Every month Suan Dusit conducts a political index survey. The benefit of the Suan Dusit political index is that it is (1) nationwide, (2) a large sample size for the survey (7,031 for November), and (3) they ask the same questions each month which makes it easier to compare with previous months.

BP’s plan is to blog the survey results each month – see  October 2011, November 2011, December 2011, January 2012, February 2012,  March and April 2012, May 2012,  June 2012, July 2012, and August 2012 and September 2012 posts. This post looks at the survey data for two months, namely October and November 2012. BP has compared the October and November results with the other Suan Dusit monthly political indexes since April 2012 for the Yingluck government.

NOTE: Had hoped to blog the December 2012 results as well. However, the Suan Dusit December 2012 poll only provides the full 2012 results (i.e average of January-December) so will need to wait until the January poll for the December results.

The points are out of 10:

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NOTE: For 17 months of the political index including April 2011 of the Abhisit government and August 2011-November 2012 of the Yingluck government, see a graphic here.

Sources:  April 2011 (PDF); August-November 2011 (PDF); December 2011 (PDF); January 2012; February 2012 (PDF); March and April 2012 (PDF);  May 2012 (PDF); and June 2012 (DOC); July 2012 (PDF); August and September 2012 (PDF); October 2012 and November 2012 (PDF)

On the performance of the PM, the government and the opposition:

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1. For the PM and the government, their support dropped in October, but rose in November and is now higher than the September 2012 numbers (6.04 to 6.05 for the PM; 5.7 to 5.9 for the government). For both Yingluck and the government, the support of each has moved up and down since February, but within a narrow bandwidth with only small rises and small drops in support. You will notice that the government trails Yingluck, but this has been consistent over time.

2. The opposition (i.e mainly the Democrats) has seen larger swings up and down. The opposition dropped down to 5.11 in June, but have increased dramatically in October and November and now are up to 5.68. Nevertheless, they are still behind the government (5.9) and Yingluck (6.05).

On economic issues:

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3. You can see some similarities between (a) cost of  living/salary/wages/benefits, (b) overall state of economy, and (c) living conditions of the people. (a)-(c) have been relatively steady since December (going up slightly and then down slightly etc). BP finds it interesting that people’s views on the overall state of the economy and their living conditions are strongly linked to their wages/salary/cost of living (or is it the other way around?).
It is also interesting to see the strong correlation for (d) cost of goods, (e) solving unemployment problems, and (f) solving poverty problems. (d)-(f) started to trend down in December, but since April this trend downwards has stalled and (d)-(f) are now starting to trend upwards.
We will have to see whether the large minimum wage increase in 70 provinces as of this month impacts on (a) and what that means for (b) and (c).
Overall, there are still no serious problems for the government.
Below are the overall political index scores by region over the last 12 months:

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NOTE: The overall political index should not be seen as necessarily reflecting a good score for the government. Some of the issues that make up the index, such as performance of the opposition, performance of political parties, ethics/culture of the country etc, may go up or down regardless of the overall perception of the government.