Less than half of Russians would vote for President Vladimir Putin in a new presidential election, according to a closed state-run survey obtained by the RBC news website.
Putin won reelection with nearly 77 percent of the vote in March 2018, extending his presidency for another six-year term.
If the elections were held this Sunday, only 48 percent of Russians said they would vote for Putin, according to the state-run FOM polling agency’s survey cited by RBC on Wednesday.
Putin’s electoral rating averaged 47 percent over the past year, public data on FOM’s website said.
FOM conducted the closed survey between mid-March and early April at the request of the Kremlin, RBC reported.
Another state-funded polling agency said last week that trust in Putin has dropped to 13-year lows.
Russians “don’t believe that life tomorrow will be better than today,” Valery Fyodorov, the head of the state-funded VTsIOM pollster that published last week’s poll, told Dozhd TV regarding the president’s low trust levels.
