The Croydonian

At least according to this poll I have just found:

'Those opposed to the treaty secure 53% of voice as opposed to 47% in favour. Equally, 33% of those polled would abstain'.

And here is the interesting bit:

'73% of yes voters and 72% of no voters from 2005 would vote the same way now'.

Labels: EU fun and games, France, opinion polls

As in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Pew Global has asked the world's citizenry which candidate it has the greater confidence in, and McCain wins in Jordan. Obama would win everywhere else, with France and Tanzania the most enthused by the Illinois senator. That Obama would not have un flocon's chance in Hell of winning any elected office in France seems to have passed France by, but never mind....

In other findings, the French and the Japanese are the most likely to think granting the Olympics to Beijing a bad thing (55%) . Rather disgustingly, we Britons think it a good thing, by 50% to 38%. The mouth-breathing 12% presumably did not know what the question meant.

Labels: opinion polls, United States

The more I read about Denmark, the more I admire her citizens:

"A new Rambøll survey indicates that nearly half of Danes support the country's participation in the current Afghanistan military operation. Despite 10 soldiers having been killed in the past seven months during the campaign, public support has grown from 43 percent in January to 48 percent today. The poll also found a corresponding 5 percent fall in those wishing a total withdrawal of troops from the Asian country". Source

I cannot lay hands on recent figures for support in this country.

Labels: Denmark, opinion polls, war on terror

Labels: 'Democratic People's Republic' of Korea, 'People's Republic' of China, opinion polls, Tibet

Labels: opinion polls, United States

Worldpublicopinion.org has polled urban Pakistanis on prospective presidents and the like, and I do wonder whether they have got to grips with this democracy malarkey:

Benazir Bhutto returning to Pakistan to stand for elections? (This was before she actually did)

Favour - 50%
Oppose - 34%

Nawaz Sharif returning to Pakistan to stand for elections?

Favour - 51%
Oppose - 35%

Benazir Bhutto becoming Prime Minister?

Favour - 40%
Oppose - 40%

However one feels about prospective presidents of Pakistan, it does seem rather sad that only 10% of those polled choose to differentiate between supporting Bhutto's right to stand and actually supporting her.

Meanwhile, support for would be contenders stands thus:

Pervez Musharraf - 21%
Benazir Bhutto - 27%
Nawaz Sharif - 21%
Iftikar Chaudhry - 3%
Shaukat Aziz - 2%
Imran Khan - 2% (Not exactly a captain's performance, eh?)
Other- 7%

None of the Pakistani parties are affiliated to what I am going to call the Conservative International, or more correctly the International Democrat Union, so there is no short cut to discovering who are the good guys and gals in Islamabad. Going through the list of Pakistani political parties, they seem to represent varying shades of ghastliness, although Musharraf's / Sharif's lot are described as centrist and Bhutto's lot as leftist.

Labels: opinion polls, Pakistan

OK, technically 9.4%. But that is right there in the Land of the Free itself.

More on the 9/11 'Truth' Movement here. But note this from a prof at MIT: "These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the 'reverse scientific method’… they determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion

Labels: opinion polls, United States, war on terror

Labels: EU fun and games, opinion polls

Which is here, includes the priceless finding that 20% of the population consider Broon to be, get this, 'cheerful and outgoing'. In comparison to on duty undertakers? Angsty adolescents? Small children that have failed to win an egg and spoon race?

Labels: opinion polls, The would be Lord Protector Broon

Hidden away in a rather heartening (unless you have the surname 'Blair') YouGov poll in the 'graph is this call and response:

"Which...of the following would you judge to have been Mr Blair's greatest failures?"

"Failing to take Britain into the euro" - 6%

Granted other more popular options included the likes of the sitting, comatose and klieg-lit ducks that are immigration, crime and Iraq, but I'm struggling to wonder just what is going on in the heads of that unreconciled 6%. Meanwhile, the other 94% might find Britain in Europe's Sunset Boulevard webpage of a Parthian shot worth the click.

Labels: EU fun and games, Mr Tony, opinion polls

Way back I posted on demographics Americans would not vote for, judging by polling evidence, with the most salient bit this:

"4% would not vote for a woman and 3% would not vote for an African American. However, some prejudices are clearly more palatable - 14% would not vote for a 72 year old (as McCain will be in '08) and 14% would not vote for a Mormon".

I have just laid hands on a broadly comparable French poll from earlier this year:

13% admit that they would be discouraged from voting for a Jew, 22% for a homosexual, and 38% for a Muslim.

