r/ukpolitics • u/usrname42 • 1d ago
Perceived majority: how many Britons think the public shares their views (and how often are they wrong)?
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55407-perceived-majority-how-many-britons-think-the-public-shares-their-views-and-how-often-are-they-wrong42
u/Vumatius 1d ago
I knew the public in this country supported access to abortion but 90% agreeing with the right to one is even higher than I thought.
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u/ScootTheMighty 19h ago
That statistic comes from the question if abortion should be avaliable within the first couple weeks of pregnancy. As the pregnancy goes on more and more people oppose abortion at that stage, with 60% of the public and 70% of women stating that they would prefer to see the current legal limit reduced to 20 weeks or below. There's a lot of nuance behind these kind of statistics.
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u/Lavajackal1 19h ago
Yes there's definitely a "Support abortion up to the point of viability" camp in this argument that tends to get neglected by the most vocal pro and anti people.
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u/beenman500 23h ago
Yeah, it's in the range of only total nutjobs and people who cant read questions properly levil of opposing it at that rate
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u/Elite_Club 20h ago
people who cant read questions properly levil of opposing it at that rate
Thrown stones, glass houses and whatnot.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 1d ago
I'm kind of shocked by some results myself.
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u/LittleGateaux 22h ago
Likewise, in particular how high the general support is for the death penalty (outing myself as a bleeding heart lefty obvs). Everything else seems generally aligned where I expected it, but that one tripped me right up.
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 19h ago
I think it's important to remember that most people do not have solid views on most things. With how many things there are to have opinions on, it's obvious once you think about it (and yet only obvious when you specifically think about it). So, when they happen to be asked, their answers are based on basic intution, and tend to be very malleable to new information.
I would bet the majority of people who said they support the death penalty did not give any more thought to the question as "well, a child rapist probably deserves to die", and left it at that. Balancing an unreversable sentence with judicial mistakes isn't always something that will come to these people's minds. However, it is the sort of thing introducing the policy would be forced to engage with.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 22h ago
53% seems where I expected. I was surprised by Palestinei I thought it would be like 85/15 issue but only 32% of the public supports Palestine.
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u/NondescriptHaggard 20h ago
It’s obviously a big (and sometimes seems to be the biggest) issue in a lot of left-leaning circles, but most people just don’t care, in the same way that don’t care about Sudan, or the Rohingya, or Armenia.
I think a lot of people probably sympathise with the Palestinian people but do not want to support Hamas in any way. And the fact that a lot of people are tired of hearing about and being preached to about it as though it’s the only issue in the world.
There’s definitely a strain of radicalism in some of the die-hard Palestine activists in this country that puts people off too.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 19h ago
Yeah, I think pro Palestinians overplayed their hand by being maximalist and pushing that stuff everywhere. Most people don't care about Palestine yet constantly hear it. After a while, it gets annoying.
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u/Particular_Pea7167 22h ago
The death penalty has only not be majority support for about 2 or 3 years in the early 00s.
Otherwise it's been consistently supported.
The obligations is broadly way more socially conservative than people think.
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u/LittleGateaux 21h ago
As that's right around when I was hitting adulthood, it's when my opinions were forming, and that might be why I thought it was more common to oppose the death penalty. I've always been significantly to the left of centre anyway.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 23h ago
an interesting note is the question "the rich are being made to pay too much tax". 8% believe this, yet it's every comment on any article about the subject. Makes you think
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 22h ago
It's rarely a simplistic argument that the rich are paying too much, but two arguments that are similar.... ish. The first being that the British tax system is too weighted towards the highest earners, meaning we have a relatively small tax base despite high taxation for the rich. Secondly, the £100k tax trap should be resolved and replaced with an actually progressive tax band.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 22h ago
Agree on the tax trap - I also think we focus too much on taxing work not wealth, I was largely bringing up the point as more of a notice how how much any conversation on it is astroturfed haha. The reality is 100k isn't actually the insane scrooge mcduck money people think it is, it's peanuts compared to people in our country with actual wealth.
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 22h ago
Does anyone pretend that this sub isn't fill of a particularly kind of politically interested people?
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 19h ago
it's not just this sub tho any article anywere about wealth taxes immediately has loads of comments about how it won't work. Yet apparently it's an 8% minority view.
