Another poll has voters backing the police over politicians

The Guardian has an ICM poll just out asking for reactions on the riots. It was carried out online and the fieldwork finished last night – so it’s much more up to date than the YouGov numbers featured here this morning.

The “good job/bad job” figures are shown in the chart above with Dave on 30% for “good job” to 44% for “bad job”. Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin, meanwhile has a split of 45 – 27.

There’s some good news for Boris who faces re-election next May – in the capital, his net negative score is only -3.

To other questions the sample gave reasonably good backing to the police with 61% saying they are confident that the police enforce the law fairly, uniformly and without prejudice.

Julian Glover reports that there’s widespread agreement about the main causes:-

Asked to pick from a list of possible reasons, 45% blame criminality on the part of the rioters. Older voters and richer ones are most likely to lay the blame on this. Of other possible reasons, 28% cite lack of respect within families and communities. Only 8% think a lack of jobs for young people is the main reason.

A further 5% say the shooting by the police of Mark Duggan, which led to the initial disorder in Tottenham, was the main cause, while 4% blame the coalition government, 2% the police and 2% the state of the economy.

No doubt there’ll be a lot more polling this weekend.

@MikeSmithsonPB