Pessimists but not extremists

On both sides of the Atlantic, the current mood is pessimism rather than anger. Most people are worried about how their family will cope with the next 12 months.

Voters are divided about their own government’s ability to dig their country out of recession. But there is little sign – so far – of a surge towards extremism of the kind that disfigured Europe in the 1930s.

Those conclusions emerge from exclusive surveys conducted for E!Sharp in Germany, Britain and the US in the days that followed the G20 summit in London in early April. The surveys were conducted online by the YouGov group. Samples were carefully selected to be representative of the electorate in each country.

First, YouGov asked respondents to assess the current financial condition of their immediate family. In all three countries, barely one in four told us this is very or fairly strong; the vast majority within this group said it is only “fairly strong”. Very few said it is “very strong”.

In each country the largest group said their family’s financial condition was “neither strong nor weak”. This was true for Germany especially: 44 percent, compared with just over one in three in Britain and the US. In all three, there is widespread gloom, but it is more acute in Britain and the US, where more people consider their financial condition to be “weak” than “strong”. In Germany the figures for “weak” and “strong” are equal.

Those low levels of consumer confidence should concern any government. But they do not reveal the full depth of today’s pessimism. This emerges from our next question. We asked the same people to say how worried they are that the “financial conditions of you and your immediate family will get worse over the next 12 months”. In all three countries, almost two-thirds replied that they are “very” or “fairly” worried.

This pessimism has infected every demographic group in each country: young and old, rich and poor, men and women. No wonder sales of big-ticket products, such as cars, have fallen so fast. When people are this nervous about the future, one of their first impulses is to put off purchases that don’t need to be made now, and to save more. That is one of the paradoxes of the recession. The boom that preceded it may have been fuelled in part by easy credit and excessive spending; but now, when economic recovery requires consumers to spend rather than save, they are too worried to do so.

Who do they blame for creating this mess? We offered a variety of culprits: domestic and international, political and financial. Here the transatlantic consensus breaks down. Most Germans blame “general world conditions” and, to a lesser extent, banks and governments abroad. Just one German in four blames either their own banks or their own government.

In the US, the reverse is true. Four out of five think the recession is home-grown, with politicians attracting the lion’s share of blame. Fully 64 percent pin the greatest blame on either the Bush administration or Congress. Perhaps surprisingly, given the struggles faced by financial institutions, only 18 percent of Americans think the biggest culprits are US banks. Yet even less blame is allocated abroad: fewer than one in ten Americans think the biggest cause has been general world conditions or banks or governments elsewhere.

British attitudes fall midway between those in Germany and America. Two-fifths of the British public blame failings abroad; but most Britons think the greatest blame lies at home, with British banks (blamed by 30 percent) narrowly attracting greater censure than Gordon Brown’s government (26 percent). Indeed, it is noteworthy that domestic bankers are significantly more unpopular in Britain than in Germany or America.

What matters now, of course, is whether the right decisions are taken to turn the global economy around and get it growing again. We asked respondents in all three countries to rate the political leaders of all three countries. In the aftermath of the G20 summit, do Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown have what it takes to tackle the recession?

Views are divided. The most popular leader is Barack Obama. Fifty-six percent of his countrymen trust him “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to take the right decisions. This is not surprising given that he did not become president until well after the crisis first erupted. However, it would overstate things to say he leads a politically united nation. Almost two in five Americans do not trust him much, or at all. These are mostly Republican voters. The deep partisan divisions of the Bush years largely remain.

These divisions explain one of the telling findings of these surveys: Obama is substantially more popular in Europe than he is at home. In both Britain and Germany, three people in four trust him. Whereas 26 percent of Americans are so opposed to him that they do not trust him “at all”, only 4 percent of Germans and Britons condemn him so completely.

With Brown and Merkel, on the other hand, popularity is greater at home than abroad. Slightly more Britons (52 percent) distrust Brown than trust him (42 percent), while Germans divide three-to-one against trusting Brown. Among Americans, the biggest proportion say “don’t know” when asked about both Brown and Merkel.

Germans are evenly divided on whether they trust Merkel; but just as they have a higher opinion of her rather than Brown, so Britons rate their own leader more highly than that of their main European partner. The G20 summit seems to have confirmed Obama’s reputation in Europe, but it has done little to enhance public respect among Europeans for the leaders of other EU countries.

This helps to explain the next finding: most Germans and Britons do not trust the EU to take the right decisions to tackle the recession. Scepticism is greater in Britain, where distrust outruns trust by three-to-one (21 percent trust, 64 percent do not trust); but even in traditionally less Eurosceptic Germany, the margin is almost two-to-one (36 percent trust, 60 percent do not trust).

One significant difference between Britain and Germany is that in Britain, distrust of the EU is greatest on the right, among Conservative voters, whereas in Germany, it is higher on the centre and left, among SDP, FDP, Green and Die Linke voters. As Britain’s Conservative Party prepares to leave the European Peoples’ Party grouping in the European Parliament, our poll suggests that, whatever the intrinsic merits or otherwise of this decision, it is at least consistent with the distinct views of its supporters in Britain.

This contrast is even more marked in answers to the next question: should the EU play a big role in tackling the recession in Europe, or keep out of the way and leave the decisions to individual member states? By a 55-35 percent margin, Britain’s Conservative voters want the EU to keep out of the way, whereas supporters of Germany’s CDU and CSU opt by three-to-one (70 percent to 24 percent) for the EU to play a big role.

Overall, Germans divide more than two-to-one in favour of a big EU role. In Britain, despite the views of Conservative voters, strong pro-EU sentiments by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters (both of whom back a big role for the EU by more than two-to-one) mean that, overall, Britons are slightly more in favour of, than against, a major role for the EU.

These figures offer the EU an opportunity. Whilst it is now widely distrusted in both Britain and Germany, there remains a widespread wish in both countries for the EU to be closely involved in tackling the recession. Should it do so, and should it be seen to be effective, then this might start to increase the trust that is needed among Europeans in all member states if the EU is to gain the legitimacy to evolve further.

Finally, YouGov asked Britons and Germans whether they might consider voting for one of the smaller parties in this June’s European elections. This is not a conventional voting intention question: it measures interest and sympathy, not voting strength. Respondents could pick more than one party, and a fair number did. In Britain, for example, almost half of people who said they would consider voting for the xenophobic British National Party said they would also consider voting for the anti-EU UK Independence Party. They will be unable to vote for both – and many may end up voting for neither.

* = Less than 0.5 percent. Source: YouGov surveys in: Germany (sample 1,009; fieldwork April 3-6); Great Britain (sample 2,539; fieldwork April 3-6); United States (sample 1,000; fieldwork April 5-7)

What the surveys show is that there remains a degree of support for the smaller parties already in the European Parliament (UKIP and the Greens in Britain; Die Grünen and Die Linke in Germany), but more limited support for parties not currently represented. That does not mean that no more parties will break through in this election. Britain’s BNP might win one or two seats (especially if support for UKIP slips back substantially), while Familien-Partei, which is more about traditional values than extremist ideology, might gain a foothold among Germany’s MEPs.

But there is little sign in these figures of a major shift towards extremism as a result of the recession. Unless something remarkable happens in the final weeks of campaigning, the great majority of voters in both Britain and Germany will resist the most disruptive forms of nationalism and socialism, and remain loyal to the parties that eschew extremism: those occupying the centre-right, centre-left, centre and green zones of each country’s politics.