Few issues divide opinions between different age groups quite as sharply as Brexit. And it could be that the differences are becoming even more pronounced…
If there were to be a second referendum now, 52% would vote Remain and 48% Leave, an average of polls over the past three months suggests…
So, it is a stable picture, albeit one that reverses the position in 2016.
But the opinions of voters vary dramatically across different groups - none more so than between young and old.
Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave.
In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave.
These younger and older voters may be even more polarised now.
A total of 82% of 18 to 24-year-olds with a voting preference say they would vote Remain in a second referendum… while only 18% of this age group say they would vote Leave.
In contrast, two-thirds of those aged 65 and over would back Leave, while only one-third would favour Remain…
As a result, the UK is divided into the under-45s who, on balance, favour staying in the EU, and the over-45s, who want to leave…
Younger people are much keener on the idea of revisiting the Brexit vote.
Asked whether there should be a referendum on whether to accept the terms of Britain's exit from the EU once they have been agreed, about half of 18 to 24 year-olds say they are in favour of another poll.
Only three in 10 of those aged 65 and over hold that view.
However, only half of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they would be certain to vote in a second EU referendum, according to recent polls by Survation. This compares with 84% of those aged 65 and over.
So if there were another ballot, it is far from certain that young people would necessarily take the opportunity to register their distinctive views.
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Journalists are always looking for stories behind the story. So the National Peoples Congress is in session. What are delegates talking about (that's not in the official press releases)? Read the social media.
It’s that time again, when more than 5,000 delegates to China’s National People’s Congress… meet in Beijing to endorse legislation and discuss government plans for the coming year. They talk about their policy ideas… and coverage of their proposals and the online comments they attract provide glimpses into some of the issues on the minds of Chinese today.
End All Birth Restrictions. Lower the Marriage Age…
Drop English from the University Entrance Exam…
Make Parental Negligence a Crime…
More Holiday Time… [for Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, known as Spring Festival]…
Stack the Dead… [cemeteries are too expensive]
Make It Easier for People to be Registered Where They Work…
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Just The Facts! 2nd editionis a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Discontent runs so deep over domestic issues here — including a recent 20% hike in gas prices — that many Mexicans express more frustration with President Enrique Peña Nieto than with Mexico-bashing… Donald Trump...
Peña Nieto
Despite Trump's litany of criticisms, Mexicans are increasingly upset with their own government. This month they marched in the streets, blocked highways, looted stores and closed gas stations to protest gasolinazo, the jump in the government-set gasoline price.
Peña Nieto holds a low approval rating of 12%, according to a poll… in the Reforma newspaper, as Mexico is engulfed with deep public debts, sluggish oil revenues and political scandals.
“There’s a sense of grievance” with the government, said Ilán Semo, a political historian at the Iberoamerican University…
Trump’s threats have already caused turmoil in Mexico, which has transformed over the past 25 years from a closed economy to one so open that more than $500 billion in goods annually cross the border.
The impact has especially hit the automobile industry, which has expanded rapidly and “represents about one-third of total Mexican manufacturing and roughly about one-third of total non-oil exports,” said Jonathan Heath, an independent economist in Mexico City…
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Nobody gets many views of the political culture of Russia. For the most part, we hypothesize based on behavior we observe. The Levada Center has earned a reputation as a fairly accurate and honestly run polling operation. Here's the latest.
Sixty percent of Russians believe that Internet censorship — in particular, the banning of certain websites and material — is necessary, according to a new poll.
Just 25 percent opposed the idea…
The poll was conducted by the Levada Center, an independent polling firm, which asked Russians questions about trust in media and censorship between Oct. 21 to 24. On the subject of political censorship, 32 percent of Russians said that denying access to certain websites would infringe upon the rights and freedoms of activists, while 44 percent said it did not and 24 percent could not answer.
More broadly, Russians seem to be generally skeptical about the Internet, Levada found, with 51 percent believing the Internet could not replace newspapers, radio and television…
In total, 35 percent of Russians thought the media was deceiving them frequently, while 49 percent said they felt that way only rarely…
[I]n countries such as Russia, where most mainstream news networks are strongly aligned with the government, opposition groups have been able to organize and spread criticism of the government through online media.
