Putin poised for victory

But pollsters see the strongman’s support waning

MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin will reclaim the Kremlin’s top job by winning two-thirds of the vote in a March presidential election, but he may face growing resentment against his rule, the last major poll before the vote showed on Friday.

Prime Minister Putin’s aides hope a big win in the March 4 presidential election will take the sting out of an urban protest movement which casts him as an authoritarian leader who rules through a corrupt and tightly controlled political system.

Russia’s 59-year-old leader faces a crisis of confidence in his rule, Russia’s biggest independent pollster said.

Putin will win 63-66 per cent of the vote, far ahead of his closest rival, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who will win 15 per cent of the vote, said Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Centre pollster.

“We shall have a weak authoritarian national leader,” Gudkov told reporters. “Even Putin’s victory in the first round will not change the situation.”

The Levada poll showed 80 per cent of Russians believed the former KGB spy would win his dream of returning to the Kremlin while 57 per cent still viewed him as “national leader,” the title of choice for Putin among supporters.

Victory in the election will give Putin a six-year term in the Kremlin.

He could then run again for another term from 2018 to 2024.

Russian stocks rose four per cent to a seven-month high, driven by greater confidence Putin will gain victory in the first round, averting weeks of further uncertainty.

But the Levada poll also reflected a mood change against Putin, showing a significant minority of Russians are unhappy with the political system crafted by Putin in the 12 years since he rose to power.

“We are seeing a growing crisis of confidence in the authorities which halted during the election campaign, it sort of froze,” Gudkov told reporters.

He said that Putin’s popularity could be hit hard if people felt that many of the election promises – including spending pledges of as much as five per cent of Russia’s $2.1 trillion 2012 gross domestic product – were not implemented.

“The most likely scenario is an undulating growth and then slump of the protest mood and a growth in social tensions,” said Gudkov.

More than one third of Russians supported street protests against vote stuffing though only 13 per cent were willing to take part in such rallies.

Just under one fifth said they supported the slogans “Russia without Putin” or “Putin should go.”

The protest leaders, a fragmented group of politicians, activists, journalists and bloggers, have called for a rerun of the Dec. 4 parliamentary election which they say was rigged to hand victory to Putin’s ruling party.

Levada, which has made a name for itself by publishing polls that contradict the Kremlin official view, is respected because its independence, though its last major poll before the Dec. 4 parliamentary election was about four percentage points out.