Suan Dusit political index shows large drop for the Democrats; smaller drops for PM and the government

Every month Suan Dusit conducts a political index survey. The benefit of the Suan Dusit political index is that it is (1) nationwide, (2) a large sample size for the survey (7,036 for June), and (3) they ask the same questions each month which makes it easier to compare with previous months.

BP’s plan is to blog the survey results each month – see  October 2011, November 2011, December 2011, January 2012, February 2012,  March and April 2012, and May 2012 posts. This post looks at the June 2012 survey which was undertaken between June 25-30. BP has compared the June results with the other Suan Dusit monthly political indexes since August 2011 for the Yingluck government and the final survey from April 2011 that BP can find for the Abhisit government so we have a point of comparison (BP can’t find the surveys for the months of May, June, and July 2011 (i.e. last 3 months of the Abhisit government) although this could be that Suan Dusit diverted their surveys to election surveys).

The points are out of 10:

Sources:  April 2011 (PDF); August-November 2011 (PDF); December 2011 (PDF); January 2012; February 2012 (PDF); March and April 2012 (PDF);  May 2012 (PDF); and June 2012 (DOC)

On the performance of the PM, the government and the opposition:

1. For the PM and the government their support has dropped. Yingluck has dropped from her previous high of 6.24 to 6.15. The government’s support has dropped from 5.96 to 5.78. The drop in support is likely because of the constitutional amendments and introduction of reconciliation bills, in particular. You will notice that the government trails Yingluck, but this has been consistent over time.

2. The opposition (i.e mainly the Democrats) have suffered a large drop in support from 5.7 down to 5.11. Likely reasons for the decline are (a) the Democrat party antics in parliament over the reconciliation bills were not viewed favourably, and (b) the hysteria the Democrats whipped up against NASA using Utapao (more in a latter post). BP thinks it is (a) more than (b), but plan to look at (b) in a future post.

Source: EPPO

BP: Of course, there are other factors which have lead to the increase such as the minimum wage increase which has increased the cost of production, but not all goods have increased in price yet (although certainly for rice dishes sold on the street there has either been an increase in price/decrease in quantity of serving since the beginning of the year). However, petrol prices go up and down and the the decline of (b), (c), and (d) between December-April and then steadying in May and June correlate with the the price of petrol. The point that BP is making is that the international oil price will be a key factor in determining the government’s rating on economic issues. Price of oil goes up it will hurt the government and prices goes down it will help. So tension in the Middle East (pushes prices up) versus economic crisis in Europe (pushes prices down as less consumption) are issues to watch for the flow-on effect on Thailand.

For the regional breakdown, BP has run out of time, but there is a NIDA poll which BP will also blog on and will include the regional breakdown in that post.

*Survey data methodology for June 2012:

Gender:
Males   44.68%
Females 55.32%%

Age:
Under 20,  9.08%
21-30,  22.47%
31-40,  31.10%
41-50,  24.7%
50+, 11.43%
Not specified, 1.22%

Education:
Less than Bachelor’s, 55.78%
Bachelor’s degree, 32.82%
More than Bachelor’s degree, 4.62%
Not specified, 6.78%

Occupation:
Farmers, 25.17%
Contractors, 22.46%
Civil servants/state enterprise employees, 16.23%
Soldiers/military, 1.05%
Doctors/nurses, .99%
Private sector employees, 9.81%
Self-traders, 10.9%
Students, 10.05%
Others, 3.34%

Region:
Bangkok and surrounding provinces, 22.68%
Central, 19.88%
North, 18.28%
Northeast, 29.15%
South, 10.01%

BP: The North, South and the Northeast are slightly under-sampled.