Here are the first results from the survey of readers (carried out between Saturday and Thursday). I closed the survey at 854 responses as that was twice the number of respondents when the same questions were asked in December 2012 (and was arrived at in a shorter period of time). Last month (January 2014) this blog received 12,926 unique visitors according to Google Analytics.
You are quite like me: mostly living in England (81%), rather male (67%), getting on a bit, read the Guardian (53%) and a range of wildlife magazines, support a range of wildlife NGOs (but the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts are your favourites), would vote Labour tomorrow (80%) if the only choice were the Tories and consider yourselves naturalists.
You like a range of the subjects covered in this blog and if pushed to give a view you are least keen on the cartoons (but I like them!).
These results are not very different from December 2012 in fact they are very similar. The readership of BBC Wildlife and British Wildlife amongst readers of this blog has gone up and the proportion of potential Labour supporters has gone down a bit.
More results over the next few days – I think there is some interesting stuff in here. Thank you to those who responded.
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The bit I find really surprising is the Labour voting figure,that is really unbelievable so to speak,not that I doubt your figures.
Does that mean that your type of blogging discourages Tories from coming and taking part on your blog,cannot see why it should but as voters are close to 50/50 I assume then would have expected similar result in your survey.
Dennis – 1) people might lie, 2) Tories may be less keen on answering the survey (not sure why), 3) fewer Tories read the blog (I could understand that).
You’ll find the results on Thursday interesting.
I suspect many of your respondents are like me. I would never vote labour or conservative but the former is the lesser of 2 evils the way this uninformative question was phrased.
Presumably there is a reason why the choice was restricted to Labour v. Conservative, but surely it would be more informative to know how readers of the blog would actually vote (indeed you could ask both questions).
Personally, I have voted for three different political parties over the years, but never Labour or Conservative. I left the question unanswered.
Did you have to graphically represent ‘What is your age’. It reminds me that I going down a rather steep slippery slope.
Bob – the alternative is worse.
Writing as a slightly tide-marked pundit…
So what should the Sun’s Environment correspondent take from these findings?
Oh, hang on a minute… Silly question.
Howver, I suspect that if you look at the political make up of the newsprint media’s readership and then at the Avery respondents’ favoured morning reads, the overall overwhelming rosy tinge of Mark’s audience merely highlights the fact that the Gnariaud and its ilk are absolutely terrible reads and their woe-begotten readerships are forced to find solace elsewhere, whereas the nature notes in the Telegraph afford gripping stuff for your true blue naturalist, so that they’re unlikely to view these wise words.
But if you fancy further figures, do check out the latest YouGov Polls. It appears that very few people believe either of the Big 2 parties can navigate their way through the current economic situation (Surprisingly, no questions about exiting bags of the paper variety).
Sadly, issues of the environment were not included in questions put to interviewees (well, not beyond who’s responsible for all the flooding – Was it Kylie or Justin Timberlake? I don’t know. I joined the flood of Guardian ‘readers’ heading for the shallows of this very blog).
As Philip Espin points out too, the voting preference question was particularly uninformative. Well said from the 1970s: Labour, Tory, same old story. Edward Wilson, Harold Heath, them on top and us underneath.
I’m one of those who filled in the questionnaire but couldn’t put an answer a lot of the questions because they were couched in such restrictive and narrow terms.
Serena – thanks for filling it in anyway. The questions were the ones I wanted to ask – funnily enough! And, at least this time, I wanted to replicate those asked over a year ago to see what had changed – not very much!
How many political parties do you think are represented in the Westminster House of Commons, by the way? (Answer – 11)
Mark, was there a reason why you didn’t include the BTO in your list of membership organisations? I’m sure that for many birders taking part in your survey, time undertaking BTO surveys, contributing to BirdTrack etc outstrips any other support we give to other societies.
Steve – I agree with what you say and would yield to few people in my admiration for the BTO’s work. I guess that comes through in these blogs.
So why not include them? Two reasons – I didn’t include them last time I asked the question and wanted the results to be directly comparable. But why didn’t I include them last time – because the BTO is not a conservation organisation.
Yes the BTo’s work is of value to nature conservation but then so is that of many universities and other research organisations.
I suspect that the next time I do a readership survey the questions will be different. I am kicking myself for not asking some other questions already! So maybe it won’t be that far away.
Shame. Adding them this time would have been a start, or adding BTO News to publications would have been another way of covering it.
Also, BTO itself might not be a conservation org, but members pretty much support because of the conservation benefits that come from BTO research. Still should be included in my opinion.