Putin Poised to Retake Kremlin: Poll

If he wins on March 4, then Putin will become Russia's longest-serving leader since Leonid Brezhnev.

With just more than a week left before the election, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin boasts the support of two-thirds of likely voters, according to a major poll. The poll, undertaken by Russia's largest independent polling firm, Levada, shows that between 63 and 66 per cent of respondents said they'd be casting ballots for Putin. That's about a fifty-point lead over his closest competitor, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, and the rest of the presidential field, including billionaire playboy Mikhail Prokhorov. Putin's massive lead also flies in the face of street protests that rocked Moscow and St. Petersburg late last year, in which anti-Putin protesters and the typical assortment of youth and activists staged the biggest demonstrations since the fall of the Soviet Union. Should the poll results be reflected on election day on March 4, then Putin would get his third term as president after a brief interlude with Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin. However, it will be his first six-year term, as previously presidents had been limited to just four years in office.