changes in russian nationalist public opinion 2013–14said they would vote for Putin now go up, but so did the share
who said they had voted for Putin in 2012. In the 2013 survey,
39 per cent said they had voted for him in the 2012 presidential
contest, whereas by 2014 a whopping 59 per cent claimed they
had cast their vote for him. This need not reflect fear, however:
there is a well- known tendency for people to self- identify with
winners after the fact, so the surge in people’s self- reported
earlier support for Putin could also reflect the simple desire
to align themselves, vis- à- vis the survey interviewer, with the
highly popular winner. In any case, what we find is clearly evi-
dence of a massive ‘rally- around- the- leader’ effect of some kind
or other.
There is some evidence that this rally- around- the- leader effect
Figure 7.2 ‘If presidential elections were held today, for whom would you
vote?’ (estimated percentage of entire adult population)