Friday, August 23, 2013

A brief note on public opinion and immigration

We are facing the usual glut of headlines about how the public think that immigration is one of the most pressing issues facing the UK today. Aside from the fact that this is entirely based on perception, such polling results require a bit of basic dissection before making conclusions about them.

Let's start with the questions posed.

Most polls of this sort will give respondents a list of issues, preferably in randomised order, and ask them to identify the one/two/three most important issues. The issues from which to choose will vary somewhat over time as issues rise and fall, but many of them are fairly constant. Common issues include:
  • Crime
  • Economy
  • Unemployment
  • Housing
  • Healthcare
  • Immigration
  • Education
  • Pensions
  • Environment
  • Etc.
Many of the polls simply ask respondents which are the most pressing issues. However, the better polls ask people to identify the most pressing issues for their country as a whole as well as the most pressing issues for them personally. This then identifies what problems people are facing in their everyday lives separately from what they pick up from news media, rumour, heresay, etc.

This is where the results get interesting.

Let's take the Eurobarometer (May 2013) results. First, let's look at the rankings for the question, 'What do you think are the two most important issues facing the UK at the moment?'



For nationally pressing issues, unemployment and immigration clearly rank as the top issues. But the picture looks distinctly different when we look at answers to the second question, 'And personally, what are the two most important issues you are facing at the moment?'

 

Suddenly, immigration comes in as eighth most important.

What does this mean? A lot of people think immigration is a pressing issue at the national level but isn't for them. This indicates that respondents are picking up on government rhetoric and mass media reports that frame immigration as a pressing problem, but in actuality, the vast majority of people are facing far more pressing issues. It's not possible for something to be a pressing national issue that is a pressing personal issue for so few people.

Thus, whilst we should respond to people's fears about immigration, we should take such polls with a very generous pinch of salt. Our response should be more about education with less focus on perceptions that aren't based on any evidence.

3 comments:

  1. "A lot of people think immigration is a pressing issue at the national level but isn't for them. This indicates that respondents are picking up on government rhetoric and mass media reports that frame immigration as a pressing problem. It's not possible for something to be a pressing national issue that is a pressing personal issue for so few people."

    Idiotic. One is about threats to the integrity of the group, the other is about what is affecting your household (e.g. budgets, lack of improvement, bills, etc). Of course "immigration" isn't a specific threat to one's own household as the cost of living. What a totally brainless grounds for dismissal.

    >>>"Thus, whilst we should respond to people's fears about immigration, we should take such polls with a very generous pinch of salt. Our response should be more about education with less focus on perceptions that aren't based on any evidence.">>>

    So depressing and inane. The Soviet approach to "addressing concerns" - when and where will the reeducation camps be opened?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is a rather bizarre response. The dissonance between peoples’ beliefs about the importance of issues on a personal and national level is very interesting. On average people who live near migrants have a more favorable opinion of migration, whereas more isolated (often older) populations have less favorable opinions.

      It is an empirical fact that the British public has wildly inaccurate beliefs migration. They believe there are three times as many migrants as there are in reality. It is not obvious that policy should take such spurious beliefs into account.

      Given that on average the British public massively overestimates how much migration there has been. Isn't it rather optimistic to think that anyone will notice the effects of the current government’s rather ham-fisted migration policy?

      Just out of curiosity a) what proportion of the UK population do you think was foreign born? b) how old are you? and c) which newspaper do you read most frequently?

      Delete
  2. Great post.

    Do you know where we could get data on peoples' beliefs about migration and the newspaper they read?

    It seems likely that the dissonance between peoples' personal experience and their beliefs about the country as a whole are due to the media. I expect that Daily Telegraph, Mail and Express readers' beliefs about migration are more inaccurate than readers of other papers and people who do not read papers at all.

    If this is true there are some interesting implications. Newspaper circulations are in free fall, likely because of the increasing availability of free and more accurate information on the web. Therefore in the future, without the malign influence of newspapers, along with other factors such as the increasing levels of education, will peoples' beliefs about the importance and benefits of migration at a national level become more accurate and less biased?

    Needless to say, as with many other areas of public policy, the current government's approach to migration is rather flawed.

    So I end on a positive note, despite all of the whinging about Labour in press over the summer, Labour still have a 6-8 point lead in the polls. Thus if the election were held today, Electoral Calculus (a polling aggregation site) would give the Tories a 3% chance of achieving a majority. Indeed the Tories' chances look so grim Boris Johnson has ruled himself out of running.

    Which suggests we will only have to put up with this for another 21 months.

    http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

    ReplyDelete