Political portraying as a method allows to get a full knowledge of political leader and to predict its behavior and the effectiveness of interaction with other policies has a considerable heuristic potential In this article the author analyzes the causes of emergence method of portraiture in Russian science. The reason of its need in the method, the author sees significant changes to the political system and the acquisition of new specific features. In addition, the article considers the essence of portraiture as a research strategy and some of its methods. Examples of the application of the portraiture of domestic and foreign researchers. As these examples used the work “the Governors of new Russia” of N. Zenkovich, revealing the potential of portraiture for analysis not only of elite groups, but to characterize the stage of development of the political system as a whole. An example of using the method of portraiture in political forecasting is the work of K. de and J. Landshire Midlife "the Role of personality in politics in the European Union", where scientists on the basis of a comparison of psychological portraits of the three leaders of the European Union came to conclusion about the effectiveness of their future communication. In the end of the article the author made conclusion about the adequacy of the method of portraiture for the analysis of political elites and prospects of application of this method in political science.
