Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Demos poll: only 15% want to be part of "Big Society"

Here's what the think tank Demos said about their latest piece of research:

"Labour’s next leader needs to support public sector cuts and embrace the ‘Big Society’ agenda if they are to be heard by the public."

And here's what their polling showed that people actually thought about the 'Big Society' agenda:
















If you can't read that, the poll found that 35% of people said that "I'd like to be more active in my community but I don't have time what with the pressures of work and family", 19% 'it's not my job to look after my community, that's what we pay our taxes and elect politicians for", and 15% "I enjoy being active in my community and get involved whenever I have the time and feel it is worthwhile to do so". 25% picked "none of them", with 7% "don't know".

Funnily enough, these stats weren't included in Demos' press release. They've got a lot of media coverage for their claims that Labour needs to support cuts and back the Big Society, but their own polling doesn't support their claims. If a think tank commissions opinion polling, I think there is something quite dubious about only picking the results which fit with their prejudices. It makes me wonder what other inconvenient facts they decided not to release.

3 Comments:

At 5:08 pm , Anonymous tim f said...

Weird questions, too. I'd pick "I enjoy being active in my community and get involved whenever I have the time and feel it is worthwhile to do so" along with the 15% out of the options offered, but still oppose the cuts and big society agenda. We don't need to cut services to create things for volunteers to do, there are already plenty of ways community life expresses itself and room for more.

 
At 9:45 am , Anonymous Pete said...

Also the fact that their stats are only available on request is pretty dodgy frankly.

Oh, and the polling dates seem to be a longish time AFTER the surveyed people voted in the election, which surely means it's pretty bollocks to draw such strong conclusions from the data anyway - it reflects the impact of the first months of the coalition's media management on the opinions of people who *claim* to not have voted Labour, not what was in their minds at the time they voted.

 
At 4:15 am , Anonymous Anonymous said...

who are Demos?

Never heard of 'em

Sounds like that Tory idiot in No. ten who thinks America was in the war in 1940.

 

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