September 2000, Changes in the Structure of the Electorate

Nine months have passed since Vladimir Putin assumed the post of president, and about two hundred days since his presidential powers were confirmed by a nationwide vote. Of course, this is not a long enough period to draw any far-reaching conclusions about the future of the "Putin regime." However, we can make a few observations on the behavior of our fickle "Brownian"1 electorate, the currents discernible in it, its response to national and global events, and its attitudes toward Putin's political course. Let us use for this purpose a survey conducted by VTsIOM [the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research] in September 2000 (N = 1,601).