And further oddities: 16% would prefer the next president to be male, 21% to be female, and over half want their president to be in his or her 50s. Rather amusingly 21% of right inclined voters consider sang froid a key presidential skill compared to 16% of lefties, and being multilingual is a plus for 54%, versus the 44% who are not bothered.

Combining some of those and sundry other characteristics, robocandidate would walk it if he or she was the following: in his / her 50s, able to understand daily life, honest, a listener, polyglot, a degree holder, Catholic, married and has the same standard of living as the Gaul dans la rue.


So, are Americans less prejudiced than the French, or more wary of what they say to pollsters?

Labels: France, opinion polls, United States

Or so a poll of their favourite songs would seem to suggest.

Lennon's turgid 'Imagine' leads - 'No Hell below us, above us only sky' - There's the atheism.

Second, Lady in Red - There's the schmaltz.

Third, 'Stairway to Heaven. Awful, just awful. Give me 'When the Levee Breaks' any day. Mysticism, arrant nonsense and lyrically fuelled by a lot of hash.

Fourth - Stand By Me. Harmless enough.

Fifth - Crazy (Gnarls Barkley, not Cline). Seems to be about insanity.

Sixth - Lou Reed's Perfect Day. Yes, it is about heroin. Accordingly, the Children in Need version provided a huge amount of wry amusement.

Seventh - Good Vibrations. Hmm...

Eighth - Bridge over troubled water. Also widely believed to be about heroin.

Ninth - Closest Thing to Crazy. I'm beginning to worry about them now...

Tenth - Whole lotta love. They could at least have chosen the Muddy Waters 'You need love' that this was ripped off derived from.

Still, no Beatles, so it isn't ALL bad.

Labels: opinion polls

Le Journal du Dimanche has very thoughtfully polled French farmers on voting intentions, and since Libé in reporting that has included a graphic, I'm going to use it:


In a not hugely unexpected result, Sarko and Bayrou fare best with the fillers of formstilllers of the soil, but the extreme left must be enormously disappointed that the coalition of workers and peasants is missing a leg - 3% for the Trots and the Tankies compared to 8.5% among the wider population.

Elsewhere, Sego is sticking with la force de frappe - no nuclear disarmament yonder, and Chirac has attended his 30th successive Salon international de l'agriculture. He must really like charolais bulls, or more likely really likes the votes of their owners. I suppose it is a bit like the ritual homage that Labour politicians used to pay to the miners. Somehow I cannot see Broon being very comfortable mooching around Stoneleigh Park in green wellies and a tweed jacket making nice with the friesans and the hoodens.

Meanwhile, if the Gauls decide they want a crowned head instead of a grubby civilian president, step forward 'Balthazar Napolean de Bourbon, a jovial Indian lawyer and part-time farmer settled in Bhopal', a newly discovered Bourbon dynast. Can't see Prince Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans, Comte de Paris, Duc de France, one of the other pretenders being very keen, then again he was disinherited, so to speak, by his father for marrying 'a commoner'.

Labels: France, opinion polls

Because there you will find headlines like this:

"Labor in strongest electoral position since 2001". (The Australian)

And "Opinion poll puts Labour in front by three points" (NZ Herald).

I am rather unimpressed with the opinions of our Antipodean friends at the moment, frankly.

Labels: Australia, Mr Tony, New Zealand, opinion polls

Back to another of my favourite places. Polling by the Hindustan Times makes for happy reading for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, in that if elections had been held in January the UPA would have won an outright majority, gaining seats at the expense of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

Both the BJP and Congress are clearly wed to sane economics, and although there are various breeds of Lefties floating around at least one of the Indian parties with a far left identifying name has been keen on privatisation. Not, however, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) , judging from its equivalent of The Worker, which reports on CPI(M)’s affiliated trade union congress: "With a call ‘Forward To Bigger Class Battles’ Pandhe ended his speech saying, ‘We shall overcome one day!’ "

This rabble, plus sundry others form a third group, the Left Front, which with 59 seats holds the balance of power. They are currently supporting the UPA.

A bit more rooting around shows that coalition building in India must be a rather complex process – 39 parties are represented in the Lok Sabha, plus five independents. Congress and the BJP secured less than half of the total vote in 2003, although they are clearly the Big Beasts – the next biggest party, our chums at the CPI(M) took 5.7% of the vote, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, that of the Dalits (or ‘untouchables’) 5.3%.

