Maybe people just like the idea of referendums?

I've got another blog post on the Opinium site (link here) about whether people really want a referendum on the EU or just like the idea of referendums generally with a bit of polling data to back it up.

The reason for looking at this is that we regularly see commentators and politicians citing polls that say the public are in favour of a referendum on EU membership. Before this they were polls saying the public wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and before that it was the EU Constitutional Treaty and the Euro.

But the flaw in these polls is that they don't measure intensity. Our questions ask using an agreement scale (Yes - definitely, Yes - probably, No - probably not, No - definitely not, Don't know/no opinion) but you can only really measure intensity by asking people to prioritise. YouGov do a "pick the top three" most important issues question and even among UKIP voters, 'Europe' is only selected by 32% and 20% of Conservative voters.

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Polling on Syria

We did some polling last week on the situation in Syria and whether the UK and other countries should intervene.

People are generally opposed the idea of sending weapons to the Syrian rebels or putting troops on the ground but are broadly in favour of humanitarian aid and, surprisingly, enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

I've got a quick piece on the Opinium site about possible reasons for this (found here).

The blog section is starting to become a bit more active now so hopefully there'll be some more interesting content coming over the next few weeks. The Syria polling also included some questions on Britain's foreign policy generally, whether the UK is overstretched and what our obligations are so there's analysis of that to look forward to as well as other topical issues.