Fear of crime surges, maybe |

Wednesday 10th August 2011 | 11:02

Fear of crime surges, maybe

The first wholly post-riot polling figures have now been released by YouGov – including their tracker on what issues the public think important to the country and themselves and their family.

The question asks voters to pick up to three issues. The graph below showing the number including crime as an ‘important issue’ for the country in 2011, speaks for itself.

Compared to the same poll conducted a fortnight ago, there has been a 25 point leap in those seeing crime as an important issue facing the country – at the expense of almost all other issues, especially health, which is down 8 points. Crime is now placed 2nd on this scale in people's minds, up from 5th place.

When asked what issues are important to ‘you and your family’, however, the picture is far less pronounced.

On this metric, crime still sits in 5th place, up slightly from its 7th placed ranking a fortnight ago.

Indeed, crime is now in almost exactly the same place as immigration as a political issue. There is a 31 point gap between immigration and asylum being perceived as an ‘important issue’ for ‘the country’ (46%) and those who see it as such for ‘you and your family’ (15%) – and a 29 point gap between crime being important for the country (48%) and the respondents themselves (19%). Previous to the riots, the national-personal divide on crime was just 9 points.

While the overall importance of each issue matters hugely, it is possible to argue that the larger the deficit on each issue between individuals' own concerns and their concerns for the country, the more theoretical the topic is for voters - and less likely to make them base their voting intention on this issue. It makes sense that people are concerned at seeing such widespread rioting on the TV and the damage it does for our national morale and reputation, but are not worried about being personally threatened by them.

Until a few more polls are released, especially after the riots have died down for several months, it will be difficult to read too much into these figures – but the pattern is certainly interesting.

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Fear of crime surges, maybe

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