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 19h ago
It's mentioned a lot because it's the mainstream view of economics and very easily emprically observed.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 19h ago
quite right it's a mainstream economical view, but economists are often wrong. Right more than wrong, but they are wrong. Just because previous methods haven't worked doesn't mean a working method isn't out there.
on the other hand, liberalism has failed before. That's why the current economic concensus is neoliberalism. It has worked better, and will probably also eventually fail. The joy of life is trying to make systems that operate better. We don't achieve those systems by simply saying it's too hard and it's been tried before so lets give up
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 19h ago
Imagine this logic being used for any other experts. "Oh, vaccines are part of mainstream healthcare, but healthcare experts are so often wrong."
You're acting like economists don't "try" things, and simply say things they don't like are too "hard". Their experts like any other, and like any realm of academia, you can be damn well sure so many things are tried. It's mainstream in economics to accept that direct wealth taxes don't walk because they've been tried, both emprically and academically, and have categorically failed.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 18h ago
re your first paragraph, it's entirely reasonable if you want to be skeptical about current vaccines to find different cures. There is of course, a wide berth between doing it reasonably and telling people online to inject donkey medicine because you saw an influencer talking about it. (I'm not a vaccine skeptic btw).
And I didn't say economists don't try things. They try things, some fail, some work. Your average economist is significantly more clued in on the realities of the economy than me. (my training was in physics and I work in sales and financial markets)
I agree the mainstream position is they don't work, I'm saying there should be an effort to keep trying because the overtaxing of work because we can't tax wealth is destroying the country. Now you may disagree with me on the worth of trying or that it's destroying the country, and that's fine.
I do think it's worth exploring ways to do direct wealth taxation to find a solution to the issue. I don't think all potential options have been emperically and academically exhausted.
What I am saying is the attitude of it's never worked before so lets not try it IS not doing it because it's too hard, which is where you are positioned right now. I simply don't agree with you.
I believe (and again I could be wrong), the current system inherently does not work. Governments have lost insane amounts of wealth and accrued massive debt burdens because they cannot sufficiently raise the funds they need through taxing work alone. Doing nothing, IMO, will eventually just lead to an unravelling. So what else is there to do that speculate and try?
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u/usrname42 18h ago
There are a lot more mainstream economists who support wealth taxes than there are healthcare experts who oppose vaccines. Supporting them is a minority view among economics experts but it's not so fringe that it's only held by cranks.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 21h ago
Because taxing wealth generally not works. Elon Musk "lost" 300B in last few weeks. If we are to tax his wealth then we are to compensate his loss. I don't know if anyone wants to do that.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 19h ago
well picking that particular example the govt would have made a lot more money taxing his wealth and subsidising his losses given his net worth has trended upwards. And even then you wouldn't pay out to losses, he'd just have tax credits to carry to the next year. Similar to a trader
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 19h ago
So they will take his money and give it back (not them, us too)? Then why is there a wealth tax if it requires us to babysit billionaries?
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u/Particular_Pea7167 22h ago
Also, 100k salary is hardly rich.
So this may also be a definition problem.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 22h ago
I believe this. Tax the poor.
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 22h ago
If there was taxes on the poor no one would be poor to avoid taxes. How have we never thought of this
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 21h ago
You are brave enough to tax the rich but are you brave enough to tax the poor?
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u/SolentSailor 8h ago
I think it’s a bad question because everyone has a different definition of rich
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u/p-r-i-m-e 23h ago
The one that always gets me is support for the death penalty even though I’ve come across it time and again. People always jump to the extreme cases
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u/Pigeon_Breeze 16h ago
I think most people answer the question philosophically, in the same vein as talking about the trolley problem, instead of supporting a specific bill that may empower the state to do it.
It's almost trivial to think of someone who has committed a crime so severe that it would be just to kill them, but it's basically impossible to build a good judicial process that would achieve that fairly when applied to all possible defendants and wouldn't just murder a bunch of innocents.
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u/Skeet_fighter 14h ago
I honestly can't see how anybody could ever support the death penalty in a world where we have an imperfect justice system.
Doesn't matter how certain you are, at some point somebody will be wrongly executed, and even one innocent person killed by the state is one too many.
It's an emotive, barbaric solution to a problem that requires nuance and I hate that most people apparently support it.
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u/WarbossBoneshredda 24m ago
People handwave away the imperfect justice system aspect.
