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Some of the headlines seem designed to highlight the tired face-palm emoji on social media about the ignorance of the general public. It was recently reported that the British public believes that net migration increased last year (in fact, it fell by two-thirds).
This is not the only recent example of public perception being out of step with reality. London police chief Sir Mark Rowley told the FT it was “sad and quite disappointing” that more people do not realize that the city is “exceptionally safe”.
“I think people have a lot of different reasons for ignoring the facts,” he said. “I think some people just want clicks online, some people are just angry at the world in general.”
Even Donald Trump, the most successful populist politician in the past few years, has been fed up with popular opinion. He said in December that the so-called affordability crisis in America was a “hoax.” “Almost everything is down.”
But are most people really so out of touch with the reality of the policy issues they care about, like crime, immigration, and cost of living? Or is there something else going on?
Part of the problem is a discrepancy between the metrics commonly used by economists, policymakers, and journalists, and the ways in which people actually perceive change in their everyday lives. For example, inflation in the US could fall from a peak of more than 7 percent to less than 3 percent in 2022. But that still means prices are rising, just not as fast as before.
Net migration is also a measure of the rate of change. By June 2025, net migration to the UK was actually reduced by two-thirds. But it still means a net increase Out of 204,000 people. And while the public may well notice when the pace of change around them suddenly accelerates, it is perhaps harder to recognize when it slows down somewhat.
“In places with an increasing pace of change, you can start to feel it,” said Sunder Katwala, director of the think-tank British Future. “It’s much more difficult to see and feel a reduction, unless it’s a very dramatic migration reduction. It’s just like how would you see a half reduction in the inflation rate? The price of milk will keep going up.”
These metrics of rate of change are important to central bankers, policy makers, economists, and demographers. But that doesn’t mean the public is stupid for not thinking about the world from the same perspective, or for not paying the same level of attention to those metrics at every turn.
Nor does it mean that public opinion is completely disconnected from actual trends, even though it may be delayed. For example, after Brexit, there was a period when immigration was very low on the list of public concerns. Some at the time speculated that this meant that the public did not really care about the numbers, as long as the perception was that “control” had been achieved. But if the Conservative government saw this as the beginning of liberalizing immigration policy, it proved to be an electorally costly mistake: following a rapid increase in immigration, public concern arose.
That said, there are some examples where the gap between statistics and public perceptions appears to have been deeper and longer lasting. Crime is a good example of this. Violent crime in Britain has been declining since the 1990s, but the British public’s concern about crime has been increasing in recent years.
As a police chief or politician, you can dismiss the public as simply “angry at the world” or misled by clickbait on social media, or you can consider the possibility that you are missing something that really matters to people. For example, increase in incidents of shoplifting and snatching. These crimes may be less serious than murder or violent assault, but they are more visible on the streets and generally create a feeling of unease and lack of control.
Similarly, even if net migration to the UK drops completely to zero, if crossings by small boats remain a problem, it is unlikely that public opinion will ease.
“People care about the structure of migration,” Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, told me. “Even if overall migration actually goes down, if there are still large numbers of people coming on small boats – the kind that are least welcomed (by the public) – people will still have a perception that migration is out of control independent of the numbers.”
Where does all this leave policymakers? Hopefully, to a more positive place. Of course, some people live in a “post-truth” world in which they only believe what they want to believe, or what their social media feeds tell them to believe. But they are not the majority. one in voting practice By British Future, one in five respondents refused to believe that net migration numbers had fallen so much. This shows that the majority is ready to have a conversation about why the data differ from their perceptions. However, the conversation between policy makers and the public will be more fruitful if it flows in both directions.
I don’t believe in the old adage that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”. But if you’re waving spreadsheets at people and calling them idiots? I’m pretty sure you’ve already lost.
sarah.oconnor@ft.com
