Russian elections have been severely compromised by allegations of fraud, which makes public opinion polls an important source of information about popular support for Vladimir Putin and his policies. Putin's high ratings as well as the wide use of polls by his administration suggest that his rule is essentially democratic. This paper challenges this view by discussing the specific conception of democratic representation behind polling practices. Far from being a perfect mode of representation, opinion polls are capable of manufacturing the political reality they represent. The paper demonstrates how Russian authorities use polls to replace referenda and to legitimize the results of elections and thereby exposes the representational machine that turns polls into an efficient tool for governance, maintaining the hegemony and promoting de-politicisation. The distinction between partial and total representation, drawn from Ernesto Laclau's work, serves to illuminate the cases when polls and official election returns actually diverge and shows how the legitimacy of a regime is secured by the politics of representation that leaves a significant part of the Russian population unrepresented.

中文翻译：

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通过民意管理：普京俄罗斯的代表政治和总统支持

欺诈指控严重损害了俄罗斯的选举，这使得民意调查成为有关民众支持弗拉基米尔·普京及其政策的重要信息来源。普京的高评价以及他的政府广泛使用民意调查表明，普京的统治本质上是民主的。本文通过讨论民意测验背后的民主代表制的具体概念来挑战这一观点。民意测验远非完美的代表方式，而是能够制造其所代表的政治现实。该文件展示了俄罗斯当局如何利用民意调查来代替全民公决并使选举结果合法化，从而揭示了将民意调查变成治理的有效工具的代表性机制，维持霸权并促进非政治化。根据埃内斯托·拉克劳（Ernesto Laclau）的著作得出的部分代表制与全部代表制之间的区别，有助于阐明民意测验与官方选举结果实际上发生分歧的情况，并显示出政权的合法性是如何通过代表政治保留了俄罗斯人很大一部分的。人口无人代表。