Just for a point of comparison, there are ten parties plus two independents in Westminster, 10 parties in Moscow, 11 in Paris and six in Berlin.

As a footnote, Sir William Wedderburn, 4th Baronet, was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress.

Labels: opinion polls, South Asia

A slew of polls have been released, and they are looking good for Sarko, even before the revelation that Sego is a Champagne Socialist / of the Gauche Caviar filters through. For the second round - if Sego and Sarko make it, he is favoured 52/48. Meanwhile, 39% of our Gallic chums think Sarko has fought the best campaign, and 26% proffer the laurels to Sego.


Elsewhere, Sarko is laying it on thick : "I have seen many [personal] attacks against me, and I cannot see what purpose they serve....I will not comment on [Sego's] difficulties, and they bring me no pleasure (liar, liar.. C). I want a campaign which is peaceful, honest, transparent, worthy and dignifies France....We do not need low blows, nor personal attacks".

Sounds a bit like Tony Benn and his perennial cry of 'let'sh focush on the isshues, not pershonalities'. Alternatively, the skeletons in Sarko's cupboard are rattling....

Labels: France, opinion polls

On the face of it, it might seem a little curious that only 34% of Gauls wish to see a run off between Sarko and Sego in the second round of the Presidential election, but I suspect that asked who they wanted their man or woman to face the wily Gauls concluded that they would rather see a no-hoper as the opposition....

Digging around in the details of Libé's poll, Sarko outpolls Sego for 'understanding the concerns' of manual workers and employees, as does Trotskyite Arlette Laguiller. Maybe the toiling masses are just not ready for quasi-Blairism. In a comparatively encouraging development, 61% are very or somewhat interested in the election, compared to 38% ahead of the 2002 contest. Which makes me think that there will be a Sarko/Sego run off as there will be less willingness to vote for the fringe parties and risk a re-run of the 2002 contest.

Elsewhere, the barbs are flying, with a Socialist spokesperson commenting: "the extreme right is galloping back...Behind the media circus, Nicolas Sarkozy has made a speech that is extremely worrying for our fellow-citizens and our country". And he's like Berlusconi, apparently.

In other coverage, Le Figaro notes that there were some 60 accredited bloggers at the UMP bunfight, most of whom look to have been on side, so to speak, with a few other high profile blogggers thrown into the mix. It looks as though the equivalent of our friend Iain is Loïc Le Meur, who is not only one of the most read, but also owns one of the main blog platforms and advises the UMP on internet strategy. Loïc notes that there more people read blogs in France than the press, which is a bit of jaw dropper, although a sub 8m readership for the printed press is pretty feeble - and less than that for the News of the World alone

Labels: France, opinion polls

Chinese millionaires have been surveyed on their likes and dislikes, as China Daily reports. It is largely rather dull stuff, but apparently 10% of them are prepared to 'fess up to their careers being of greater importance than their families. However, looking at the overall sample, when they were questioned about what they like doing with their spare time, travel, swimming and golf all rated higher than doing family things. Ho ho.

Labels: China, opinion polls

M Chirac clearly has a sizeable family, or has been scattering largesse, as 19% of the French population want the old villain to run again.

Still, one can be heartened that there was no dithering, as the poll reported no 'don't knows'.


Of rather more moment is that the OECD wants answers from Blair over the dropping of the Serious Farce Office's investigation into the Saudi arms deal. Why did I have to read that on a French site? Anyway, the head of the OECD wants 'an explanation - and it had better be a good one' from Blair.

Labels: France, opinion polls

To such an extent that a poll in The Scotsman suggests heavy support for heading towards a Swedish model - 71% are in favour of restricting the availability of alcohol.

The shade of John Knox appears to have risen up, judging from the gallery of ghastly lobbyists etc that the paper quotes, my 'favourite' being someone from Alcohol Focus (very easy - lift up drink and look at it. Wear glasses or lenses if results are poor) : "We want to see an end to all cut-price, heavily discounted offers and an end to the favourable excise duty for cider that enables high-strength ciders to be sold cheaply". Righty-ho, how heavy is 'heavily discounted'? Would the £10 off two bottles of malt that I availed myself of the other day count? A close second is some other character who thinks that there are too many pubs and licences should be restricted. Erm, won't that just encourage more barn sized pubs? To adapt what a 19th century bishop said when the licenced trade was under attack then, "Better Scotland free than Scotland sober".

Labels: Act of Union, Cant, opinion polls