Looking through some of YouGov’s recent poll results (as you do on a summer’s evening during the Olympics), a trio of responses struck me as, well, slightly bizarre. See what you think…
Lib Dem voters LEAST LIKELY to think Britain is best at cricket, MOST LIKELY to think we’re best at cycling
This may simply be a reflection that ‘Britain’ does not play cricket. Or perhaps just a subjective viewpoint: after all, England is currently ranked the best test cricket team in the world (though fourth in one-day internationals); while the poll took place towards the closing stages of the Tour de France with the British Team Sky cyclists dominating. In the circs, how do you judge which Britain is ‘better’ at?
Lib Dem voters are THREE TIMES more likely to walk to work than Labour or Tory voters
I imagine there are demographic and/or geographical explanations for this…?
Lib Dem voters MOST LIKELY to think it’s wrong to ask a tradesman for a discount if you pay ‘cash in hand’
Intriguingly, there’s a pretty slim difference between the two questions yet quite a big difference in responses.
The first question explicitly makes it clear that both the customer and the tradesman will benefit from illegally dodging tax, yet more than one-quarter of voters for all three main parties say there is nothing wrong with this. The second question implicitly makes it clear there will be tax-dodging (unless anyone seriously thinks the discount is equivalent only to the transaction cost-saving), yet more than half of all voters don’t think this is wrong. Lib Dems are significantly more likely than either Labour or Tory voters to believe in sticking strictly to the tax rules.
It seems public outrage against tax dodging is more a question of scale than morality: it’s wrong if millionaires like Jimmy Carr or Take That do it, but fair dinkum for the rest of us.
(All data from YouGov’s poll for 12-13 July 2012 and 26-27 July 2012.)
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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8 Comments
I suspect you have a first approximation priggishness metric there. Green supporters not included, at a guess.
Does YouGov indicate whether any of this stuff is statistically significant? 20% of Lib Dem supporters is only about 2% of the whole, and the sampling error must be pretty large.
5% of LD voters travel to work by the Underground? Yeah, right. YouGov strikes again, London’s the LD’s weakest English region, that’s got to be out by a country mile.
When will you poll for idea’s on the economy and when will notice be taken of the responses? Much more important to the Nation. than this poll.
“pay ‘cash in hand’…Intriguingly, there’s a pretty slim difference between the two questions yet quite a big difference in responses.”
I’m not sure that they are. It certainly used to be the case, and it may still be the case. that businesses are charged to pay cheques (and indeed cash) into business accounts; similarly, credit card transactions are paid for by vendors. There is therefore a genuine and non-tax related reason why a tradesman might prefer cash. I doubt that the margins are massive, so you may be right that the margin is too small for it to be worthwhile., but it may explain the difference in expressed preference in the poll (as people may not consider how marginal the benefit for the tradesman is).
More interesting when comparing parties is that, when the evasion is explicit, Tories and Lib Dems are fairly equal but substantially more Labour voters would be willing to see the taxman defrauded.
“It seems public outrage against tax dodging is more a question of scale than morality: it’s wrong if millionaires like Jimmy Carr or Take That do it, but fair dinkum for the rest of us.”
You are right that it is “more a question of scale than morality”; you are wrong to equate Jimmy Carr’s avoidance scheme with cash-in-hand evasion. There was nothing illegal about what Jimmy Carr did (unless that “general avoidance rule” has taken effect yet, in which case my decision to over-pay into my pension is going to lead to trouble!). Yet he was considered to have done something worse, despite it not being illegal, because the sums were so high.
That being said, did you see the first episode of Eight Out Of Ten Cats following the expose? It seems that, what with Jimmy being so funny and all, and his willingness to say “Yes I did, and it was silly, and I’m very, very sorry,” it’s all forgiven now. So that’s alright then.
Only far to pint out that yougov is not the most reliable of indicators since the sample is self-selecting.
Mat: other cities have metro systems, so a Lib Dem on Tyneside, for example, might well have answered “Underground”. I guess I would have done when I lived there, though it was called the Metro, not the Underground.
Yes, most of this can’t be statistically significant, but the cricket result might well be and the walking. It’s not just environmental awareness (or “priggishness”, as Guy calls it) because a lot of Tories claim to cycle to work. As far as I can see, the walking result can only imply that quite a lot of us live near, but not at, our work – and choose not to drive a mile or two.
But what really fascinates me is the cricket result! Are we disproportionately ignorant about cricket, or less anti-Indian, anti-South-African, anti-Pakistani and anti-Australian, or more knowledgeably sceptical about the durability of our cricket success?
Not many of us cycle to work, but quite a lot of Tories do, and we think the country is good at cycling. Any hidden message there?
The underground result is even more surprising given that much of London (including most of our Westminster seats and our only borough) are not served by the tube. Even given YouGovs methodology, the result that more than 100% of LibDem voters within walking distance of an underground station use it regularly is worth noting.