Two thirds of people have never met their local councillor and a similar number cannot name one, according to a new poll published today, on the eve of this May's local elections.
The introduction of free entry to museums and galleries in England and Wales appears to be achieving the government's objective of widening access, according to MORI research conducted in January 2002. The overall proportion of adults visiting museums and galleries has gone up since similar research was undertaken two years ago from 31 per cent to 38 per cent.
Pulse Check delivers key insights from Ipsos' Political Monitor, Political Pulse, and Public Services data, along with reactive polling, to help you navigate the evolving political landscape.
When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September, economic optimism in Britain fell sharply: the MORI Economic Optimism Index (EOI) in our late-September poll for The Times hit -56, its lowest level for more than twenty years. It is perhaps surprising that barely half a year later all discussion of this year's budget should be concerned with the popularity of its taxation measures and not with its macroeconomic effects.
Research on behalf of Norwich Union, the UK's largest insurer, into stakeholder pensions shows that only just over a half of people earning between 16310,000 and 16325,000 a year say they've heard of stakeholder pensions
Statistical analysis of constituency results in the last two general elections strongly suggests that ethnic minority (Black or Asian) candidates secure a smaller share of the vote for their parties than do white candidates. While it is not possible to prove from the evidence why this is the case, the obvious presumption must be that it is caused by racist voters being deterred from voting for an ethnic minority candidate. The effect was strongest in the case of Labour candidates, depressing their vote share by more than three-and-a-half percentage points, but was also present for Liberal Democrats; however, there was no statistically significant loss of votes found in the case of Conservative ethnic minority candidates.
