{"id":5579,"date":"2022-03-12T10:19:07","date_gmt":"2022-03-12T18:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5579"},"modified":"2022-03-12T10:41:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-12T18:41:10","slug":"the-war-is-unpopular-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5579","title":{"rendered":"The War is Unpopular in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some people are claiming Russians support Putin’s war, citing polling data<\/a> to back this up, but let’s think about what those polls are saying for a moment in the broader political context.<\/p>\n

That context is the polling taking place in a country with basically no freedom of expression, a country where opposition media is banned<\/a>, a country where peaceful protesters are arrested and tortured<\/a>, a country where people are randomly accosted by police on the street<\/a> so that messages on their smartphones can be checked for anti-Putin sentiments.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you are a Russian. You know the risks involved in opposing the government. A random stranger approaches you on the street, or calls your phone, and claims to be an opinion researcher. S\/he asks you if you support or oppose the most significant policy<\/em> the government is currently engaged in. For all you know, he or she may in fact be a member of the FSB, Putin’s secret police. How do you answer?<\/p>\n

It’s pretty obvious that all<\/em> answers to any<\/em> poll about issues of consequence in a country like Russia are answers given under significant duress.<\/p>\n

As such, anything less than overwhelming<\/em> support for the government is basically meaningless for purposes of concluding actual support. By “overwhelming” I mean 95% at minimum<\/em>. Lukewarm support in the 60\u201370% range probably means significant overall opposition<\/em> to the issue being polled about (and is probably as opposition-y as one can reasonably hope to see).<\/p>\n

And the actual level of professed support for Putin’s war shown in that poll is\u2026 58%!<\/p>\n

Mark my words, the “majority” opinion expressed in that poll says the exact opposite of what a majority says in more normal circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people are claiming Russians support Putin’s war, citing polling data to back this up, but let’s think about what those polls are saying for a moment in the broader political context. That context is the polling taking place in a country with basically no freedom of expression, a country where opposition media is banned, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5579"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5585,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579\/revisions\/5585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}