More from the YouGov/Sunday Times poll
A little later than I intended, here's a round up of other findings in the YouGov/Sunday Times poll, full tables for which are now available here.
Firstly there were a group of questions on local government cuts - 48% thinks cuts to council services are necessary in the context of the government's deficit, 31% do not. People are pretty evenly split on whether they blame the government or local councils for cuts to local services - 27% blame the councils themselves for not tackling waste, 29% the government for cutting their funding, 37% think blame should be shared equally between them.
On local government cuts, 48% think the cuts to local council services are necessary to reduce the deficit, and are quite evenly split about where the blame for individual cuts should lie. 27% think the blame for the cuts should mainly fall upon local councils for not cutting their waste, 29% the government for cutting their funding and 37% that they are equally to blame. There was some sympathy for arguments that councils are cutting voluntary grants because it's easier than sacking staff, that councils countrolled by opposition parties are deliberiately slashing sensitive services for political reasons and that councils are exaggerating their funding cuts, but in all cases it is hardly overwhelmingly, with less than half agreeing.
There were some questions on the big society that largely echo the YouGov/Sun polling on the Big Society a fortnight or so ago. The majority of people aren't sure what the Big Society actually is, though having has it explained to them a plurality of them think is a good idea in principle (in the Sun poll a fortnight ago YouGov also asked if people thought it would work in practice - a large majority thought it would not).
Asked if they themselves would be interested in volunteering 17% of people claim they already too some sort of volunteer work in their community, with a further 10% saying they would be interested in doing so if given the opportunity. 28% say they do not have the time and 30% that they would not be interested. Note well, however, that this sort of question is probably subject to social desirability bias - people will tend to exaggerate how helpful and community spirited they are themselves (my favourite example of this that I often quote was a Populus poll that asked people how much money they personally had given to the Tsunami appeal - if everyone who answered the poll had been telling the truth the public would have donated far, far, far in excess of the amount the appeal actually received).
There were also some questions on Human Rights and the European Court which displayed a typically hostile reaction. 63% think it is wrong for the ECHR to be able to make rulings over the British courts and 57% think that our membership of the ECHR is, on balance, a bad thing. Asked what their preferred option would be, 24% think we should remain a member of the ECHR, 55% would like to see Britain withdraw and instead adopt our own Bill of Rights, 4% would prefer Britain did not have any sort of Bill of Rights.
On the specific case of prisoners having the right to vote, 69% think no prisoners should be able to vote, 20% that only prisoners serving short sentences should be able to vote and 6% think all prisoners should be able to vote. If the government were ordered to pay compensation to prisoners denied the vote, 61% think the government should refuse to do so, just 9% that "The government needs to obey the law, and should pay compensation if ordered to."
