Britain's end-of-year Olympic verdict: it was worth every penny

Source: the guardian

Far from suffering from an Olympic hangover, Britons are closing 2012 in a mood of fond nostalgia for the London Games, according to a Guardian/ICM poll. By an emphatic four-to-one margin, the public said the Games were worth the expense – and there are signs that the resulting feelgood factor has rallied spirits more widely in the year of a double-dip slump.

Even after being reminded of the £9bn price tag, 78% of voters said the Olympics "did a valuable job in cheering up a country in hard times", as compared with just 20% who look back on them as "a costly and dangerous distraction".

This new vote of confidence is even more marked than that which ICM found at the height of the Games. In an online survey taken immediately after so-called Super Saturday – on which Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford all took track and field gold for Team GB – ICM asked an identical question, and found support for the games running at 55%, with 35% against. Instead of narrowing as the Games slipped into memory, that 20-point margin has widened to 58 points today. The Paralympics may have helped to cement this majority.

For all the pre-Games controversy about the public money involved, the strong retrospective support is reflected remarkably closely across the range of demographic groups and the political spectrum: 79% of men say the Games were "well worth the cost" as do 77% of women. In every age bracket, more than three-quarters of people take the same view, with the 80% of 65+ voters who gave the thumbs-up being the most emphatic of all.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/dec/25/britain-end-of-year-olympic-verdict