Halloween and Other News

Halloween

Halloween is almost upon us again! It is next Friday (31 October 2014). Strictly speaking, it is All Hallows’ Eve in the Christian calendar, but since the Millennium it has been transformed in the UK into a seasonal festival in the American mould, surpassed only by Christmas and Easter in its value in the commercial calendar. In 2001 it was estimated that only £12 million of Halloween-themed products were sold in this country, whereas today the value of the Halloween market is said to range from £230 million (according to Mintel) to £443 million (Webloyalty/Conlumino), with Planet Retail’s forecast being £330 million. The fact that Halloween this year falls on a Friday and during school half-term breaks is thought likely to increase its observance still further. Since average spend per consumer on Halloween remains relatively low, there is felt to be quite a lot of potential for ongoing growth.

Such is the commercial importance of Halloween, especially to the supermarkets, that it now drives a fair amount of market research, much of which remains locked up behind paywalls. However, the Webloyalty/Conlumino report was put into the public domain on 24 October 2014 and can be briefly summarized here. Of the total Halloween spending of £421 million in 2013, 33% was on costumes, 31% on food, 21% on decorations, and 15% on entertainment and stationery. Two-thirds of consumers questioned in September 2014 anticipated celebrating Halloween in some shape or form the following month (the most common activities expected to be giving out sweets to trick or treaters and carving a pumpkin), and 57% thought they would buy something for Halloween, with £11 the likely amount of money to be parted with. Despite this apparent enthusiasm, 63% agreed that Halloween is not a real festival but a commercial opportunity, 56% claimed to be indifferent towards it, and 50% said they would not open the door to trick or treaters. Asked whether Halloween is bad because it focuses on the occult, 23% agreed, 36% disagreed, and 41% were neutral. The Webloyalty/Conlumino report is at:

http://www.webloyalty.co.uk/images/uk-halloween-research-webloyalty-2014.pdf

Meanwhile, 42% of 2,067 Britons have told Populus, in an online poll for Hubbub (the charity behind Pumpkin Rescue – no, we jest not) carried out on 10-12 October 2014, they have at some time bought a pumpkin to carve or decorate for Halloween. Those professing no religion were slightly more likely to have done so (45%) than Christians (42%) or non-Christians (36%). After hollowing out and carving the pumpkin, most respondents throw the insides away, but one-third claimed to have cooked with them. Data tables are at:

http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Hubbub-Pumpkin-Research-Full-Tables.pdf

Contemporary beliefs

Doubtless also prompted by the imminence of Halloween, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! London attraction released the headline results of a survey into UK beliefs on 28 October 2014, which were initially picked up by The Times and Daily Star. The study was commissioned by Ripley’s from 72 Point and conducted online by the latter’s polling partner, OnePoll, between 7 and 10 October 2014. The sample comprised 500 children aged 8-12 and 1,500 adults aged 18 and over. Full data tables are not available, nor (one suspects) are they ever likely to be, but there are two press releases which can be read at:

http://www.ripleyslondon.com/believe-aliens-god/

and

http://www.72point.com/coverage/brits-aliens/

As with other media-focused polls investigating the supernatural, it is not always easy to reconcile the findings with those from other sample surveys into religious and cognate beliefs. This is especially so in relation to belief in God, which fluctuates markedly in surveys and is heavily dependent upon question-wording, and particularly upon the way in which ‘God’ is defined. For the record, this is the Ripley’s league table showing how comparatively badly God fares when pitted against other extra-terrestrial beings:

YouGov@Cambridge polling

New YouGov polling on defence and foreign policy issues has been released in connection with this year’s YouGov@Cambridge Forum, which was held on 23 October 2014. Here we focus on the Islamist-related aspects, concerning attitudes to a range of actions which could be taken against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq (fieldwork on 13-14 October 2014) and Syria (14-15 October 2014) and the Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria (25-26 September 2014). Samples of approximately 2,000 adults were interviewed online for each survey. Topline results are summarized below, but detailed data tables can be accessed at:

http://cambridge.yougov.com/archive/

Perception and reality

‘The British public are often very wrong about the basic make-up of their population and the scale of key social issues’, Ipsos MORI has concluded from its analysis (published on 29 October 2014) of a multinational survey of knowledge about nine topics, two of them religion-related. The two pertinent questions asked were ‘Out of every 100 people how many do you think are Muslim?’ and ‘Out of every 100 people how many do you think are Christian?’ Average guesses were computed from the answers given and compared with the true national proportions. Fieldwork was conducted online between 12 and 26 August 2014 among a sample of 1,000 Britons aged 16-64 via Ipsos Global @dvisor.

As in most of the other 13 nations surveyed, Britons massively overestimated the proportion of Muslims in the population, the average guess being 21%, which was almost four times the actual number of Muslims recorded in the 2011 census. They likewise underestimated the presence of professing Christians, suggesting they only represented 39% of the population whereas the census recorded 59%. These ‘perils of perception’, as Ipsos MORI describes them, doubtless contribute to the growth of Islamophobia and to the sense that Christian tradition and culture are being undermined. Results for Britain and major Western European and North American countries are shown below. They have been abstracted from a press release and slide show which can be found at:

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3466/Perceptions-are-not-reality-Things-the-world-gets-wrong.aspx