Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor,
will win 71% of the votes in March's Russian presidential election,
state-owned pollster VTsIOM predicted.
Medvedev, who enjoys full Kremlin backing and blanket coverage in
state-owned media, has been consistently way ahead of his opponents
in all polls published to date.
In field work conducted from Jan 26-27 among 1,600 committed
Russian voters in 46 regions, VTsIOM predicted Communist Party
Leader Gennady Zyuganov in second place with 12.8%.
Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky was second with 11.5%.
Andrei Bogdanov of the tiny Democratic Party received 0.9% of the
predicted votes.
VTsIOM said the margin of error was 3.4% and predicted a 70.7%
turnout on March 2.
