Sociologists on specificity of polls in the North Caucasus

Opinion polls are based on an axiom that any person has his/her own opinion. The president of the Public Opinion Fund, Alexander Oslon, thinks that this statement is not trivial. “The idea of opinion polls was born in America at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century in a society of individualists. The first polls were conducted without sampling or representativeness, but when people were gathered and chose a judge, sheriff or mayor it was a poll. Since that time, European civilization, including Russia, has been following this path,” Oslon said, emphasizing that the level of individualism in Russia differs from that in the West due to differences in cultures and mentality.

In late 2011 the Public Opinion Fund conducted a poll among Russian citizens on the parliamentary elections and the developments which followed them. One third of Russia’s population hasn’t heard about the meeting on Bolotnaya Square on December 10. In Moscow, there were only 6% who hadn't heard about it. “Russia is a big country. Not everything that is well-known in Moscow is obvious to other Russian regions,” Alexander Oslon said. However, the information level is high: 36% of Russians know about the meeting and 29% of them have heard about it.

As for the North Caucasus, Alexander Oslon said that the main factor in holding polls in this region is the specificity of its culture. “When we try to find out whether an educated young woman will vote or not, we understand she will answer only in presence of her brother, father and grandfather. If they nod at the question addressed to her, she nods too,” the sociologist says. That is why, within all-Russian research, Public Opinion doesn’t conduct polls in the regions, which have such specificity. Oslon noted that voting takes place according to a deal between relatives, clan members, neighbors and friends. And their results differ from all-Russian ones. “It is not about falsification, it is about another mechanism, which motivates people on the election day,” he thinks.

As for the Stavropol and Krasnodar Territories, Alexander Oslon says there is no specificity. People vote expecting those in power will do something good or protesting against something bad done by those in power.He sees the differences in the results as being due to different social and political situations in the regions.