Unemployment, low wages and distrust of authorities among top Armenians' concerns Poll findings

The International Republican Institute, a US-based non-profit organisation with a long history of polling in Armenia, recently conducted another survey.

Surveyors carried out telephone interviews with a representative sample of over 1,500 adults across Armenia in December last year, Civilnet reports.

The survey results have a margin of error of 2.5 per cent.

Most Armenians continue to name “national security and border issues” as the most pressing issue facing their country.

Meanwhile, when asked to identify the most important problem facing their household, respondents most often selected bread-and-butter issues, like high unemployment and low wages.

To that point, the majority of those polled described their family’s economic situation as “having enough money for food and clothes, but not enough money to buy expensive things.” Only one in 20 respondents said their family “can afford anything we want.”

Crucially, however, most Armenians have little faith in their elected representatives’ ability to tackle those problems.

A whopping three in five respondents said they trusted no politicians in the country, and nearly half said they would not vote, vote against all candidates, or intentionally spoil their ballot if elections were held now. Only about one in five said they would vote for the ruling Civil Contract party, with every other party garnering 3 per cent support or less.

Notably, the share of respondents who said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had not had any successes in the past half year was greater than the portion that was able to name any policy achievement.

Public faith in key institutions also remains relatively low.

The army remains Armenia’s most trusted institution, with almost two-thirds of respondents saying they were “somewhat or very satisfied” with it. 

Conversely, Armenia’s parliament retained its spot as the country’s least trusted body, with almost seven in ten respondents saying they were “somewhat or very dissatisfied” with it.

The survey also found that public opinion on Russia is growing increasingly unfavorable in Armenia.

For the first time, a majority of Armenians — two-thirds of those polled — said they considered their country’s relations with Russia “somewhat or very bad.” Strikingly, that figure was in the single digits less than five years ago.

Still, nearly half of those polled acknowledged Russia remains Armenia’s most important economic partner, even as most pointed to France, Iran, and the United States as their country’s main political and security partners on the world stage.