12 per cent of Europeans expect economy to improve
12% of Europeans expect their local economy to improve within the next 6 months.
As the G20 meets in Mexico with the continuing crisis in Europe dominating the agenda, a new poll from Ipsos’s global @dvisor shows that just 12% of citizens from across 9 European countries (Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Hungary and Poland) expect their local economy to improve in the next six months. This has fallen from 20% in April 2010.
There are differences within Europe itself. Just one in ten Britons (9%) expect their local economy to be stronger in the next six months. Similar levels of pessimism come from the Swedish (10%), French (9% and Belgians (8%). The Danes* and the Germans are the most optimistic of the Europeans with around one in five (22% and 20%) expecting improvement. The Americans are more optimistic with a quarter (25%) saying their economy will get stronger in the next six months. This is set against some very different assessments of the current state of the economy in their country: in both Germany and Denmark, 69% describe the state of the economy as “good”, a little ahead of the 64% recorded in Sweden. At the other end of the scale, are Hungary, Italy and Spain (each 3%), France (9%) and Britain (10%). The US registers 23%.
Technical Note
Ipsos Global @dvisor is a monthly online survey conducted by Ipsos via the Ipsos Online Panel system in 24 countries around the world. This month included additional interviews in Denmark. For the results of the survey presented herein, an international sample of 18,713 adults age 18-64 in the US and Canada, and age 16-64 in all other countries, were interviewed. Approximately 1000+ individuals participated on a country by country basis via the Ipsos Online Panel with the exception of Argentina, Belgium, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and Turkey, where each have a sample approximately 500+. In this wave (G@33), 500+ individuals in Denmark also participated in the survey and 1000+ individuals in Kenya participated in a similar survey
The survey was conducted between 1st and 15th May, 2012.
Weighting was then employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to the most recent country Census data, and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. A survey with an unweighted probability sample of this size and a 100% response rate would have an estimated margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points for a sample of 1,000 and an estimated margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20 per country of what the results would have been had the entire population of adults in that country had been polled. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error
