After a year of historic political events such as Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the Italian constitutional referendum, a major new Ipsos survey across 22 countries paints a picture of a global public feeling left behind by the traditional system of politics and government, which in several countries […] Read more »
An Implosion of Trust
… The 2017 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER finds that two-thirds of the countries we survey are now “distrusters” (under 50 percent trust in the mainstream institutions of business, government, media and NGOs to do what is right), up from just over half in 2016. This is a profound crisis in trust […] Read more »
How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency
Barack Obama campaigned for the U.S. presidency on a platform of change. As he prepares to leave office, the country he led for eight years is undeniably different. Profound social, demographic and technological changes have swept across the United States during Obama’s tenure, as have important shifts in government policy […] Read more »
Political Pollsters Reflect On What Went Wrong In 2016
2016 was a year of failure for political polling in several Western democracies. France, Britain and the U.S. were all taken by surprise after polls underestimated the support for conservative presidential candidates and Brexit. Now, pollsters in all three countries are reflecting on what went wrong. All Things Considered, NPR Read more »
Widespread Pessimism or Glimmers of Hope? US Consumer Confidence After the 2016 Presidential Election
The 2016 US presidential election can be characterized by widespread discontent with the status quo. Indeed, a supermajority of Americans see the system as broken. And strong majorities across party lines believe that America is on the “wrong track”. However, American consumer confidence has strongly rebounded since the Great Recession […] Read more »
Big Data’s Big Misses: 2016 Was a Bad Year For Predictions
Goodbye 2016. The journalists and analysts who work with numbers will not miss you. From the United States to the United Kingdom, the last 12 months will be remembered for missed calls, surprises and upsets that didn’t just beat the odds, but that shattered them – and not just in […] Read more »