An opinion poll carried out by Novus Opinion and published on the King of Sweden’s 64th birthday yesterday shows that support for the Swedish monarchy has fallen significantly during the last decade. Today 58 % want to keep the monarchy, while 28 % favour a republic. Compared to the results from 2000 (85 % monarchists, 12 % republicans) and 2005 (80 % monarchists, 18 % republicans) this shows a clear tendence.
Interestingly the poll also shows that 44 % think the head of state should be chosen through democratic elections while 39 % think the position should be hereditary. 36 % think a monarchy is reconcilable with democracy; 48 % think it is not. The poll was conducted between 15 and 20 April by asking 1,000 individuals over the age of 16.
To a great extent this poll confirms the results of the SOM institute’s poll published ten days ago, which showed 56 % in favour of a monarchy and 22 % supporting a republic.
Saturday 1 May 2010
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It might have been worthwhile to observe that this poll was bought by Republikanska Föreningen fromn Novus.
ReplyDeleteThe Novus "webpanel" is the same population of people, who to an extent of 20+% believed that George W Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks on WTC.
The fact that this Novus-poll has the "SACO"-segment (SACO = Sveriges Akademikers Central Organsiation = Swedish Union of Academics) as one of the MOST CONSERVATIVE and monarchy-friendly segments, says something about the heavy republican bias of the whole survey -- for the last 35 years or so, and up until 2009, the SACO-segment has always been the one of the MOST REPUBLICAN segment in all polls (e.g. SIFO and SOM).
It is totally incredulous that the Novus poll is an accurate rendition of the Swedish population's actual sentiments. Especially since a SIFO-poll ordered by Aftonbladet in February 2010 yielded 71/18 in favour of monarchy.
What is your opinion of these "webpanels"? I see huge risks of such a community being populated by urban wannabe-opinionators who are tempted to tick the more "exciting" boxes in the surveys.
Correction: Aftonbladet's SIFO-poll of Feb 2010 yielded 76% i favour of monarchy.
ReplyDeleteI do not held any opinion about specific polls. I also do not subscribe to the theory that who "bought" or commissioned an opinion poll influences its findings as long as it is done by a serious agency. If so, would one expect an opinion poll published in for example a conservative newspaper like Svenska Dagbladet to be more strongly in favour of the monarchy? To me this sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory. And I cannot see any relevance in bringing up what this agency found out about people's beliefs on 9/11.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, what IS odd is the way this poll has been used by the Republican Assocation, such as they figuring out that based on this there will be a republican majority in 2024, which is certainly to jump to conclusions. But again, it must be possible to draw a line between the findings of an opinion poll and the views of the assocation which commissioned it.
Compared to the findings of the same poll in 2000 and 2005, the results speak for themselves. They are also backed up by the results found by the SOM Institute, which is certainly a serious institution, last autumn.