The Countryside March - Who Was Really There?

Polling undertaken by MORI on behalf of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) during the Countryside March has revealed that four out of five of the participants on Sundays Countryside March were Conservative voters, with almost half of them living in areas other than 'the middle of the countryside'.

Full results are available on request, but the main findings are summarised as follows:

• 79% of those marchers who indicated which party they supported, said they would be most inclined to vote Conservative. 10% said Lib-Dem and just 7% Labour.
• 15% described themselves as living in the middle of a town or city, with 5% living in a suburb. 22% said they lived on the edge of the countryside.
• 47% of marchers were in the AB class group (professional / managerial), and 35% in the C1 (clerical) group. Only 5% came from the DE group
• 40% gave fox hunting / hunting with dogs as the single main reason for being there, 28% said they were marching primarily for the rights of rural people, and 12% gave farming generally (or beef / beef farming / BSE / beef bans) as the main reason for attending.
• Using MORI's own estimate of 200,000 participants, we can estimate that 12,000 people taking part in the march supported a ban on hunting with dogs (6% of the total), and an estimated 30,000 supported increased right to roam in the countryside (15% of the total).

MORI randomly interviewed 1,128 people aged 15+ during the march on 1st March.

A separate MORI survey [Countryside says yes to Michael Foster's anti-hunt bill] realised on 24 February showed that transport (including a lack of public transport and getting to and from towns) is the single most pressing issue for country areas, according to rural people. A quarter (26%) mentioned this spontaneously as an area that country groups should be tackling.

With reference to the results released on 24 February, MORI interviewed 3,010 people (including 1,529 in rural areas) aged 18+ by telephone between 17-28 October 1997.