UKIP supporters were more pessimistic than any other party's about Andy Murray's chance of winning Wimbledon, according to a YouGov poll for yesterday's Sunday Times.
UKIP supporters were more pessimistic than any other party’s about Andy Murray’s chances of winning Wimbledon, according to a YouGov poll for yesterday’s Sunday Times.
Forty per cent of UKIP supporters thought Murray was unlikely to win this year’s men’s Wimbledon trophy, followed by 36 per cent of Conservative supporters and 34 per cent of Labour supporters.
Lib Dems were the least pessimistic, with just 28 per cent saying they thought Murray was unlikely to win Wimbledon.
When asked which qualities they associated with Andy Murray, a quarter of both UKIP and Conservative supporters cited the word ‘unfriendly’, compared to 17 per cent of Labour supporters and 10 per cent of Lib Dems.
12 per cent of UKIP supporters also believed Murray was “hostile”, compared to just 4 per cent of Lib Dems.
It would appear that right-wing pessimism is alive and well – and as unrealistic as ever!
4 Responses to “UKIP supporters most pessimistic about Murray’s chances of winning Wimbledon”
Charlie_Mansell
Some of these UKIP supporters are ex-Labour. Their pessimism and willingness to raise immigration early in a conversation is how they actually identify other like minded people like themselves, in a world where they perceive their safety and security values are belittled by a patronising inner directed dominant narrative. However their politics are not set in stone and articles like this purely end up giving centre-left activists greater smugness barriers to engaging with those rather fearful, low trust voters and thus actually help firm up the UKIP vote further! Rather than deride a pessimistic mindset that is part of how they identify people like themselves, we need to show a bit of empathy and get beyond our own distaste for those values and into talking about the smaller tangible local issues that do make a difference to them and can win them away from vulnerablity to UKIP, thus getting a ‘foot in the door’ to get a hearing for our own ethically concerned values. Instead of just identifying this problem, I’ve also recently set out out how we actually tackle this here http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/06/20/immigration-the-facts-are-just-not-enough/ which is based on 4 years of research in one of the toughest recent places where a Council had to relearn how to talk to its own residents http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=87279
Rallan
OMG is this banal, trivial, silly article really worth anyone’s time? Really?
Philip
A bit trivial but, then again, it’s a blog…
Philip
That’s interesting. I’d have expected Murray’s ‘no BS’ attitude to play well with the right in general. I find the people who dislike him for the tone of his media appearances to be rather self involved – it’s like he owes them something, like if he isn’t sunny and charming that he has somehow let them down personally. Well, I like the fact that he doesn’t give a damn what people like that think.
I’d call him brusque rather than hostile. And that’s just when he’s talking to the cliche-spouting idiocy-mongers who generally interview him. Who can blame him, frankly? I think I’d feel the same way. He seems quite personable otherwise. Intense but not at all unpleasant.