Statistics don’t vote – should we care if they are abused?

Statistics are essential to our wellbeing and the bane of our future. We need numbers to understand what is happening in our world. Yet day after day, they end up abused in our media, distorted by our political leaders and muddled in our heads

Yesterday the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) published a cute survey that looks at the difference between statistical perceptions and reality.

Let’s look first at those people who are satisfied with their experience of local council services. That’s 38% of us. This is not great applause, but when people are asked what they think of local council services across the nation, appreciation drops to 27%. Why is that? Why is it that more of us are satisfied with our local police, but less are satisfied with policing nationally? Ask people about schools, GPs and NHS hospitals and you get the same disparity. We consistently say that life is better where we live than further afield.

The reason for the difference is that opinion on local services is forged by immediate, often personal experiences. Opinion on national services is shaped by the media. Our media – broadcast, print and social – relishes on talking things down. We love gloomy headlines. Politicians are as guilty. They must be “seen to be doing something”, so they routinely home in on gloom and amplify it. Where would an education minister be without failing schools?

Does this matter?

It does. The RSS asked a second suite of questions that suggest that misinformed opinion could wreak havoc with the future of our society.

Litter will certainly not send our society towards a path of anarchy or destruction, but it is illustrative. Half of those surveyed (48%) think it’s a problem locally, but 71% think it’s bad nationally. Unemployment, crime, immigration, teenage pregnancy, drugs and vandalism are all seen as bigger problems somewhere else, not where people live. We are scared of the world beyond where we live.

Then there is the guessing game. The RSS survey shows that we believe that 34% of us are Muslim. In reality it’s less than 5%. Benefit fraud? We think one quarter of funds are defrauded but it’s less than 1%. How many of us voted in the last general election? We guess 43%, but actually it was a healthier 65%.

The moral panic built by the media over immigration means that we think every third person we meet wasn’t born here. It is actually one in six. That misconception is fuelling UKIP and the right of the Tory party.

In building myths about the statistical dimensions of our society, we are pressuring politicians to dance to a tune that is out of touch with reality.

It is easy to blame the media for this mess. But equally guilty are us political types. Is there anyone of us that has not overlooked a statistical inconvenience to get a political message across?

After all, statistics don’t vote.

* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.