James Hill for The New York Times / Vladimir V. Putin, running for president for a third time, at the United Russia Congress in Moscow. He is poised to win, but there is evidence of voter fatigue.
By ELLEN BARRY Published: November 27, 2011
MOSCOW — Two months after Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin revealed his intention to reclaim the Russian presidency, he returned on Sunday to the same podium, facing the same sea of rippling flags, to accept his party’s nomination.
But something important has changed in the intervening time, leaving the impression that the day of Mr. Putin’s first announcement, Sept. 24, will be the dividing line between two distinct periods in Russian political life.
It is now clear that instead of restoring public confidence in the political system, the announcement that Mr. Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev would switch jobs annoyed many Russians. Mr. Putin’s approval rating briefly dipped to 61 percent this month, high by international standards but lower than at any point in a decade.
Meanwhile, the governing party, United Russia, has had to scale back its expectations for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections, when it is likely to lose the two-thirds majority it has held since 2007.
The announcement, in other words, seems to have had an unintended negative effect, a jarring outcome for a government that has proved itself adept at measuring and manipulating public opinion.
“They can’t be blamed, based on their past data, for getting it wrong,” said Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar who is studying the role of public opinion in Russian politics. “But something has changed. The biggest problem is that people have gotten fed up with them. If you look at long-serving leaders like Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, you see that their ratings tank in the latter half of the decade. It’s like the seven-year itch of politics.”
The Putin era is in its 12th year. Mr. Putin, who first became acting president in 1999, was elected to the job in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. Constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, he became prime minister in 2008 and was succeeded as president by his protégé, Mr. Medvedev.
But any suggestion of ennui was drowned out by lights and bunting at Sunday’s nominating convention, where an 11,000-seat hall rang with chants of “Pu-tin! Pu-tin! Pu-tin!”
Nominating him for a term that would end in 2018, speaker after speaker focused on Mr. Putin’s role in taming the economic and political disorder of the 1990s, a compelling but increasingly distant memory, especially for young voters. Voters complaining about the current system, Mr. Putin said, were forgetting how much worse things were before he came to power in 1999.
“When a regular person has to deal with financial problems or some other problems in his day-to-day life, when he faces corruption and other small problems, he doesn’t remember the massive problems” of the past, Mr. Putin said. “The indignation that person has is usually turned against the current authority.”
The convention was marked by ferocious attacks on the political opposition, including from Mr. Medvedev, who until recently had argued for greater political pluralism. Mr. Putin, for his part, suggested that signs of rising discontent were the result of covert meddling by Western governments.
“Representatives of some countries meet with those whom they pay money, the so-called grant recipients, give them instructions and guidance for what ‘work’ they need to do to influence the election campaign in our country,” he said.
These efforts, he said, were “money thrown at the wind, firstly, because Judas is not the most respected biblical figure among our people, and secondly, it would be better if they used this money to pay off their national debt and stop conducting an ineffective and costly foreign policy.”
Party officials seemed to hope that Mr. Putin would infuse the party with some of his own popularity by accepting its nomination, something he has never done before, preferring to run as an independent. His September announcement, intended to lay the groundwork for an easy campaign season, achieved nothing of the kind.
The backlash began within hours, when Finance Minister Aleksei L. Kudrin told reporters he would leave the government rather than report to Mr. Medvedev, whom Mr. Putin promised to install as prime minister. United Russia’s approval ratings, already in decline, began to fall faster, possibly because Mr. Putin’s name, long atop the party list, had been abruptly replaced by Mr. Medvedev’s.
And Mr. Putin, whose robust popularity is a cornerstone of his government’s claim on legitimacy, seems to be taking a hit himself. This has never been more apparent than it was a week ago, when mixed martial arts fans booed Mr. Putin when he climbed into the ring after a match to congratulate the victor, an incident that seemed to puncture some protective membrane around the prime minister.
Three days later, when Mr. Putin addressed Parliament, a number of opposition lawmakers remained seated, an unusual show of rebellion.
Ms. Hill, who is studying fluctuations in poll numbers, said that Mr. Putin’s lagging approval ratings were very unusual. In past political cycles, his popularity has always peaked just before Election Day; previous drops, meanwhile, have been associated with specific events, like financial setbacks or disasters. The current dynamic, she said, is reminiscent of the late years of Lady Thatcher or Helmut Kohl, who also enjoyed great popularity early on.
“By the end, the brand is shot; you can’t rebrand it,” she said. Russian authorities, she said, “seem too confident that they can pull it off.”
Another analyst, Aleksei Mukhin, said the September announcement was “an improvisation” and a tactical error.
The announcement displeased Mr. Medvedev’s supporters, who had hoped he would be allowed a second term, as well as those in Mr. Putin’s circle who did not want to report to Mr. Medvedev as prime minister, and members of United Russia, which needed him at the top of its parliamentary list, said Mr. Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, a research center in Moscow.
“Vladimir Putin has tried to create the illusion of stability and success, and warned others not to rock the boat,” Mr. Mukhin said. “In fact, it turned out the opposite way. He is the one who has rocked the boat.”
Many Russians were offended by Mr. Putin’s terse explanation that he and Mr. Medvedev had privately decided to switch places long ago, said Konstantin V. Remchukov, the editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a newspaper that is frequently critical of the government.
Since then, Mr. Putin has repeatedly explained that he needs to stay in power because Russia is entering a period of dangerous volatility that requires a steady hand. But that explanation is also meeting with skepticism, Mr. Remchukov said.
“We are coming to the point where people more and more often ask, ‘Are they really doing all this for stability, or is it that the year they leave power there would be some consequence, like a corruption investigation?’ ” Mr. Remchukov said. “It seems like they are pushed into a corner. Mr. Putin is pushed into a corner where he has no option but to preserve power.”
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting
In Russia, Putin’s Bid for Presidency Prompts Voter Ennui - NYTimes.com
