Ipsos Research Highlights - October 2017
Ipsos's Research Highlights for October 2017 includes the dangers of sugar and Britons becoming tired of austerity but more positive about immigration.
Welcome to our October highlights – this month we examine the Tribes of Brexit in the UK, and see how attitudes to issues such as gay marriage are closely related to attitudes to Brexit, and how they crossed party lines. We highlight how the public is becoming more positive about immigration – concern has been falling for 18 months – but 60% still want to see it reduced.
Immigration has been slowing the decline of religious observance in the UK, but this month we find six out of 10 Britons, despite having a state church, agree religion does more harm than good.
As the UK Chancellor prepares a new budget our “State of the State” report for Deloitte finds Britain is tiring of austerity – an increased proportion feel affected by cuts, and the number willing to see cuts in public services to help reduce Britain’s debts has more than halved since 2010 (from 59% to 22% now). This poses real challenges for a government without a majority where the ‘spend more’ opposition is narrowly ahead in the polls.
Elsewhere, we look at the lives and work of 'the 1%' – the people running the world’s top businesses – and how technology dominates them. Overall we find the public becoming more wary of technology they are not used to – so Artificial Intelligence worries people, and only a quarter want completely driverless cars in our review of motoring for the RAC Foundation.
We look at sugar. It is now more dangerous than gunpowder according to Yuval Harari in “Homo deus” – the public don’t know how much they consume, but are as ashamed about it as they are fiddling sick leave or their taxes. Politicians favour manufacturers doing more.
Internationally, we look at views of aid to developing countries, what Americans believe makes you a ‘real’ American (it includes guns), attitudes to women in South Africa, how the Chinese travel (air travel is forecast to double by 2034) and much, much more.
I hope you find something useful here – please let me know what you think.
Ben Page
Chief Executive
Ipsos