The Kremlin’s chosen candidate Dmitry Medvedev will win Russia’s presidential election. That is almost certain. It is certain too that he will face no serious competition. Why? The reason - or at least a big part of it - was on display two weeks ago at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.

In the departure lounge a group of about 10 people in their twenties was sipping champagne as they waited to board their flight. It was just after 9:00 a.m. and they had already polished off 7 bottles.

Russians’ penchant for drink is nothing new. It is not unusual to board an early-morning flight and be hit by a wall of vodka fumes. Some anxious flyers take a drink to ease their nerves.

What is new is that young, middle-class professionals like the group at the airport have the money to upgrade from vodka to champagne. And they were drinking the French stuff, not the ersatz “shampanskoye” made in Russia.

This economic feel-good factor is at the heart of Medvedev’s almost-inevitable victory in the March 2 election.

As President Vladimir Putin’s protégé, he is the heir to a system which Russians credit with overseeing the biggest boom in a generation.

Nearly everyone has seen their incomes rise.  Data from the state statistics service showed wages earned by Russians in December last year rose 30 percent against the same period in 2006. The average monthly wage is now around $530.

And Russians believe the good times will keep rolling. A survey by the Levada Centre pollster showed that 82 percent of Russians believed the economy would either grow stronger or stay as it is in the medium term, against only 14 percent who expected it would deteriorate.

The result of all this is that, come election time, Russians feel no need to change a team that has brought them relative prosperity.

There are, of course, clouds on the horizon. Some economists say inflation is in danger of getting out of control, and that it will only take a drop in the world oil price for the Russian economy to crash.

Opposition parties say behind the glitzy economic boom, the Kremlin is monopolising power and destroying democracy.

For many of the Russians I speak to, all that is a concern, but not for now. Asked what he thought about the Kremlin’s treatment of human rights and democratic freedoms, a Russian analyst with a major Western investment bank told me: “I don’t care about any of that stuff. It doesn’t affect my life.”