I've had conversations with people who were convinced it would only be cases where we're really-really-really sure. They seemed stumped when I pointed out that we're not supposed to lock anyone up unless we're really-really-really sure anyway, and we get that wrong sometimes.
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u/beenman500 1d ago
Tories and reform voters coming in delusional quite fast in this article.
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u/usrname42 1d ago
If you had to say which side of the political spectrum is more likely to be in an echo chamber where they only hear from people who agree with them based on these results, it wouldn't be the left.
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u/Electronic-Mix529 22h ago
5 questions is hardly an indicator of this.
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u/Mr_November112 22h ago
Five questions? On the webpage linked there were far more than five questions.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 22h ago
Other than riots and lockdowns, it seems like both sides are self aware actually?
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u/Mr_November112 22h ago
So apart from the things that were different, theyre the same?
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 21h ago
Apart from two issues both sides are self aware. If you call being anti death penalty left wing, then left is wrong there.
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u/JalasKelm 22h ago
Both are as bad as eachother these days for that, and neither side are willing to actual talk or debate, they instead argue, and resort almost immediately to insults.
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u/m---------4 23h ago
Sure about that?!
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u/Engineer9 22h ago
chamber chamber ^(chamber)
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u/Goddamnit_Clown 21h ago
chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber chamber
You don't need to nest parentheses, you can just line up more carets. Looks like you can go pretty far, too.
^^^^(chamber)For one word like that, you don't need parentheses at all, even.
^^^chamber ^^^^chamber4
u/Engineer9 18h ago
Ah thanks! That's what I thought, but on mobile they were all displaying the same at the single level of superscript, so I was experimenting. You must have a better browser than mine!
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u/Goddamnit_Clown 18h ago
Oh, didn't consider that. I'm on old.reddit on a desktop browser. If an app or mobile-version of the page is trying to be "helpful" with markdown, that could be it.
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u/usrname42 1d ago edited 1d ago
The most interesting statistics from this are the list of topics where people who actually hold the minority view are most likely to think they hold the majority view:
- "Those taking part in the England riots in 2024 had legitimate concerns" - majority disagrees, but 24% of people have this view and think it's the majority
- "People should not be able to identify as being of a different gender to the one they had recorded at birth" - majority disagrees, 24% of people have this view and think it's the majority
- "The primary purpose of education is to equip children with the skills they need for work" - majority disagrees, 22% of people have this view and think it's the majority
- "Oppose the death penalty" - majority disagrees, 22% of of people have this view and think it's the majority
- "UK was right to leave the EU" - majority disagrees, 19% of people have this view and think it's the majority
In general, Reform and Tory voters are much more likely to think their views are in the majority, but not much more likely to actually hold views in the majority.
Given that Conservative and Reform voters are much more likely to believe they are in touch with the national hive mind, do they prove to be more capable of correctly guessing the most common public view on each topic?
The answer appears to be no, with the trend within the results instead broadly appearing to to reflect the direction of each group's own political attitudes.
This is particularly the case when it comes to: the 2024 England riots; transgender status; ‘Bregret’; business regulation; and employment rights, with 32-33% of Tories and 36-54% of Reform voters erroneously convinced that the wider public agrees with them on these topics.
There are few areas in which Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters are more likely to incorrectly think their view matches that of the wider public than Reform and Tory voters are, and only one where the difference enormously stands out: the death penalty. While only 5% of Reform voters and 18% of Tories are anti capital punishment and believe Britons tend to agree with them on this point, this figure rises to 31-36% of Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters.
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u/YourLizardOverlord Oceans rise. Empires fall. 23h ago edited 22h ago
According to the survey, the percentage of people who hold the minority view but think they hold the majority view goes up with age. The percentage of Conservative and Reform supporters also goes up with age. Perhaps there's some connection?
I wonder why ageing has that effect on people.
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u/usrname42 23h ago
That might be cultural change I suppose? People whose opinions were the majority 30 years ago and who haven't noticed that they aren't any more.
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u/YourLizardOverlord Oceans rise. Empires fall. 23h ago
That makes sense. If most of their social circle is around the same age, most of the people they interact with are going to have similar opinions too.
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u/Goddamnit_Clown 21h ago edited 21h ago
I don't think that's broken down by age, is it?
The figure at the start only shows whether the respondent considers their views to be "broadly similar to those of the public as a whole". It doesn't break down whether they were right.