In April, Konstantin Malofeev, a wealthy businessman with links to the Kremlin who runs the pro-censorship lobbying group Safe Internet League, traveled to China to meet with the architects of that country's notorious “great firewall.” And this week the country moved to block the professional networking site LinkedIn as it did not house data about its Russian users within the country…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd editionis a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Latinobarómetro, like it's cousin Afrobarometer is a large scale research project to measure public opinion in a specific part of the world. The Economist just wrote about the most recent Latinobarómetro. What can we learn about Mexico's political culture?
THE year since The Economist last published the results of the wide-ranging Latinobarómetro survey of Latin American public opinion has been an eventful one…
Latin pragmatism looks like a welcome contrast to the rise in support for fringe candidates and causes in Europe and the United States. But this year’s Latinobarómetro poll suggest that Latin Americans are no more content with the status quo than are Brexit-voting Britons or Trump-drunk Americans. The proportion of Latin Americans who think the elites govern in their own interests is on average 73%, its highest level in 12 years. For the first time, the share of people who say their countries are going backwards is bigger than that of people who think they are progressing…
Economic optimism has been hurt by six successive years of deceleration after the end of the global commodities boom. Latin Americans’ satisfaction with the performance of their economies is at its lowest level since 2004. Unemployment is the main economic worry…
Where disgust with the shenanigans of political leaders is strongest, support for democracy has dropped…
But that does not mean Latin Americans are ready to abandon democracy for something else. Overall, 54% say it is better than any other system, a proportion that has not changed much since 1995. Instead, they are channelling their discontent into activism. Outrage over corruption has inspired… thousands of Mexicans have protested against official impunity…
Changing attitudes towards violence are evidence of greater maturity and more assertiveness among ordinary citizens, argues Marta Lagos, Latinobarómetro’s director. Although Latin Americans say that violence from street crime is the most common sort, the most damaging to their country, they think, is domestic violence. The priority people give to domestic violence is new, Ms Lagos believes (although the question has not been directly posed before). It suggests that Latin Americans are beginning to challenge the culture of machismo, which is pervasive in some countries. Women in particular are less willing to suffer in silence. This represents a “huge cultural change”, says Ms Lagos.
Although Latin Americans have little appetite for the dictators of the past, new types of anti-democratic politics could emerge. Unless elected politicians offer answers to crime, low growth, inequality and corruption, less democratically minded leaders may provide them instead.
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The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6, and
a description of the AP exam format. $2.00. Order HERE.
Before the ubiquity of polls, "man in the street" interviews were a standard for portraying public opinion. In Nigeria, people in the street interviews are still done. Here's one, done in Lagos, asking people about President Buhari's first 100 days.
Take a walk through Nigeria’s commercial capital and expectation is heavy in the air. One hundred days after Muhammadu Buhari swept into power, becoming the first president to ever unseat an incumbent here, many citizens say they are seeing some significant improvements.
Rooting out corruption – which was central to the platform of “change” on which Buhari campaigned – is also at the forefront of most people’s minds, and so far the scorecard is high…
But a perceived lethargic approach has caused his critics to nickname him “Baba go-slow”, after local slang for traffic jams. Some feel too much emphasis on the fight against corruption means other vital sectors are being neglected… although even detractors say the new government has taken a far more hands-on approach than the previous government…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Russia's only independent polling agency said Monday it may have to close after prosecutors targeted it for "political activity" under a law spearheading President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on civil society.
Levada Center published a letter, dated last week, from prosecutors who said its polls and publications are "aimed at shaping public opinion on government policy" and demanded it cease publication until it registers as a "foreign agent" under a law passed last year.
Russia has pushed strongly in recent months to enforce the law, which requires all foreign-funded NGOs that engage in ill-defined political activities to register as "foreign agents"…
Levada receives between 1.5 and 3 percent of its funding from foreign sources, including longtime bêtes noires of Putin's foreign policy like the National Institute for Democracy and George Soros' Open Society Institute, according to center director Lev Gudkov…
The campaign has stoked public opinion against NGOs, according to a poll Levada released last week. Only 19 percent of Russians polled thought NGOs did any work of value.
Okay, the Iranian election won't take place until a month after your students take the AP exam. The election might even take place during summer vacation.
But this election guide from the BBC might help students make sense of Iranian politics and offer examples they could use when freely responding to exam questions. And, who knows, they might be interested in things Iranian that they understand after the exam and after the school year ends.
