Fun with polling: hawkish anti-Russian nationalism edition

Fun with polling: ask vague questions, get vague answers, interpret them arbitrarily. In this case, use it to bash Europeans' lack of enthusiasm for a wider war with Russia.

Anne Applebaum on the App Formerly Known As Twitter boosted this thread¹ from Russia opposition figure Leonid Volkov, chief of staff of the imprisoned kinda-sorta-liberal Russian political leader Alexey Navalny. Volkov is currently promoting an August 20 event on the theme "Putin Is A Killer." He has some polling figures for France and Germany.

One of his tables shows 3% of the French respondents rating Putin as a "predictable president," whatever that means.

The only other vaguely positive trait included is "tough but fair" (24%). Volkov highlights the fact that 45% rated Putin as a "strong leader." And takes this to mean, "If Putin would be eligible to run in France, he could compete!"

And this is supposed to be evidence that the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys, to use a famous phrase from Bart Simpson?

But don't Putin’s critics also see him as a "strong leader," even a dictator? The poll obviously allowed more than one answer per respondent. So someone could rate Putin as a "war criminal" (30%), a "murderer" (21%), and also a "strong leader."

Then Volkov shows these charts.

So, a straightforward reading of France's results: 43% somehow ("rather") positive, 57% negative or clueless.

Germany's results: somehow ("rather") positive 65%, 35% negative or clueless.

Then he shows a poll whose results he finds more to his liking:

Gosh, people in Lithuania - a former Soviet republic with 2.8 million (expected to decline to 2.4 million by 2023), 5% of them coded as ethnic Russians - have a negative impression of Vladimir Putin! Who would have guessed? (Actually, it's a "rather negative" impression, whatever that means.)

He also provides this one:

The point of Volkov's thread seems to be that the wimpy French and Germans need to absorb some Lithuanian wisdom and consider Russia the world's greatest evil. Or something along those lines.

This is silly. Yes, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all have dominant national narratives build around Russia as a potential danger to their national identity and sovereignty. The historical reasons for this are fairly easy to understand.

But do nuclear power France (pop.: 66.2 million) and economic powerhouse Germany (pop.: 85.9 million) have as much obvious incentive for a very negative view of Russia and its current leader as tiny Lithuania? Hardly.

To get an actually meaningful perspective using similar categories, a poll would have examine how the results break down along party lines, because far-right parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party in France and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are more-or-less Putinist/Orbanist parties.

And the Left Party in Germany not only has a faction that is critical of NATO’s position in the Russia-Ukraine War, but it still has constituents in eastern Germany who retain some kind of favorable impression of Russia that was promoted for two generations in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

In other words, this vague set of survey results basically tells us nothing important. Except Navalny supporters hate Putin and want France and Germany to adopt Polish- and Baltic-style narrow anti-Russian (or at least anti-Putin) nationalist attitudes.

Now, these are pretty obviously push-polls that Volkov is using to promote a political event. Nothing especially novel about that.

But how does Applebaum interpret Volkov’s thread and its charts?²

Or, more likely: it’s a superficial push-poll that says nothing meaningful about French or German attitudes on policy towards Russia. Or even about opinion in Lithuania, for that matter.

By the way, the actually elected governments in France and Germany have both lined up loyally behind the Biden Administration’s hard line on the Russia-Ukraine War.

1. Volkov, Leonid (2023): X (Twitter) post 08/15/2023. <

https://twitter.com/leonidvolkov/status/1691490561604071425?s=20>

(Accessed: 2023-16-08).

2. Applebaum, Anne (2023): X (Twitter) post 08/15/2023. <

https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1691492521392943104?s=20>

(Accessed: 2023-16-08).