Weekend polls
YouGov in the Sunday Times have topline voting intentions of CON 42%, LAB 37%, LDEM 12%. It also has what I think are the first questions on William Hague's statement - the balance of opinion comes down strongly on Hague's side on whether he is telling the truth or not (46% think he is, 12% think he isn't) and whether he was correct to release his personal statement (59% think he was, 17% that he wasn't). However, on the question of whether the initial decision to share a room with his advisor was an error of judgement, the public are more evenly divided - 43% think it was an error, 42% think it was not.
There is also a YouGov poll in the Scottish Mail on Sunday. Holyrood constitutency voting intentions there are CON 19%, LAB 39%, LDEM 11%, SNP 29%. Holyrood regional voting stands at CON 15%, LAB 36%, LDEM 12%, SNP 26%. Note that the write-up in the Herald says the poll was conducted a month ago. I guess they've got the dates wrong there, and it was actually carried out this week - I'll confirm when I get in the office on Monday.
As we get close to the Pope's visit to Britain this month, there are also two polls asking questions about it. A poll for the Tablet by MORI found 25% supported the visit, 11% opposed it with 63% having no strong view. 29% of Catholics interviewed said they were likely to go to one of the events during the Pope's visit.
Asked about the Catholic church in general 49% had a positive view about the Catholic church having strong moral views. 41% agreed it was a force for good, with 17% disagreeing (this was asked as a split sample - the other half of respondents were asked about religion in general, where 52% thought religion was a force for good, and 22% a force for bad. On the specific issue of the child abuse scandal, 55% thought the Catholic church had responded badly, only 11% thought they had dealt with th
MORI also tested if people could identify Pope Benedict - 65% correct identified a photo of him. This compared to 50% who recognised Rowan Williams, 73% Fabio Capello, 86% Simon Cowell, 90% David Cameron and 95% Prince Charles.
There was also a ComRes poll on the visit for Theos. ComRes asked if people agreed or disagreed with 12 statements taken from the Pope's encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate. In almost every case people overwhelmingly agreed, largely one suspects because they were pretty bland, inoffensive, non-religious statements, such as "We must prioritise the goal of access to steady employment for everyone" or "The natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure". The only statement that people disagreed with was the sole one to mention god: "Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love", which 81% of people disagreed with.
Despite agreeing with most of the statements he made, people were broadly negative towards whether or not the Pope should comment on world issues. Only 18% thought he responded wisely to issued (49% disagreed), 40% said they generally disagreed with the Pope's views (20% disagreed) and 41% thought the Pope should not speak out on social and political issues (36% disagreed). I suspect the apparent disconnect between these two banks of questions is down to people associating the Pope with his views on things like abortion, homosexuality, contraception and the church's child abuse scandal, rather than his views on the environment and the economy.
