Russians assess the work of the present government positively. However they do believe that Putin should make staff changes after the inauguration.

MOSCOW, April 5, 2012. Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents the data describing how Russians assess the performance of Putin`s government; whether the government staff changes should be made after the inauguration of V.Putin.

Russians tend to evaluate the work of the government positively (66%). Those who think so are respondents who approve of the work of Putin as prime-minister (85%), supporters of United Russia party (87%) and rural area residents (71%). The share of those who negatively assess the performance of the government is 24%: they are basically those who are satisfied with the work of the prime-minister (64%), adherents of CPRF party (52%) and metropolitan residents (30%).

According to Russians, the current government is one of the most effective ones over the recent decade: 47% of respondents believe that it has performed better than the previous governments (only Putin`s government in 2000 got such a high record - 48%). However the overwhelming majority of respondents think that the present cabinet of ministers is neither better, nor worse (43%). Only 5% consider that the present government performed worse than the previous ones (to compare: the same assessment was given to the Fradkov`s cabinet of ministers in 2005 - 21%).

Those respondents who think that the present government has performed better than the previous governments are supporters of United Russia party (64%) and rural area residents (52%). Adherents of non-parliament parties (64%) and residents of million cities (55%) do not see any difference. Supporters of CPRF party believe that the work of the present government is worse than that of the previous governments (18%).  

The majority of Russians are confident that Putin should make staff changes in the Cabinet of ministers after his inauguration: 40% think that ministers should be partly changed; 37% think that the whole cabinet should be radically changed. Only 10% believe that the government structure should not be changed.

Those who believe that small staff changes should be made are basically supporters of Putin (49%) and United Russia (49%). They also think there is no need to reform the cabinet of ministers (14 and 16%, respectively). Those who think that the cabinet of ministers should be radically changed are supporters of LDPR party (54%) and V.Zhirinovsky (60%), CPRF (53%) and G.Zyuganov (58%), as well as non-parliament parties (58%), and M.Prokhorov (63%).

The initiative Russian opinion polls were conducted March 17-18 and April 1, 2012. 1600 respondents were interviewed at 138 sampling points in 46 regions of Russia. The margin of error does not exceed 3.4%.

Note: in the surveys of 1999, 2000 and 2005 the respondents assessed the work of the Government at the time of the survey.

Note: Using materials from the site www.wciom.ru or wciom.com, as well as distributed by VCIOM, the reference to the source (or hyperlink for the electronic media) is obligatory!