Sri Lankans More Positive About the Country’s Direction after Presidential Election

Photo courtesy of Lifestyled Islander

Sri Lankans views of the country’s direction improved dramatically in the Institute for Health Policy (IHP) SLOTS polling for September 2024. In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, a net 43% of the public thought the country was heading in the wrong direction. This reversed after the election with a net 5% of Sri Lankans saying that the country was headed in the right direction in the last ten days of the month, the highest level since SLOTS started tracking this in April 2022.

Overall, during September an average of 21% of adults thought the country was heading in the right direction versus 54% who thought the country was heading in the wrong direction. In the period before elections on September 21, 16% thought the country was heading in the right direction and this increased to 41% after the polls while 59% thought the country was heading in the wrong direction before elections falling to 36% after.

This dramatic turnaround in opinion occurred immediately after the election. SLOTS did not conduct interviews during 22 to 23 September but the change in sentiment was clear and detectable immediately from 24 September when the survey resumed.

The improvement in the public’s views about the country’s direction was broad-based and across all demographics. The biggest improvements were seen in the poorest adults (+77%) and in younger adults (18-29 years +74%, 30-44 years +77%), Sinhala (+75%) and Muslim (+74%) respondents. The only demographic where net opinion on the country’s direction did not increase into positive territory was the richest third of Sri Lankans, in which a net 6% thought the country was heading in the wrong direction.

The big change in views meant that Sri Lankans went from being among the pessimistic nations when thinking about the direction of the country to being the among the most positive after the elections. Before September 2024, when excluding no opinion responses for comparability with other countries, over 90% of Sri Lankans believed the country was on the wrong track. In a global IPSOS poll of 29 countries, an average of 61% of adults thought their country was heading in the wrong direction according to September estimates. By comparison, 79% of Sri Lankans held this view before the election (during September 1-September 20), a figure only better than South Korea and Japan but far behind other South Asian countries tracked. After the election, this percentage dropped to 32% (68% in the right direction) moving Sri Lanka into the top three countries with positive outlooks.

SLOTS polls the public’s outlook on the overall direction of the country by asking people: “Would you say things in the country are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction?”. Respondents are also allowed not to answer or to say they “Don’t know” or are “Not sure”. The percentages saying the country is moving in the right or wrong direction is based on all those who were interviewed so numbers for right and wrong tracks will not sum to 100% because of don’t knows and refusals.

To minimize sample bias, estimates are based on weighting respondents to match the national population for age, sex, sector, ethnicity, religion, education, socioeconomic status ranking and geographical location.