And it’s not as if Putin is a fixture on the annual list. He hasn’t received a single vote since 2010, and nobody cited him as their “most admired man” in seven of the last 10 years. His stronger showing in 2014 comes during a year in which he drew near-universal scorn for ordering the annexation of Crimea and sending troops into eastern Ukraine. At the time the survey was conducted earlier this month, the Russian ruble was collapsing.
“He’s in the news a lot, so he’s top-of-the-mind.”
“It is kind of puzzling that he’s in there,” said Jeffrey Jones, the managing editor of Gallup. He said that his team couldn’t see any demographic pattern in the respondents who named Putin, and they didn’t know for sure if people were listing him as a joke. While the longer list of more than 50 names that respondents volunteered included politically polarizing figures like Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, and Jesse Jackson, Putin had the worst standing in the U.S. of any of them (though Donald Trump also received a vote). In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in August, just four percent of respondents rated Putin positively.
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