People value Putin as an experienced politician - expert

What determines a politician’s rating? The latest poll held by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) shows that President Vladimir Putin has the approval rating of 60 percent. It has been 60 percent for months now, amazingly stable and seemingly unaffected either by successes on the international stage or widespread flooding in the Far East or a controversial pension reform. Stability is what most Russians appreciate in Putin. About half of the respondents see him as an experienced politician capable of ensuring stability. Few people expect drastic improvements, but for many a bird in the hand is definitely more important now than two in the bush, Yevgeny Marchenko, Director of the International Institute for Political Expertise, told the Voice of Russia.

"It’s Putin’s fourteenth year in power, so naturally it would be strange if he were still being looked at as a ‘president of hope’. People value him as an experienced politician… For a man who has been in politics for so long, it sounds logical. It’s easy to be a hope if one is a newcomer, but after one ruled for fourteen years, the hopes are supposed to have already come true.”

Politicians have no time for a slow start. If a politician promises to do something, he must do it as quickly as possible, or his approval rating will fall as it happened to French President Francois Hollande, whose popularity has plummeted from 61 percent to 21 percent since he took office. A similar fate befell former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who replaced Silvio Berlusconi only to step down in a year or so after his rating dived from 71 percent to 20 percent.

The less one promises, the longer one rules. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel never promises "gold mountains” but prudently handles what already exists. For the Germans she is a "rock in a stormy sea”. As a result, she is now chancellor for the third successive term and has a stable approval rating of 50 percent. Confidence in the present, rather than the future – that’s what modern voters need, said Alexei Martynov, Director of the International Institute of Modern States.

"It’s good to think about the future, but we are living here and now. That comparison, a ‘rock in a stormy sea’, can also be applied to our situation: there is President Putin and there are lots of problems – economic and ethnic problems and a disturbing situation in the world… So naturally people care more about the present – how to earn money to support and educate their children, and so on,” he told the voice of Russia.

A robust and stable "today” makes people less worried about "tomorrow”. And then no temporary difficulties or natural calamities can shake their leader’s rating. By contrast, US President Barack Obama’s rating fluctuates depending on a rise or fall in gasoline prices or tornadoes or congressional debates.

The Americans are mostly preoccupied with their own life and care little for international relations. The latest decline in Obama’s rating followed two weeks of the US government shutdown.

Opinion polls show people can’t live without hope. Today all their hopes are about stability.