According to SLOTS polling conducted in November 2024, 25% of Sri Lankan adults believed the country was heading in the right direction, while 16% expressed uncertainty about its trajectory.

There was a temporary boost in optimism in the days immediately after the Presidential Election, but since then this has subsided, but that that overall sentiment remains more positive than before the elections.

Despite some temporary improvement in public sentiment since the Presidential Election, public sentiment remains largely negative but was not as unfavourable relative to other countries as it was before the elections. According to a global IPSOS poll of 29 countries conducted in November, Sri Lanka’s sentiment ranks below the global average for pessimism.

About IHP

The Institute for Health Policy (IHP) conducts the SLOTS survey to track changes in health and social conditions, and public opinion in the country, on behalf of the Sri Lanka Health and Ageing Study (SLHAS) consortium of Sri Lankan academic and research institutions. IHP is solely responsible for commissioning and designing the survey, and it takes full responsibility for it. IHP is an independent, non-partisan research institution based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The SLOTS lead investigator is Dr Ravi Rannan-Eliya of IHP, who was trained in public opinion polling at Harvard University, and who has conducted many opinion surveys over three decades, both in and outside Sri Lanka.

Methodology

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. Weighting is done by propensity weighting and iterative proportional fitting (raking).

Funding

IHP conducts the SLOTS survey to track changes in health and social conditions, and public opinion in the country. IHP is solely responsible for conceiving, commissioning and designing the survey, and it takes full responsibility for it. Interviews are done daily by phone by IHP employees, with respondents recruited by a national field survey or by randomly dialling phone numbers. SLOTS fieldwork since 2021 has been supported by a range of funders, who play no role in question design, data analysis, or reporting. Past funders have included the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, Asia Foundation, European Commission, UK National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Foundation Open Society Institute, and others. Current fieldwork is supported by funding from the Velux Stiftung foundation, New York University Abu Dhabi, USAID, and the IHP Public Interest Research Fund. The survey findings and IHP reporting do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of past and present funders. Interested parties can contact IHP for more detailed data and results.