20 February 2008

Soft Authoritarianism And Going Green

ICM has done two recent polls, one for the Telegraph (field research done 30th/31st January), and one for the Guardian (15th/16th February). My advice is to always look at ICM's extended PDF files (on their website) to see how every question breaks down by age, gender, region and class.

The Guardian poll looked at taxation and the gap in incomes:

The good news: 75% feel the gap between high and low incomes is too wide in Britain, the highest ever level found by ICM.
The bad news: Only 36% agreed that taxes make society fairer - 51% amongst Lib Dems and 48% for Labour voters.

The Telegraph poll in late January asked about various Tory policies, and if they would make respondents more likely, less likely, or no difference, to vote Tory at the next election.

The good news: 60% of 18-34 year olds said that "forcing people to change their behaviour to reduce greenhouse gases" made them "more likely" to vote Tory.

The bad news: 69% of people or more, across every social group, said that "allowing police to hold terrorist suspects for longer than 28 days without charge" would make no difference, or make them more likely to vote Tory. Large majorities (for make no difference, more likely to vote Tory) were found for "reducing people coming from overseas to live in Britain" and "more police on the streets."

The Green Party's vision looks at redistribution, equality, libertarian views on holding terror suspects and prison, and open immigration/asylum. We may have 60% of younger voters buying into the idea of rough justice to achieve a sustainable society, but two-thirds of society also agree with rough justice, in the form of soft authoritarian policies. As well, it's unclear how people think the massive rich-poor gap is going to be resolved, if it's not through redistributive tax policy.

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