Nearly four out of every five people in Guernsey support assisted dying, according to an online survey from Express.
We surveyed more than 1,000 people, with 79.9% saying they would support the legalisation of assisted dying in the Bailiwick.
The survey reaffirms claims made by Deputy Gavin St Pier, who recently argued that the “majority” of people on the island supported assisted dying.
Support for assisted dying seems to have grown since we conducted a similar survey in 2018, when nearly a third of people were against the idea.
Deputy St Pier lodged a historic requête in 2018 to try to set up a working group to introduce the legislation – which was ultimately defeated by 24 votes to 14, after three days of debate and compromises.
Strong views on both sides
After the debate hosted by the Guernsey Disability Alliance, Deputy St Pier told Express that assisted dying will always be “a matter on which strong views can be held”.
GDA member Carol Le Page offered the opposing view, with both acknowledging that assisted dying is an ethical issue bound by individual people’s morals.
Ms Le Page said she has concerns over coercion where assisted dying is concerned, and that “it could be a slippery slope” which leads to people choosing to end their lives early so they aren’t a burden on others.
Checking the data
Given the deeply emotive and high-stakes nature of the assisted dying debate, online surveys are frequently targets for coordinated campaign groups or automated form-manipulation.
To ensure the integrity of the results, Express subjected the raw data to a rigorous security scrub.
A handful of anomalies – including duplicate “spam” votes submitted from identical IP addresses in fractions of a second, as well as rapid-fire bot scripts targeting both sides of the debate – were identified and stripped from the final tally.
Interestingly, removing these fake votes caused virtually no change to the final result, with the verified totals at 845 ‘Yes’ votes and 213 ‘No’ votes.
