.3 percent of respondents.

The Institute for Priority Regional Projects interviewed 1,600 Russians older than 18 in 120 populated localities in 43 constituent territories in February 2015, Mironov said. The margin of error is under 3.6 percent.