A majority of Russians plan to vote in the 2018 presidential election
According to a VTsIOM public opinion survey, 52.5 percent of Russians will certainly vote in the presidential election in March 2018, while another 17.4 percent said they'll most likely turn out, Vedomosti reports.
Another 16.3 percent of Russians are undecided and will make a decision closer to the elections, and 6.9 percent said they won't go to the polls at all.
Among those not planning to vote, about one-third said they don't see any point in the election because "everything has been decided." Another 21 percent found it difficult to answer why they don't want to vote, and 18 percent said they're simply not interested in elections. Finally, 8 percent of Russians don't believe in fair elections.
The poll was conducted from Feb. 22 to 28 involving 1,600 respondents.
In March, the head of the Federation Council's Committee on Constitutional Legislation, Andrei Klishas, and member of the Federation Council, Anatoly Shirokov, submitted a bill to the State Duma that eased the rules for holding elections.