Twenty-five days to go: measuring and interpreting the trends in public opinion during the 1993 Russian election campaign

White, S.L., Miller, W.L. and Heywood, P.M. (1996) Twenty-five days to go: measuring and interpreting the trends in public opinion during the 1993 Russian election campaign. Public Opinion Quarterly, 60(1), pp. 106-127. (doi: 10.1086/297741)

Abstract

The article reviews the trends in public opinion during the 1993 Russian election campaign. The Public Opinion Quarterly published a review by Vladimir Shlapentokh that considered the following explanations for the predictive failures of the polls published during the 1993 Russian election campaign. The election results were "rigged by provincial bureaucrats in favor of the opponents of democracy." Fear of the regime: "Russian respondents may still be subject to fear of the dominant regime and a desire to demonstrate conformity." Broadly speaking Shlapentokh argued in favor of methodological propositions. Although these surveys were not made public at the time of the election, they strongly support the late swing hypothesis. Compared with official census figures, gender, rurality, and region were very accurate, though--as is usual--the young were slightly underrepresented and the highly educated were slightly overrepresented. Age and education were correlated with voting preferences; however, the young were more likely than average to vote for Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and less likely than average to vote Communist, while the highly educated were particularly likely to vote for Gaidar's Russia's Choice and unlikely to vote LDP.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Miller, Professor William and White, Professor Stephen
• Authors: White, S.L., Miller, W.L., and Heywood, P.M.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Journal Name: Public Opinion Quarterly
• Journal Abbr.: Public Opin. Q.
• ISSN: 0033-362X
• ISSN (Online): 1537-5331