Sajith Premadasa’s favourability rating improves in November

Saturday, 16 December 2023 00:52 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

In IHP SLOTS polling in November, all major party leaders continued to have negative favourability ratings.

SJB leader Sajith Premadasa’s favourability rating did improve to -46 from -64, but continued to remain worse than that of NPP/JVP leader A.K. Dissanayake at -14.

Favourability estimates for each month are based on 100–500 interviews conducted during that month and during a few weeks before and afterward to ensure a minimum set of responses.

The November 2023 estimates are based on 427 (Sajith Premadasa), 394 (A.K. Dissanayake), 419 (Ranil Wickremasinghe), and 172 (Gotabaya Rajapaksa) interviews.

Negative scores, i.e., a net favourability rating of less than zero, means that the individual or institution is ‘unpopular’. Only positive scores, i.e., net favourability is more than zero, mean that the individual or institution is ‘popular’ on average.

IHP is an independent, non-partisan research centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The SLOTS lead investigator is Dr. Ravi Rannan-Eliya of IHP, who has trained in public opinion polling at Harvard University and has conducted numerous surveys over three decades.

SLOTS surveys a national sample of adults (ages 18 and over) reached by random digit dialling of mobile numbers, and others coming from a national panel of respondents who were previously recruited through random selection. SLOTS tracks favourability by asking respondents if they have a favourable or unfavourable opinion of a public figure or institution: net favourability being the average of the positive (+100) and negative (-100) responses. All estimates are weighted to match the national population with respect to age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sector, province and past voting preference. Monthly estimates are based on samples of over 100 interviews pooled from interviews in each month and from weeks before and afterwards.

As the November update uses a more recent data set than the previous update, there are small changes in estimates of favourability ratings for previous months.

The SLOTS survey has previously been funded by the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), The Asia Foundation in Sri Lanka, and others. Current field work is financed by the IHP Public Interest Research Fund and others. The sponsors play no role in the study design, analysis, or interpretation of findings.

Furthermore, the survey findings do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of past and present funders.