Despite continuing partisan divide on electoral issues, ruling Awami League government has gained support among a majority of Bangladeshi respondents, an International Republican Institute survey has found.
The results of the poll, conducted in June 2015, also indicate positive public feelings about the current economic position and optimism about the future.
However, respondents cited corruption as their dominant concern.
In the 18 months following the January 5, 2014 parliamentary election, support for the government and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reached 66 and 67% respectively.
Bangladeshis are increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the country, with 62% saying the country is headed in the right direction – up from 56% in a September 2014 survey.
Furthermore, 72% rated overall economic conditions positively, 68% felt security conditions are good and 64% was positive about political stability.
The survey was based on face-to-face interviews conducted with a randomly selected sample of 2,550 voting aged adults from May 23 to June 10, 2015.
The effects of the January 2014 election were evident in the persistence of a sharp division regarding new elections – respondents were almost equally divided when asked about when they would like the next national election to occur.
Conducted in cooperation with international research firm Global Strategic Partners, the nationally representative sample was drawn from all 64 districts in the seven divisions.
Forty-seven percent of the respondents indicated a desire for new election to be held immediately, similar to an IRI survey conducted in September 2014, when 40% stated they wanted immediate election.
Forty percent want the current parliament to fulfill its term, down slightly from 45% in the previous survey.
With the decline of electoral violence and daily hartals, 24% Bangladeshis surveyed cited corruption as the most important problem facing the country, nearly 10 points higher than political instability (16%) and security (15%), which are cited as the second and third most important problems facing Bangladesh.
Although the government received positive marks on the whole, 47% do not see the government as fully engaged in or capable of fighting corruption. Interestingly, only 11% said they had paid a bribe; more than half of them said they had paid at least Tk5,000.
The margin of error does not exceed plus or minus 2% with a confidence level of 95%.