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When a poll shows that Russians support the war, people are saying that Russians are bad. But when a poll shows that Russians don’t support the war, people are questioning the poll.
This is because if you watch the war closely, you’ll see that russkies are supporting the war. It started with ~140k troops. Now, after losing about 150k to 300k, there are 400k troops. And there’s no active draft, too much of them are
collectorscontractors volunteered to go and kill Ukrainians.They volunteered because the monthly salary is more than most Russians earn in a year, especially in Southern/Eastern regions with no opportunities. Most sign up for the money, nothing more or less.
That’s a totally valid reason for invading another country and committing war crimes. Where can I sign up?
Not saying it’s valid or that we should excuse it etc. Simply pointing out that the fact that the majority of Russian soldiers currently in Ukraine are volunteers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all hyper-nationalists who love the war
Is it possible to even measure public opinion in a totalitarian society?
a totalitarian society
Afaik Russia isn’t totalitarian yet. They’re “only” authoritarian. In the latter there’s still a lot of private life left that isn’t dictated by the state and therefore a lot of room to wiggle in a survey. That obviously doesn’t mean you can get surveys with a western standard, but you can indeed gauge public opinion. Real authoritarian regimes are actually quite rare. I can’t think of any examples besides North Korea and Afghanistan that clearly fit at the moment.
There’s actually a few different methods that can give you at least more accurate results if not 100% accurate (which polling never really is in the first place.)
Eg. list experiments are a potentially useful method. You start off with a list of statements like “I like candy” or whatever and you ask people how many of those they agree with (ie. not which ones, just the amount), which gives you an approximate baseline. Then you give another set of people the same list but with eg. “I support the war in Ukraine” added on (hypothetical example, nobody please get pedantic about the wording), and you then compare the total number of agreed-on statements with your baseline. Here’s an example from LSE last year that used this method: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/04/06/do-russians-tell-the-truth-when-they-say-they-support-the-war-in-ukraine-evidence-from-a-list-experiment/
The poll was done a month ago, let’s see how it plays out after recent 170k mobilization.
And after the “election” Russia has coming up
How can anybody make an opinion poll in Russia that is even remotely accurate? This is just rubbish.
