Sunday, October 11, 2009

What do Petersburgers really think? A quarrel

A week ago the main quarrel related to the Gazprom skyscraper had arisen from dueling polls of resident opinion. The Agency for Social Information obtained results showing that the plurality of Petersburgers favored the construction of the building (46%), while a minority (33%) were definitely against it. A separate poll by ToiOpinion found that, in answer to the question “Do you support the construction of a 400-meter building across from Smolny Cathedral?” 40% of respondents were definitely against and 26% were sooner against – yielding a result of roughly 66% per cent of residents against this specific construction on this specific site. ASI claims to have called 2000 subjects, while ToiOpinion called 1000 respondents.

Aleksandr Margolis, head of BOOPIiK, called the ASI poll “disinformation.” Roman Mogilevskii, head of the ASI, has threatened to sue those who have suggested that his poll was inaccurate. As Fontanka reported on September 30, Mogilevskii criticized ToiOpinion for using the word “skyscraper” in its survey questions, as well as the specific height of the proposed design; he claimed that “skyscraper is a word that has a negative connotation in our culture.” Unlike ToiOpinion, Mogilevskii has refused so far to release the questionnaire used by his team, so it is still difficult to assess his results.

Other respected polling agencies in Russia, such as BTsIOM and the Levada Center, did not conduct polls.

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