ОТНОШЕНИЕ ГРАЖДАН К В. ПУТИНУ И Д. МЕДВЕДЕВУ: ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ РЕЙТИНГИ (VS ДАННЫЕ ФОКУС-ГРУПП)

Abstract

Анализируются методические проблемы использования традиционных рейтингов политических лидеров при характеристике общественных настроений и показаны причины необходимости обращения к методу фокус-групп, позволяющему не только выяснить специфику отношения к политическим лидерам, но и уточнить мотивацию оценок респондентов. Приводятся результаты региональных опросов общественного мнения и фокус-групп, показывающих особенности установок населения в отношении Президента РФ и премьер-министра. ; The principle of complementarity of information obtained in the course of mass polls and focus groups provides reliable data about the attitude of people to political leaders, and permits to avoid typical drawbacks of these methods and limitations. The practice of using political ratings for public opinion manipulation, especially during election campaigns, is widely known. Political ratings as evaluation of political actors, institutions or events, obtained through focus group polls at a particular time and expressed in percentages or scores, provides important information about political preferences of different social groups. Not only individual evaluation may be presented as a rating (for example, 65% of respondents positively rated activity of politicians), but the list of objects of political evaluation, expressed in scores, places and percentages (for example, the rating of references to politicians in mass media). Technology of ratings based on public opinion polls is the use of direct questions to obtain information on preference of a political actor or an institution. With different question formulation in respect of the same politician there are different results. According to the data of "Political Petersburg" the project of The Center for Empirical Political Studies of The Faculty of Political Science, St. Petersburg State University, in 2011 estimates, made by Petersburgers on a 5-point scale, of activities of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are almost identical: 55% of respondents rated both politicians at "4" and "5" to. In 2012 activity of Putin was rated at "4" and "5" by 53.4%, "1" and "2" 16%, "3" 23.3%. Dmitry Medvedev for his work was given "4" and "5" by 44.5% of the respondents, "3" 29.9%, "1" and "2" 20%. Results of a series of focus groups (study in Leningrad Region, July-August 2011, more than 20 focus groups in 8 districts of Leningrad Region, both in regional cities, small towns and rural areas; the criterion for participants was their age (up to 45 years, older than 45 years); all social groups were represented in the sample) showed that attitude to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin differentiated from the extreme degree of acceptance to absolutely fierce criticism, which was connected with the overall evaluation of affairs in the country, the sources of political information used by respondents, the level of personal social well-being. The most important criterion of attitude to federal executive power, personified in the images of the president and the prime minister, is a subjective evaluation of presence or lack of the authorities' efforts to improve life quality of citizens of the Russian Federation. Some respondents believe that motivation of the head of the state and the prime minister is aimed not only at solving their personal financial problems, but has open anti-state character. In the minds of ordinary respondents the "president prime minister" tandem is united and has common purposes, unity of ideas on the development of Russia, and therefore the attitude to D. Medvedev is transferred to V. Putin and vice versa. Respondents did not separate functions of the executive power of federal and regional levels. They have extremely negative attitude to a principle of "manual management" of the country, because this style of activity demonstrates inefficiency of the management system of the state in general. Respondents do not see any alternative to V. Putin and D. Medvedev since "the field of politics" is cleansed.