The outcome of the last election in 2009 was hotly disputed, leading to mass protests against the results. Four years later, two of the candidates are still under house arrest, hundreds of political activists are in prison and hardly any of those behind the killing of dozens of protesters have faced investigation or trial…
For the Islamic Republic, which is governed under a mixed clerical and parliamentary system, the elections are seen as key affirmation of the system's legitimacy, however flawed the process may be…
FACTIONS: This is the first time in almost two decades that, instead of two main conservative and faction reformist faction, at least four factions will compete for the presidency…
FOREIGN POLICY: Nuclear program… and negotiations with the US…
PUBLIC OPINON: Public opinion is divided over the upcoming election. Commentators regularly refer to the following five groups, though it is difficult to know their proportions among the population…
The approval rating for David Cameron and Nick Clegg fell markedly since late October.
Two-in-five voters in Britain are ready to support the opposition Labour Party in the next general election, and the approval rating for the two main players in the Coalition Government took a noticeable drop, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.
In the online survey of a representative sample of 2,004 British adults, 40 per cent of decided voters and leaners (+3 since late October) say they would support the Labour candidate in their constituency in the next General Election...
The approval rating for Prime Minister David Cameron stands at 44 per cent this month. Since the start of the Coalition Government in May, Cameron has dropped ten points in this indicator.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s approval rating fell to 36 per cent. In seven months, the disapproval rating for Clegg has doubled (from 26% in May to 53% in November).
One third of respondents (33%) approve of the way Ed Miliband is handling his job as Leader of the Opposition, while 37 per cent disapprove...
In the online survey of a representative sample of 2,006 British adults, 86 per cent of respondents say the economy is in poor or very poor shape. Almost two thirds of respondents (63%) feel the same way about their own financial situation…
In the next six months, only 13 per cent of Britons think the economy will see a recovery. In contrast, 32 per cent of respondents think the situation will worsen further, and half (49%) expect things to remain the same…
Unemployment remains the top concern among Britons (40% have worried about it affecting their household in the past two months)…
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, remains the most trusted leader to handle the economy (51%). Prime Minister David Cameron is trusted by 47 per cent of Britons to make the right economic decisions (43% distrust him). Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has the confidence of 41 per cent of respondents (46% distrust him).
Fewer respondents express confidence in George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer (37%), and Labour Shadow Chancellor Alistair Darling (28%).
By a wide margin, the Conservatives remain favoured over Labour to rein in the national debt (57% to 18%), end the recession (44% to 25%), and control inflation (47% to 25%). Labour (38%) is slightly on top of the Tories (33%) in the category of creating jobs.
From August 20 to August 22, 2010, Angus Reid Strategies conducted an online survey among 2,006 randomly selected British adults who are Springboard UK panelists. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 2.2%. The results have been statistically weighted according to the most current education, age, gender and region data to ensure samples representative of the entire adult population of Great Britain. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.
In the online survey of a representative sample of 2,001 British adults, 56 per cent of respondents support the creation of the social mobility tsar position, while 28 per cent are opposed.
The social mobility tsar will advise the Prime Minister on how to break down social barriers for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and help those who feel they cannot have access to top jobs due to race, religion, gender or disability…
From August 17 to August 19, 2010, Angus Reid Public Opinion conducted an online survey among 2,001 randomly selected British adults who are Springboard UK panelists. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 2.2%
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remain highly popular in Russia, according to a poll by the Yury Levada Analytical Center. 72 per cent of respondents approve of Medvedev’s performance, and 77 per cent endorse Putin’s…
The next presidential election is scheduled for March 2012. Both Putin and Medvedev are eligible to run as candidates…
The first televised debate among the parties in the UK, brought Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems, to many people's attention. The latest poll shows how much.
The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats are tied as Britons ponder their choices in next month’s General Election, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 32 per cent of respondents would support the Tories, while 32 per cent would back the Lib-Dems.
The governing Labour Party is third with 24 per cent. 12 per cent of respondents would vote for other parties. Support for the Lib-Dems increased by 10 points in a week, while backing for the Tories fell by six points...
Daniel Wilson, in the blog Under the Volcano, notes that a recent poll shows that the Mexican president's popularity continues to slide and that PRI's popularity is rising.
