Vladimir Putin Is The Most Influential Person In The World, Time Readers Say
By Karoun Demirjian April 14 at 8:21 AM
Putin has won the Time 100 reader's poll. (Reuters)
MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin is the most interesting person in the world – according to Time readers, at least.
The Russian president won the magazine readers’ poll for who should top its annual list of the world’s 100 most influential figures, edging out Lee Chae-rin – a member of the South Korean pop group 2NE1 who is better known as "CL" – to claim the top spot with a whopping 6.95 percent of the vote Monday night.
He was the only world leader to place in the top five, an echelon that was otherwise the fiefdom of female pop stars, including Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Taylor Swift.
What this says about the cultural and political leanings of Time readers voting in the poll is unclear. Putin is not a pop icon, but the world does have a particularly acute obsession with seeing him shirtless.
It is also difficult to qualitatively compare the contributions Putin and his closest competitors for Time’s top berth had on the world in 2014. For example, Putin may have completed the annexation of Crimea and led Russia into a period of the worst relations it has experienced with the West since the end of the Soviet Union, but Swift completed the transition from country to pop in a chart-topping album named after the year of her birth – which also happens to be the year the Berlin Wall came down.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/14/putin-bests-pop-stars-to-win-the-time-100-readers-poll/
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