Something’s up with this Covid poll

The Economist has a rather eye-popping chart in this week’s print edition, under the headline “Some Britons crave permanent pandemic lockdown”, which has been doing the rounds on Twitter:

Yes, according to the above table, based on a poll conducted for The Economist by Ipsos MORI, it is apparently the case that just under one in five Brits (19 per cent) support having a nationwide 10pm curfew permanently in place, regardless of whether or not we happen to be in the grips of a pandemic. More than one in three (35 per cent), meanwhile, apparently want us all to have to quarantine for 10 days each time we come back from abroad forever and always; more than one in four (26 per cent) want clubs and casinos to be kept permanently closed.

You can see why the table has been making a stir, and not just in the lockdown-sceptic we-have-never-seen-such-an-infringement-of-our-civil-liberties crowd. Even Owen Jones is aghast.

But are large swaths of the nation really suffering from some kind of temporary Covid-induced insanity, or do we just live in a much less liberal society than we thought we did? The Economist seems to think it could be the latter, referring to “the strange myth of liberal Britain”.

Ben Page, Ipsos MORI’s chief executive, told us that this could just be a case of people feeling extra-cautious while we were still in the midst of the pandemic. However, he added that there is a sizeable “ban everything” crowd in Britain who wanted to use Covid as an excuse to make permanent change, and that the findings were similar to other such polls, such as a YouGov one on wearing masks. He told us:

The public remain far more cautious than the government. The majority want many restrictions to continue into August or beyond. A minority seem happy for some restrictions — like mask wearing — to become the “new normal”.

To me this just highlights public concern and a willingness to do what it takes to conquer the disease; whether one in five really want a police curfew permanently is unlikely — although a small minority who feel unsafe at night may well do — rather it reflects the fact that the public remain extremely wary of the disease and like the idea of stopping “other people” spreading it.

We think another possibility should be considered in trying to work out what on Earth is going on here, and that is that while this table, and the poll itself, have been done in good faith, they are for various reasons not particularly representative of the truth.

First of all, it strikes us that the three options given to respondents — 1,025 British adults aged 16-75, who were polled on 2-3 July 2021 — might have influenced their answers. They were asked “to what extent, if at all, would you support or oppose the following rules being in place?”, and were given these three choices:

— For a period of one month after July 19
— Until Covid-19 is under control worldwide
— Permanently, regardless of the risk from Covid-19

Now if there was, say, an option that said “Just up until July 19” (the date that restrictions are scheduled to end), might we have seen a different set of results? The three options seem to us to imply that the rules should be in place longer than the government has decided they will be, despite the fact that you were allowed to oppose such ideas in the survey as well as support them. It strikes us as whatever the reverse of “leading questions” is (leading answers?), this might be an example of that.

Second, this poll might have had similar results on mask-wearing to the YouGov one that Page pointed us to, in which 36 per cent said they would keep using face masks on public transport and in crowded indoor areas, but in the YouGov poll, the question was “After the final coronavirus restrictions are lifted this summer, do you think you will keep doing the following or not?”. Deciding to continue to wear a mask in public places strikes us as very different to being mandated by law to do so — one constitutes an infringement of civil liberties, while the other is about personal choice. But because the Ipsos MORI poll was specifically about rules, and didn’t give respondents the option to say whether this should be compulsory or a matter of choice, it seems plausible to us those that want to carry on wearing masks indefinitely indicated that choice in the survey by going for that option.

Third, the “permanently, regardless of the risk from Covid-19” option contains a scary word. As “Professor Risk” himself Sir David Spiegelhalter told us recently over an oyster Lunch with the FT, “risk” is a very loaded term:

The problem with ‘risk’ is that it only addresses the downside — you say there’s a good chance of winning the lottery or of something good happening . . . I much prefer thinking in terms of potential benefits and harms, which is clumsier but really expresses what we’re faced with in every decision that we make.

We would add that “regardless” is a bit loaded in this context too. If the option had been worded as, say, “permanently, even if there was little to no risk from Covid-19”, we would guess that we might have got a different set of results.

Also, The Economist table shortens the option to “regardless of Covid-19”, which we suspect might have also got some slightly different answers, but which makes the fact that so many people have chosen that option seem even more preposterous. Likewise, in the table the question on curfews is shortened to just “a 10pm curfew”, while in the poll, the question was about “having a curfew against leaving home after 10pm without a good reason”. A “good reason” is rather broad, and it’s easier to understand people might not want others to be outside at night if they think they are outside for what they might consider a “bad reason”.

Polling has got a bad rap in recent years, and we don’t think that has always been fair. But big issues can emerge with the way topical, emotive questions are asked, and sometimes respondents try to influence policy in their answers. Pollsters’ aims might be noble, but their findings shouldn’t necessarily be taken at (mask-covered) face value.

Related links:
Lunch with Sir David Spiegelhalter: ‘Risk is a very loaded term’ — FT
Some Britons crave permanent pandemic lockdown — The Economist