Daniel Wilson, writing in the blog Under the Volcano, cites poll results showing that people in Mexico want change, but aren't sure what change will work.
An El Universal national telephone poll showed broad support for the concept of political reform (89% approval) and President Calderón’s proposal (69% approval). However, there is a low level of actual knowledge – only 20% said they knew the specifics of Calderón’s proposal. Of the specific proposals, reducing the size of Congress had the highest support, and reelection the lowest.
Daniel Wilson, the blogger for Zemi Communications, who edits their blog Under the Volcano, recently wrote about a poll of presidential popularity in Mexico. It makes Mexican public opinion look like public opinion in most of North America.
A Reforma poll published 12/1 showed a sharp quarterly drop in the presidential approval rating. Those approving fell to 52% (down from 68% in the previous quarter), while those disapproving rose to 39% (from 24%). The principal reason given by those disapproving was the imposition of new taxes, followed by producing poor results.
Kathryn Green who teaches at Benilde-St. Margaret's High School in St. Louis Park, Minnnesota, pointed out this article as an illustration of the complexity of Russian political culture.
I looked for reports of the original survey, but the Levada Centre's English web site is "Under development."
A growing number of Russians believe their country does not need democracy, a nationwide survey by one of Russia's leading polling agencies suggests.
The poll by the Levada-Centre showed that 57% of those questioned considered that Russia needed democracy - the lowest number since 2006...
Nearly 95% of respondents said they had little or no influence on what was happening in the country...
The majority (60%) also said it would be better for Russia if the president controlled both the courts and the parliament, which can hardly be described as a democratic aspiration...
The poll also suggested that 43% agreed with the question that the country sometimes needed an "iron fist" leader.
And nearly 25% said the Soviet Union had a better political system that the current Russian model (36%) or that in Western countries (15%)...
A large majority of people in Russia think president Dmitry Medvedev governs under the influence of former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin, according to a poll by the Yury Levada Analytical Center. 67 per cent of respondents say Medvedev conducts policy guided by Putin...
Polling Data
Do you think Dmitry Medvedev conducts policy in an independent fashion, or does he act under the influence of Vladimir Putin and his inner circle?
In an independent fashion 20% Under the influence of Putin 67% Hard to answer 13%
Source: Yury Levada Analytical Center Methodology: Interviews with 1,600 Russian adults, conducted from Sept. 18 to Sept. 21, 2009. No margin of error was provided.
When three-fourths of the pubic thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, what does that mean for political leaders? Does it make sense that 68% have a favorable opinion of the president? Does this poll tell us anything?
Mexicans are overwhelmingly unhappy with the direction of their country, and one in three would immigrate to the United States if they could, a Pew Research Center survey said Wednesday.
Of those in the poll who said they would like to migrate, more than half said they would be willing to do so illegally.
The poll of 1,000 people in Mexico found crime, government corruption and illegal drugs are major problems.
Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said they are unhappy about Mexico's direction. Nearly all of those polled – 94 percent – said corrupt political leaders are a big problem. Still, 68 percent held favorable opinions of President Felipe Calderon, 83 percent said they supported using the Mexican army to fight drug traffickers and 76 percent approved of the government's handling of the spring swine flu outbreak...
Forty percent of those interviewed said they know someone who had returned to Mexico because they could not find work in the U.S. Almost 50 percent said they know someone who came back after being detained by immigration officers at the border. The survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, was based on face-to-face interviews in Mexico from May 26 to June 2. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
More people in Mexico are expressing confidence in the federal government’s capacity to fight a drug war, according to a poll by Reforma... However, 41 per cent of respondents say that organized criminals are winning the war...
Polling Data
Who do you think is winning the war against drug trafficking?
Answers in August 2008 Organized crime 61% The government 22% Neither / Not sure 17%
Answers in August 2009 Organized crime 41% The government 37% Neither / Not sure 22%
Source: Reforma Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,515 Mexican registered voters, conducted from Aug. 14 to Aug. 16, 2009. Margin of error is 2.8 per cent.
Most people are in favour of returning the railways to public ownership, with just 23% supporting privatisation, according to a poll.
But note who sponsored the poll
A survey of more than 1,000 people for the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), found seven out of 10 of those questioned backed renationalisation...
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