Russian government-funded Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) has changed the method of the survey it used to gauge the confidence of Russians in the government after the rating of Russian President Vladimir Putin fell to a historic low, reports the Current Time news outlet.

Before that, sociologists asked Russians to answer an open-ended question, "Who is the politician you trust?". Now they added a closed question, "Do you trust Vladimir Putin?"

According to published reports, the confidence level in the President, calculated under the old and the new methodology differs dramatically. According to the new method of data collection, Putin's score was 72.3%.  23.7% of respondents expressed lack of confidence in the Russian President. According to the old way of calculation, when respondents were asked to specify the name of the politician they trust, the rating of the President in May 2019 was 31.2%. It was the lowest score in 13 years.

A few days after the publication of the survey results , Press Secretary of President Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin is waiting for VCIOM's explanation about "the data correlation."

The approval rating of the government in Russia began to decline after the Kremlin decided to increase the retirement age. In the autumn of 2018, the report of the Levada Center said that the population trust in Putin was 58%.

Then, Putin distanced himself from the retirement reform, placing the primary responsibility on the government but even that didn't improve his rating.

According to VCIOM, at the end of January, Russians confidence in Putin fell to the lowest level in 13 years.

In 2015, Putin's trust rating was 80%, in 2016 - 74%, in 2017 - 75%.

  Russia, Putin, VCIOM

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