Institutionalization of Navalny

By Vestnik Kavkaza

According to the resalts of the polls on the forthcoming elections for the mayor of Moscow, in the electoral rating there is an now undisputed leader – Acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin – with 54% willing to vote for him next Sunday. Second place is taken by the well-known opposition leader Alexei Navalny, with 9% of potential votes. The guilty verdict in the "Kirovles" case contributed to Navalny’s success: his fame grew from 71% to 80%. Third place is retained by the candidate from the Communist Party Ivan Melnikov, whose position in the last ten days doubled, from 2% to 4% of people ready to vote for him. Invited experts have rated the preferences of people in Moscow and made their predictions about how the campaign will evolve. Political analysts agreed that today's favourite, Sergei Sobyanin, will win with a wide margin, but the main plot now is who gets second place.
 
“Today Navalny is a well-known candidate for 30% of the respondents, 10 days ago, the share was 28%, that is, during this period his fame in this group grew by only 2%. But the share of those who "have heard something about him," have some information about him that there was such a person, that he is present on the political scene, has significantly increased,” Stepan Lvov, head of the Department of Social and Political Studies of VTSIOM, said. “His fame is growing, but at the same time how is the level of trust changing? The share of those who trust him out of all respondents increased from 14% to 17%, an additional three percentage points. The pace of the level of distrust is increasing. Exactly one-third, 33%, did not trust him on July 9-10. Last weekend, the day before yesterday, this figure reached 39%, which is a loss of six percent for Navalny in terms of voter confidence.”

“If we talk about Sobyanin, apparently, he got not only the electorate of "United Russia", but also part of the electorate of "Fair Russia" and of the Liberal Democratic Party, perhaps even a significant part. In particular, he apparently got part of Prokhorov’s electorate,” Igor Bunin, president of the Center for Political Technologies, thinks.“The main problem for Navalny is that his rivals are rapidly consolidating. His anti-rating is very high, and it is growing. This means that the majority, especially the conservative silent majority, which primarily will vote for Sobyanin, closes any possibility of a second round and of Navalny’s victory. The campaign is taking on quite different colours than could have been expected earlier, before Navalny. Previously, it would have been a typical campaign of zero years with a complete domination of the candidate from the ruling party. Now it is a lively, interesting campaign, which can serve as an example, from my point of view, for other regions.”

“The faster growth of the anti-rating is not just a reaction to a personality and its style. This is another derivative of the nature of the election,” Alexei Zudin, political scientist, is sure. “In Moscow, there is a mayoral election. People will choose the city authority. People will vote for a manager and business executive, though this may seem uninteresting. This fact, in addition to the identity of Navalny, works on the growth of his anti-rating, because he seems not to be recognized by many voters as a real candidate with a meaningful program. A crucial issue will be the way Alexei Navalny will accept his inevitable defeat in this election, because he cannot win under any circumstances, like any other candidate in the second and third level. So, it seems to me, that Alexei Navalny, this is just an assumption, is involved in these elections so that he can declare the results unfair and therefore, again, refresh the slogan of the protest movement, give it a new impetus.”

According to Konstantin Kostin, Chairman of the Civil Society Fund, the main intrigue of the Moscow elections to date is “who takes second place, who will be the main opposition force in the city of Moscow. This is especially important in view of the upcoming elections next year to the Moscow City Duma. And here, I think, the confrontation will be between the Communists, who traditionally have confirmed this status for 18 years and have always been second only to the ruling party, so to speak conventionally, and Alexei Navalny, who now definitely got a boost thanks to this story in the court of the Lenin district of Kirov.”

Yevgeni Minchenko, director of the International Institute of Political Expertise, sees the intrigue in different things: “A campaign "Navalny is a nationalist" has been launched already. This is a dangerous thing. If the campaign continues, it will play in favour of Navalny, not against him, because now he takes votes, roughly speaking, as a new candidate, but if there is a topic of nationalism, see the election results – the nationalist parties in Moscow traditionally have 6-7%, accordingly, I think on this subject Navalny loses one percent and a half of the liberal intelligentsia and gets 5-7% of nationalists. I think if this issue goes against him, it will be an error.”

“A lot will depend on whether Sergei Sobyanin will agree to take part in a debate and, accordingly, to meet face-to-face with his old partner,” Alexei Mukhin, general director of the Center for Political Information, thinks. “Shadow boxing is one thing, but the fight in the ring, which will cause very strong emotions among voters, is quite another. Now the intrigue continues. The headquarters of Sergei Sobyanin, as far as I know, has not yet given a clear answer regarding the participation of Sergei Sobyanin in debates. And it's unfortunate, because in fact Sobyanin has a chance to get votes even from Alexei Navalny. Alexei Navalny used to accuse the government that it was afraid, and I think, the government has taken the first step to see whom, in fact,  it should be scared of. The fight for second place, of course, is not very important. Ivan Melnikov and Alexei Navalny have, in my view, quite different political values. The first one is a functionary of the Communist Party, and the second one succeeded online and is now trying to institutionalize himself as a political figure. This is the only purpose of Alexei Navalny – not to win, of course, but to politically succeed. Because it's one thing to go to prison as blogger Navalny, and another thing to go there as a politician. I think the real prospect of imprisonment for Alexei Navalny will contribute to the drama of this campaign. This will be a campaign that will perhaps enter the annals of history of political technologies as an exception to the rule.”