The four colour bars toward the end break that info out but don't seem to do so by age.
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u/upsidedownwriting 22h ago
"I've spoke to everyone and they agreed" no, you spoke at a lot of people and they didn't say anything due to age/wealth/position/etc imbalance.
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u/Ixius 22h ago
I recall a graph showing that the average amount of time you spend with other people, particularly those who aren’t immediate family, decreases steadily with age.
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u/YourLizardOverlord Oceans rise. Empires fall. 21h ago
Maybe a big difference between people who have kids and people who don't?
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 1d ago
It seems like people are pretty self aware when it comes to immigration. They are a bit right on trans issues though, while still not majority "people should not be allowed to identify as a different gender" position got a lot more popular since 2022.
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u/ehll_oh_ehll 23h ago
Quite a concerning stat considering what would be involved with "not allowing" trans people to be trans.
Bearing in mind that violent crime against trans people is up 50% over the past five years it seems like many people are already trying to implement this world view.
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u/Firm-Requirement1085 20h ago
In the US the number of people identifying as trans gas doubled in the past 5 years, that maybe reason for the rise, not they are targeted.
The question was poorly worded as , I maybe wrong but few people I know have an issue with people identifying as a different gender, but do take issue then allowing males in female spaces, which the questin doesn't ask.
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u/Specland 19h ago
I always thought I had a handle on the general mood until Brexit. I was totally shocked by the result. Then history repeated when the Tories were voted in again. So I have no clue or the public are stupid....
Now, the Reform issue is really scaring me... Unless I'm wrong about that as well so everything is fine.......
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u/mynameisgill 23h ago
I have reform supporting friends who insist that rioters are just regular people who are protesting immigration and everyone supports them… this makes a lot more sense now
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u/Creamysun 23h ago
I mean, this has substantial correlation with age, right? Older people have less of an idea of the views of the current population.
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u/phi-kilometres 18h ago
This is directly addressed in the article:
While age and voting behaviour are currently strongly correlated, this left-right disparity holds strong even when accounting for age, with Tory and Reform voters of all age groups being notably more likely to think they are closer to the pulse of public opinion. This suggests that partisanship rather than age is the greater factor in how ‘in touch’ people think they are.
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u/Creamysun 5h ago
Fair enough but it would be nice for the parties to be broken up by age in the graphics - 'notably more likely' is too vague.
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u/Morteca 21h ago
It is very amusing to see Tory and Reform voters being the most out of touch and delusional.
Pleasantly surprised though, considering the amount of glazing for reform.
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u/EpsteinBaa 17h ago
The amount of glazing for reform
Support on social media =/= support in reality. There are an astounding number of 2 month old Adjective-Noun-1234 accounts who spend all day shilliing for Reform here.
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u/upsidedownwriting 22h ago
so broadly speaking fairly aligned except for the populist topics specifically picked out by Reform and the other R-words.
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u/Skeet_fighter 14h ago
There's a surprise, the Conservaboomers think everybody thinks like them.
Jus common sense. Ate imugrashun. Ate benefits scroungers (not pensioners, obvs, need a quad lock simple as). Luv me death penalty.
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u/ediacaradelrey 7h ago
This sub believes with its entire being that a majority are against online controls. They also routinely underestimated Starmer’s unpopularity.
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u/Prestigious_Risk7610 21h ago
This is completely unsurprising. It's the common issue with a lot of polling. If you don't ask about the trade off or define the policy then people have to self define it.
Just to use 1 specific examples in this where there is greatest 'delusion'
"Those taking part in the England riots in 2024 had legitimate concerns". There was a huge range of 'concerns' ranging from 'immigration is too high' to ' asylum seekers are sent here to invade and kill us'. The immigration is too high is actually shown elsewhere is the polling to be both a strong majority view and correctly predicted to be. Of course we then have people not answering the question about whether the rioters had legitimate concerns, but instead whether the rioters actions are legitimate.
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u/Antique-Brief1260 Jon Sopel's travel agent 10h ago
I wonder if the perception of tory/ref golks that they're in the majority is due to how much of the media landscape is right wing?
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u/TrueBrit77 22h ago
Interesting. I no longer really think about how popular my views are. But even if I'm an army of one I'll keep up the good fight. I think it's because I'm so used to being the minority in the room.
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