MOSCOW, March 04, 2008 Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents information on the differences between presidential ratings, obtained as a result of the survey conducted by VCIOM, election forecast conducted by VCIOM, exit poll and preliminary data provided Central Election Committee of the Russian Federation.

The main similarity between the presidential ratings created in different ways, consists in the fact that according to all of them, Dmitry Medvedev had a convincing victory in the first round of the presidential elections.

The data of the sociological survey provided by VCIOM consist in the distribution of answers that the respondents gave to the question "If you are planning to participate in the presidential elections, who of the presidential contenders would you vote for?" In this case, the distribution of answers provided not by all of the respondents, but only by those who were planning to participate in the elections is the one to give the more exact overview of what happened as a result of the elections. According to data obtained in the survey, conducted one week prior to the presidential elections, D. Medvedev could receive 71,0% of the votes, whereas G. Zyuganov and V. Zhirinovsky could get 9,4% and 9,0% respectively, and A. Bogdanovcould receive 0,6%.

Our forecast is a probabilistic model of the electoral behaviour, which does not only consider the proclaimed intentions of voters (we learn about these intentions from the data obtained in the course of the survey), but also their previous voting experience and motivation to vote. The forecast has been formed taking into account a series of factors, which consider the divergences between the contenders’ ratings, revealed in the course of opinion polls, and elections results. When working out the forecast, the following factors have also been taken into consideration: the different levels of voter turn out of the different contenders´ electorate, the "socially approved answers" phenomenon that part of respondents demonstrate, as well as the “rational voting" factor, i.e. partial shift of votes from the less popular contenders to the ones who have more chances to win the elections (as the respondents estimate).

The exit poll was conducted on March 2 at 1 000 polling districts in 62 constituent entities of the country. When creating the exit poll sample, we not only selected the respondents at the polling stations, but also the polling stations themselves. At the same time, the voting results of the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation that took place a short while ago were also taken into consideration. The number of people to be surveyed is not known beforehand, as it depends on the voter turn out and the polling station location. 186 066 people were surveyed on March 2 this year. At exits from polling stations, two interviewers addressed the people who have just voted with a question as to who they just gave their vote to, they also wrote down the respondent's age and sex; the second interviewer also calculated the quantity of people who came to vote.

VCIOM forecast and the data obtained as the result of the VCIOM exit poll are quite close to the preliminary election results published by the Central Election Committee (as of 10.00 of March 3, 2008, when protocol data of the election results at the 99.55% polling site commissions were already input into the GAS “Vybory”). According to the data provided by the Central Election Committee, Dmitry Medvedev obtains 70.23% of the vote, whereas VCIOM forecasted that he would receive a little more (72.9%), the data of the exit poll, however, show a little smaller share (70.1%). The second place belongs to G. Zyuganov, who received the votes of 17.76% of Russians (according to CEC); his electoral support is a little lower according to the forecast and exit poll and totals 15.0% and 16.8% respectively. V. Zhyrinovsky occupies the third place: the preliminary CEC data give him 9.37% of the vote, the VCIOM forecast and exit poll were a little more promising for him: 10.9% and 11.4% respectively. No more than 1.29% of voters supported A. Bogdanov(according to the Central Election Committee as of March 3), this result lies between the VCIOM forecast and the exit poll results (1.1% and 1.7% respectively).

The initiative All-Russia opinion poll was conducted by VCIOM on February 16-17 and 23-24. 1600 respondents were interviewed each time in 153 population areas of 46 regions of Russia. The statistical error does not exceed 3.4%.