Eleven percent of the pollees gave a "don't know" reply. Eighteen percent argued that Russia should take an economic course of its own. A year ago, twice as many respondents advocated an independent course for the Russian economy.
Forty-six percent of the interviewees assessed the state of the Russian economy as mediocre and 41 percent, as poor. The national economy is doing pretty well, according to ten percent, and just fine, according to one percent of those surveyed. Two percent replied by saying they didn't know.
The population of northwestern regions tends to have a more pessimistic outlook for the Russian economy, with fifty-four percent assessing the current economic performance as mediocre. Even more people are downbeat about their country's economic performance in the Volga Federal District, in central Russia. Here, 47 percent assessed it as poor and 39 percent, as mediocre. In Russia's Far East, as many as 60 percent of the interviewees said the national economy was presently in bad shape and not a single respondent described it as good or excellent.
Fifty-eight percent of the respondents aged between 18 and 24 said the Russian economy was underperforming while in the age group of 60 and above, 52 percent described it as very bad.
A sample of 1,500 adults in over a hundred regions across Russia were interviewed for this survey.
