People who call themselves right-wing are more likely to think they are better, morally speaking, than others

If any political group thought they were morally superior to others, you might think it would be left-wingers - Jeremy Corbyn's theme at the Labour Party Conference was all about a kinder politics, focusing on decency and care for the most vulnerable in society.

But this turns out not to be true. New YouGov research reveals that it’s those on the right who are more likely to believe they are morally superior.

47% of those who describe themselves as very or fairly right-wing or right-of-centre say they’re more of a good person than the average Briton, while 43% say they’re about as good.

Significantly fewer left-wingers think they’re morally superior (39%) and just over half (51%) say they’re about as good as others. Those in the centre of the political spectrum are most likely to claim moral parity (58%).

Good people and bad people

Perhaps as you would expect, left-wingers are more likely to doubt the possibility of in-born evil in people – only 25% say that some people are born evil. 39% of those on the right, on the other hand, think that some people are born evil. Among the general population the figure is 32%.

On the positive side, almost everyone (68%) agrees there are more good people than bad people in the world, and the median percentage chosen for the quantity of bad people in the world is 21-30% while the median for good people is 61-70%. When asked to quantify the proportions of good and bad people in Britain, the medians are even more favourable – 11-20% bad, 61-70% good.

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See the full poll results