It’s often been said that all politics is local. The validity of that statement may, of course, be context-specific, but there is clearly at least a degree of truth in it – not least in the UK, where the first-past-the-post electoral system institutionalises the importance of local vote share. Taxes, on the other hand, aren’t […]
This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Though the financial crisis had already been underway for over a year, both in terms of the seizing up of credit and money markets and the wider economic impact, Lehman’s collapse was a pivotal moment. It prompted, among other things, state intervention and […]
So far the CapX battle of ideas polling series has considered attitudes to ideologies, business and trade. For the fourth instalment, we look at taxation. Fiscal policy has been at the heart of economic debates in recent years, with the question of how to balance the books – in other words, the appropriate mix of […]
Having looked at public opinion on different economic systems and big business, the third part in the CapX battle of ideas polling series explores attitudes towards markets that cross national borders. International trade has existed for as long as international travel has, and it matters. Trade has made the world richer and been held responsible for the building […]
The first instalment in CapX’s series on the battle of economic ideas and public opinion looked at attitudes towards abstract ideas like capitalism and socialism. This week we focus on a more specific battleground: attitudes to business. Rightly or wrongly, people associate business with capitalism. In many cases they may even treat the two as synonymous. And […]
We hear a lot about what the public thinks about day-to-day, week-to-week politics, via voting intention polling, leader ratings and the like. Topical issues like Brexit as well as scandals and specific policies are also polled extensively. When it comes to the bigger picture, recent discussion of more fundamental concepts has become dominated by the […]
The impact of technology in general, and the internet in particular, has clearly been substantial in many areas of our lives. And while there are plenty of things to dislike about social media, the democratisation of debate – a free market in ideas – is clearly a good thing. Yet there is one aspect of […]
Polls say the public wants another Brexit referendum. They also show that the public doesn’t want another referendum. We’re in a situation where polls say a lot of different things. As is often the case, people on both sides of the debate are guilty of cherry-picking; creating a misleading impression by choosing only favourable evidence. […]
Mention demographic change in present-day Britain and, for the most part, people will think of the substantial post-2004 immigration from Eastern Europe. But there is another trend, driven both by recent and historical non-European migration, that is more politically and electorally relevant than many realise. Britain’s electoral system has meant that the voting behaviour of […]
A few weeks ago I wrote about how sudden swings in voting intention polls don’t happen very often. But amid the fallout from Chequers, now we have an example of such a move. There have so far been four published polls with fieldwork after the Boris Johnson and David Davis resignations. The first of YouGov’s […]
With President Trump arriving on our shores today, what better time to take stock of what the public on both sides of the Atlantic really think of this one-man controversy generator? For those more familiar with parliamentary systems, the main political barometers away from election time tend to be rather different in the United States. […]
Bashing forecasts and forecasting seems to be in vogue lately. Not only have recent years seen a number of political upsets, but the current World Cup has seen similarly notable surprises (and not just England winning a penalty shootout). But is the criticism of forecasting fair? Should we junk them and bring back Paul the […]
One of the interesting things about polling is that it provides opportunities to test which stereotypes about the views of different groups hold true in reality, and which are just lazy assumptions. Coffee consumption seems to be one area prone to such pigeonholing. American political debate has long had the pejorative “latte liberal” tag. And […]
Ever since the EU referendum two years ago, the debate about why we voted to Leave has raged on. Predictably, the result has been interpreted in many different ways and often spun to suit particular narratives. However, the debate has been fairly light on data, partly because with no equivalent of the British Election Study’s […]
Westminster by-elections are strange beasts. They attract a level of political and media interest that usually far outweighs the electoral significance of a single seat. Their impact is primarily on the wider narrative, and sometimes on internal party dynamics. Because of this, campaigning is often intense, as much of Westminster descends on a constituency, temporarily […]
Where does public opinion stand on political correctness? We asked the public how they felt about political correctness, among other topics, on a five-point scale ranging between “Not gone nearly far enough” and “Gone much too far”. Sixty-six per cent think political correctness has gone either much too far (42 per cent) or a little […]
Anyone who pays even a passing attention to opinion polls will have heard about the margin of error. For those of us who use social media regularly, it’s very often cited by someone trying to downplay a poll move or finding that’s unfavourable to their party or preferred narrative. But it represents something important – […]
Imagine being on an island where more than one in five people have never heard of Cambridge Analytica, gammon is an old-fashion pork cut, 78 per cent of people don’t talk about politics most days, and 99 per cent of people don’t watch Prime Minister’s Questions. In fact that island exists, and you may well […]
One fascinating theme when looking across the history of politics in general, and of public opinion in particular, is that the great philosophical debates of one era simply don’t crop up in another. Some of the great ideological clashes of the 1970s and 80s around the size of role of the state, for example, became […]
