Sri Lankans views of the country’s direction improved dramatically in 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 21 September, 16% thought the country was heading in the right direction, and this increased to 41% after the polls, whilst 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 on 21 September. SLOTS did not conduct interviews during 22-23 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 in Sri Lanka meant that Sri Lankans went from being amongst the pessimistic nations when thinking about the direction of the country to being the amongst 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 countries¹, 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 Sep 1–Sep 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.

Methodology

Question wording

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 directions 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.

The SLOTS right direction/wrong direction question wording follows that of well-regarded national surveys in other countries, including Ipsos and Morning Consult. An alternative approach is to ask people if they are “satisfied” with the way things are going in the country, which is the approach used by Gallup, Pew, and others. Data from the United States show that these two alternative measures usually track each other closely, but there have been short periods when they differ. The commonest reason appears to be partisan differences in how the public views the government’s ability to manage current problems.²

Weighting

SLOTS uses a hybrid sample of an existing national panel that was recruited face-to-face in 2019 and a sample of respondents reached by random-digit dialling (RDD) of mobile numbers. 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. Weighting is done by propensity weighting and iterative proportional fitting (raking).

Technical notes

1 These numbers differ from the preceding ones as they exclude don’t knows and refusals from the denominator when computing the percentages. This is to ensure comparability with the Ipsos estimates for other countries.

2 As discussed in Pew Research Center, Unusually Wide Gap in ’Satisfaction,’ ’Right Direction’ Measures, 2009 03/26. 25   April 2024. Available from: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/03/26/unusually-wide-gap-in-satisfaction-right-direction-measures/