Dmitry Medvedev's and Vladimir Putin's approval ratings rebound.
After a slight dip in October, approval ratings for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have rebounded. This was shown by the latest poll conducted by the Public Opinion Fund (POF) whose results were published on Friday. The President's approval rating stands at 59% compared with 56% last week and the Prime Minister's rating is up from 66% to 70%. Along with these changes the number of those who mistrust Medvedev and Putin dropped to 12% and 9% respectively.
Analysts attribute the dip in their approval rating to the activities of the opposition in the wake of the October 11 election, but they are sure that confidence in the leaders will remain high.
POF President Alexander Oslon thinks that fluctuations in the approval ratings are caused by seasonal factors and other incidental reasons.
"Look at the overall trend: throughout the year Putin's rating has remained stable while trust in Medvevev has been inching upward," he told Gazeta. "There are no grounds for speculating about long-term trends. A similar drop occurred in September, but opinion polls are not accurate enough to give precise readings. We ask the opinion of 2000 randomly selected individuals. What's actually far more surprising is that each time the changes in opinion are very small."
President Medvedev touched upon the issue of trust in the incumbent administration in his Saturday interview with Der Spiegel. When his German interviewers reminded him of Putin's remark that he and Medvedev "would reach an agreement" as to which of them would enter the 2012 presidential race, Medvedev explained that what Putin meant to say was that if they were both still popular in the run-up to elections, then they would sit down and discuss who should run for president so as not to get in the other's way.
"He did not say that we would decide who would become the next president. That would have been ridiculous," Dmitri Medvedev concluded.