COLOMBO — Approval of Sri Lanka's government fell to 50 percent in July from 65 percent in February, and the public's reading of the economy turned negative, according to the latest round of Verité Research's "Mood of the Nation" poll, reported in Colombo on Aug. 16.
The research group surveyed 2,013 adults between July 11 and July 30. Of those, 49.83 percent said they approved of the way the government was working, and 31.40 percent said they disapproved. Verité recorded disapproval at 16 percent in February 2025 and said the figure was unchanged a year later, which puts it at roughly double that level now.
Answers on the economy moved further. Those saying conditions were "getting better" fell to 41.63 percent from 64 percent in February, while 40.29 percent said conditions were getting worse. On the state of the economy today, 55.59 percent said "poor" and 38 percent said "good" or "excellent," down from 57 percent five months ago. February had been the first round in the poll's four years in which positive ratings outnumbered negative ones.
Verité's economic confidence index, which runs from minus 100 to plus 100 and combines views on present conditions with views on the direction of change, fell to minus 8 from plus 36.
What came before
The index opened at about minus 83 when Verité launched the poll in January 2022, as Sri Lanka's foreign reserves were running out. It reached minus 96 that June, when government approval stood at 3 percent. By June 2023 it had climbed to minus 44. Its first positive reading came in February 2025, at plus 14. This February it hit plus 36.
Political approval followed a similar path. In July 2024, the last round before the presidential election that brought Anura Kumara Dissanayake to power, 24 percent of respondents approved of the government then in office, and 60 percent disapproved. Seventy-one percent called economic conditions poor and 65 percent said the economy was getting worse. Approval reached 62 percent in February 2025 and 65 percent this February.
Approval today is more than twice the July 2024 level and disapproval roughly half of it. The 15-point drop since February is the first sustained fall the government has recorded.
The president and the government
Verité said the questions used in its poll differ from those used in other recent national surveys, which measure satisfaction with specific political figures rather than approval of the government as a whole. Its own asks whether respondents approve or disapprove of "the way the current government is working."
A separate survey by the Centre for Policy Alternatives' Social Indicator unit, which polled 1,240 people across all 25 districts between May 23 and June 18, found 75.5 percent satisfied with Mr. Dissanayake's performance and 29.4 percent satisfied with that of the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa. Satisfaction with the National People's Power government's capacity to govern efficiently was lower, at 62.8 percent.
The same survey found less patience on household costs. Respondents split almost evenly on the government's handling of the cost of living, 45.3 percent satisfied against 44 percent dissatisfied. More than half, 51.4 percent, said their household finances had worsened over the past year; 18.2 percent said they had improved.
Neither poll explains the shift. Verité's survey records what people say about the economy, not what has happened to it, and a single round cannot show whether the July reading is a correction after unusually high February figures or the start of something longer.
How the survey was done
The July round drew on a nationally representative, multistage randomised sample of 2,013 adults from separate households. Vanguard Survey (Pvt) Ltd. was the polling partner. Verité said the design allowed for a maximum sampling error of plus or minus 2.21 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, and noted that lapses in fieldwork can widen it.
The February round covered 1,048 adults from Jan. 24 to Feb. 3, with a margin of plus or minus three percentage points. Comparisons between the rounds carry the error of both.
Mood of the Nation is part of Verité's Syndicated Surveys programme, which lets other organisations add questions to the sample.
One February figure has no July counterpart in what Verité has released publicly: 59 percent then said they were satisfied with "the way things are going" in the country, the first time in four years of polling that the number had risen above half.
