States Members are rubbish – it’s official

Friday 30 May 2014

States Members are rubbish – it’s official

Friday 30 May 2014

A new poll, the same message: Islanders don’t think that our current crop of politicians is up to the job.

In the first survey by campaign group change.je just 1.9% of 197 respondents said that they had “full confidence” in the States Assembly, against 38.5% who said that they had no confidence at all. But there may be some hope for improvement – around two-thirds of respondents know that there’s an election coming on 15 October, and a similar number are planning to vote.

The campaign group was launched to reach out to students, graduates and young professionals and engage them in the political process ahead of this year’s elections. The founder of the project says that it’s independent of the States, and that he wants it to be a creative, effective and trusted source of information on local politics. Christian May says that not enough is being done to engage younger voters, and that the website will include polling, discussion forums, FAQs about the Jersey political process and opinion pieces written on a variety of topics, including the economy and taxation, healthcare, education and government priorities.

In their first poll, Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf has emerged as Jersey’s love-him-or-hate-him “marmite minister”, coming in second place in both the polls for the politician that Islanders like the most, and the least.

Asked about their confidence in the States Assembly the respondents said:

- 1.9% had “full confidence”.

- 47.2% had “some confidence”.

- 38.5% had “no confidence”.

Asked about confidence in the Council of Ministers:

- 2.5% had “full confidence”.

- 42.9% had “some confidence”.

- 32.9% had “no confidence”.

The survey also polled respondents about the 11 members of the Council of Ministers, giving approval ratings for the politicians running departments. The results of that part of the survey were as follows:

Comments

Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.