How we are WRONG about everything: From teen pregnancies to jobs and immigration, poll shows public perception is at odds with reality

The Great British people are wrong about almost everything, a new poll reveals today.

From religion to age, jobs to pregnancy, what people think about the country and the reality are wildly different.

A new survey by IpsosMORI shows the public think immigration, teenage pregnancies and unemployment are all much higher than reality, while they underestimate the number of Christians in the UK and turnout at elections.

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The pollster's global survey looks at key issues facing 14 countries and whether the public perception is matched by the facts.

It concludes: 'In Great Britain we get a lot of things very wrong.'

For example, people think that as many as one in six (16 per cent) teenage girls aged

People also think we will live longer than reality suggests, expecting a baby born in 2014 to live to 83, when official forecasts predict only 80.

Repeated warnings about an ageing population have led us to think that 37 per cent of people are aged 65 or over, when the true figure is less than half: just 17 per cent.

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Immigration has become the dominat political theme, with David Cameron josliting with other party leaders to show he has the toughest approach.

But the problem might not be as serious as some think. Britons believe that almost a quarter – some 24 per cent - of the population are immigrants – which is almost double twice the true figure of 13 per cent, the poll found.

The social make-up of the UK is also different to the public perception.

For example, we 'hugely over-estimate' the proportion of Muslims in Britain, believing one in five British people are Muslims (21 per cent) when the actual figure is 5 per cent (one in twenty), Ipsos Mori said.

At the same time we underestimate the proportion of Christians, believing that 39 per cent of the country identify themselves as Christian compared with the true figure of 59 per cent.

Cameron makes changes to immigration system (related)

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Unemployment has fallen dramatically in recent months to just 7 per cent, with record numbers of people now in work.

But the public still thinks that 24 per cent of the working age population do not have a job.

And on elections, on average people think just 49 per cent turned out for the 2010 general election, when turnout was actually much higher at 66 per cent.

Bobby Duffy, Managing Director of Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute, said: 'These misperceptions present clear issues for informed public debate and policy-making. For example, public priorities may well be different if we had a clearer view of the scale of immigration and the real incidence of teenage mothers.

'People also under-estimate 'positive' behaviours like voting, which may be important if people think it is more 'normal' not to vote than it actually is.

'This is the first international study to look at these misperceptions across a range of issues and countries – and it shows the British are far from alone in being wrong.

'In fact we're among the better informed countries – but there are still huge gaps between perceptions and reality on a number of key issues in Britain.'