Muscovites want to vote and prefer dog owners to cat owners

At the upcoming September municipal elections in Moscow, an increased (compared to previous campaigns) turnout at the level of 20% is expected. This was announced at a press conference on Tuesday by members of the expert council of the Moscow Public Chamber (OP) for social research and monitoring the mood of Muscovites.

According to the head of the sociological company Russian Field Artemy Vvedensky, such a forecast can be made from the results of the sixth wave of research on municipal elections in the capital (the proactive street poll Russian Field was conducted from August 10 to 12, 2022 among 2 thousand residents of Moscow; the statistical error does not exceed 2 ,19%). Among other things, respondents were asked whether they would take part in voting in the municipal elections if they were held next Sunday. “58% (of respondents.— “b”) said they would take part in the voting, of which 31% would definitely accept and 27% would rather accept. It is important to distinguish between declared turnout and real turnout, so naturally 58% will not take part. Approximate turnout is 31% minus one third, that is, about 20%,” Mr. Vvedensky explained.

Political scientist Natalia Eliseeva agreed that the turnout would be higher than in the previous municipal elections in 2017 (14.82%), but predicted even higher turnout – 30-40% of the voter list.

Member of the Moscow Civic Chamber, political scientist Alexander Asafov added that, according to the Civic Chamber’s yet-to-be-published report on the state of civil society, this year Muscovites are more concerned about local than political issues. And the election programs of candidates for municipal deputies are focused precisely on this request – in contrast to 2017, when the campaign contained much more general political theses, the expert noted.

In addition, Mr. Asafov presented a “portrait of an ideal municipal deputy”, formed on the basis of a survey in which 1,000 people participated. “If you summarize the results, it turns out that Muscovites prefer an experienced, working candidate who drives a car, shares traditional values ​​and prefers dogs over cats,” the political scientist said. Also, residents of the capital want their deputies to be over 45 years old and lead a healthy lifestyle, but they don’t care about their gender, marital status and appearance of the respondents, Alexander Asafov added: “From these data, I see that the conclusions that Muscovites are not politicized and they do not care about the political processes at the local level, they are not entirely correct.”

Municipal elections in Moscow will be held from 9 to 11 September in 125 out of 146 districts, including using remote electronic voting. According to their results, about 1.4 thousand deputy mandates will be distributed.

Kira Heifetz