William Hill has published the results of the attitude of the British public on the issue of luck. 69% of the population believe in luck whilst 31% do not. The survey was to mark the opening of the latest William Hill car give-away October promotion.

The survey also broke the results down by regions and asked if the respondents considered themselves to be lucky. The regions that scored highest in this was Northern Ireland where 62.5% said that they considered themselves to be lucky. This was in stark contrast to the Scottish where only 29% believed that they were lucky.

54.2% of Londoners say they are lucky, as do 55.3% of people from Wales and 52.2% of people from the East. In the rest of the regions the majority of respondents believe that they are unlucky.

The poll also questioned our attitude to superstitions; 57.4 % said that they were superstitious. Of these about a third refuses to walk under ladders, about 10% believe in lucky charms but less than 1% carries a rabbit’s foot. The unluckiest thing to do is considered to be breaking a mirror. This is followed by walking under a ladder, the number 13, opening an umbrella indoors, a black cat crossing your path, and walking on cracks.

Other interesting results include the fact that 7 is considered to be the luckiest number, that 65% of people with grey hair think they are lucky, just under a half believe in karma and that by being kind to other people will improve their luck.

Some people believe that you make your own luck. Almost half of the people asked believed that luck could be improved with effort

In terms of lucky and unlucky days, the majority of people who believed in luck say they have at least one lucky day a week. Interestingly the vast majority of people consider that other people are luckier than them.