А/О thing is much rarer than Г/Х thing if we speak of all Russia. Zuganov, for example, speaks with the southern variety of Г/Х, but I don't know any TV personality who has А/О issue in his/her speech. Speaking southern version of Г/Х is not considered uneducated - just regional difference - if your speech has no other stereotypical markers of southern villager. It is often about stereotypes, really. Put simply, Г/Х thing evokes southern village and А/О thing evokes nothern village in the mind of a "standard" Russian person, not too "southern", not too "northern" (both villages in European Russia, where the differences originated and evolved). I've written "southern" and "northern" because actual geographical details are more complicated and many people don't bother with them

А/О showcase:


Trio of soldiers (at 1:50 and many other times during the film) sings expressly in the northern version of А/О. They sound so authentic and funny to my ear!
Their "northern" А/О is explicitly strong. The hero of the film also has this pronunciation feature, but in a subtler form.

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_dialects has a map showing places of origin of primary Russian dialects as well as other information. It highlights the point that these primary pronunciation features formed before the 16-17th centuries and major Russian expansions. Since then Russia has conquered many lands to the south, the east and the north, while the dialects remained mostly in their original habitats, just slightly expanded. For example, in my hometown of Astrakhan (to the south-east of "southern" pronunciation belt, in the delta of the river Volga) there is no trace of Г/Х thing - our accent is rather standard, I think.