Today’s Ipsos MRBI/Irish Times “Perceptions Research” poll that finds we, the citizenry of the State, are seriously deluded on a range of public policy issues about key facts which inform decision-making must be a matter of concern. The poll repeatedly begs but does not answer the question: “now that we have given you the correct answer, would you change your view on the substantive issue?” Presumably the answer for many is Yes, although, also for many more, it’s surely the case that where they have guessed at an answer, that guess probably reflects their prejudices and a desire to validate them. In that sense the poll is as much a snapshot of political prejudices as of public perceptions.
Misguided perceptions matter, particularly on the scale manifested, though because we live in a representative democracy most of us do not have a direct say over public policy decisions. Many of us appear to mentally sub-contract the business of informing ourselves about the detail of policy to the politicians we elect for that purpose. Some of the ignorance may, as suggested elsewhere on these pages, be blamed on the media. But there is also a significant element of what might be termed “wilful ignorance”. That’s a phenomenon all too familiar to newspapers that, in pre-referendum mode, feed voters with detailed information but which rarely stops them complaining they have not been informed about the issues. You can take a horse to water but not make it drink.
Prejudices, often deliberately fuelled by cynical politicians, feed into political decision-making – bad decision-making – through myriad processes like polling, constituency clinics and even the likes of the Joe Duffy Show. The instinct of populist politicians will be to look at the poll finding that we believe there are twice as many immigrants in the State as there actually are, and be led to believe it would be politically profitable to announce new curbs on asylum seekers. A taoiseach might find in the wildly over-estimated perceptions of the share of State spending on politicians and politics deep-rooted anti-politics sentiment which might just be placated by abolishing the Seanad.
The findings on perceptions of ethnic background are perhaps the most worrying of the poll. Although only 12 per cent of the population consists of non-nationals, more than one in three of us believe that the non-national community represents over 30 per cent of the population. That view is shared by as many as 47 per cent of women and 42 per cent of unskilled workers and the unemployed. Fifteen per cent of respondents even said they believe one in two of us are non-nationals. Such misperceptions are deeply dangerous and could, if unchallenged by the Government, be the basis for the sort of worrying upsurge in racism seen elsewhere in Europe.
