The corruption of Putin's Approval

President Vladimir Putin's approval rating hit a 6 year high of 85.9 percent following Russia's involvement with the situation in Ukraine. In the poll 54 percent of those questioned said that there opinion on Putin's rule was impacted by the situation in Ukraine, and also the recent Victory Day celebration. The poll consisted of questioning 1600 people from 46 regions of Russia, targeting a large area of Russia. The poll was conducted by All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, established in 1987 it is owned by the state, and run by the government. The fact that it is a government run polling service make me skeptical of the legitimacy of the results the poll reached. the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion or VTSIOM for short, has been accused of having a special relationship with the Kremlin in the past. The Kremlin is to Russia what the White House is the the U.S. The New Times, a Russian Magazine published a series of reports called "Corruption in Russia" which gave insight on how the VTSIOM interpreted the results of surveys to better the Russian government. All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion started a lawsuit against The New Times, which after 10 months New Times lost, and the author had to pay fines. I spent some time trying to find what these articles said, or even what they were about, but I couldn't find anything. This could be from Russia's censoring of information and them wanting to keep the controversy of corruption hidden from outside countries. Looking at Obama's approval rating the highest he reached was 69 percent approval, and his current approval rating is 48 percent. The fact that Putin is involved in so many controversial decisions surrounding Crimea, I find it very surprising that his approval rating is 86%. Polling is important in creating a better government, that meets the needs of more people, but with the survey paid for by a government agency, who knows how corrupt the surveys are.

This graph doesn't show his current approval rating, but it shows the trend that it is increasing. Putin has been in power since May 7, 2000, and this graph shows his approval rating all 14 years of his power.  The drops in his rating look extreme, however the scale is large, and never do we see his approval rating drop below 60%. This is either the results corrupt, or people do approve of his rule. I am skeptical of his approval rating after I found out that the largest polling group in Russia is government funded, and I now don't know who can be trusted.