A majority of people say Thai politics will remain unchanged after the censure debate but the public's confidence in the government would decline, according to an opinion survey by Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, or Suan Dusit Poll.
The poll was conducted online on 1,712 people throughout the country from Feb 17-20.
The no-confidence debate against ten cabinet members, including Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, was held on Feb 16-19. All of them survived the no-confidence vote which took place on Saturday.
The respondents were asked to choose "strong points" and "weak points" of the censure debate, with each of them being allowed to give more than one answer.
On the "strong points", 52.64% gave credit to the overall performance of the opposition; 51.50% cited information made known to the public in the debate; 41.30% cited preparedness on the part of MPs from both sides; 38.60% said the two sides were given equal time to raise their points; and 33.19% praised the performance of the House speaker and his deputies.
On the "weak points", 71.26% pointed to protests made by MPs of both camps; 51.20% cited unclear answers made by some of the ministers being grilled; 50.62% said some debaters raised irrelevant matters and made unnecessary references to other persons; 46.98% said some MPs became emotional and used impolite language; and 42.40% cited exchange of verbal abuse between MPs in the chamber.
Asked what they thought Thai politics would be like after the debate, 55.40% said it would stay the same, 30.28% thought it would get worse and 14.32% said it would get better.
Asked about public confidence in the government after the censure debate, 43.25% said people would have no confidence in the government; 23.28% said confidence would decline; 20.57% said it would remain the same; and 12.90% believed it would increase.
On the overall performance of both sides in the censure debate, the respondents scored 6.90 out of 10 for the opposition and 5.01 for the government.
Asked how they followed the debate, 43.81% said they did so on social media; 29.20% from the live broadcast from parliament; and 26.99% from television, radio and newspaper reports.