Pulled from the Guardian's Live News.
Six charts that show why Tories can't win general election (probably)Reports about political polling tend to focus on voting intention – how many people will vote for each party – and many of us treat these figures with some caution. That is partly because the numbers can change quickly. And party because, even when the trend is sustained, as it is at the moment, the figures can be hard to believe. There aren’t many people at Westminster who think Labour will be 22 points ahead on polling day. That is why other polling questions can sometimes be more revealing. Today Ipsos has published some polling on attitudes to public services and, for the government, the findings are beyond abysmal. You should never say for certain that a party can’t win a general election – but it’s Friday afternoon, so here goes; if these figures are right, the election is already over.
1) Almost 80% of Britons believe public services have got worse over the past five years, and only 5% think they have got better. Given that it is hard to get 80% of people to agree on anything, this is an astonishing figure. This is much, much worse than equivalent figures during the austerity years. Another way of putting it would be to say that, for every one person who thinks public services have got better over the past five years, there are almost 16 people saying they have got worse. In 2015, for every one person saying public services were improving, there were only three people saying they were not. (The polling is based on subjective assessments, but the 78% are right; the Institute for Government recently published a report saying public service are getting a lot worse.)
2) People also continue to expect public services to get worse. The respondents weren’t told who would be in power over the next few years, and so people answering this question might not be making a party political judgement. But it suggests that 1) people are not convinced that Rishi Sunak is going to produce miraculous change in public services and; 2) when offered a choice at an election, the party that can present itself as offering change will be in a good place.
3) Most people have no faith in the government’s ability to improve the economy in the long term. Only 25% of people think government policies will improve the economy in the long term, and 68% disagree. These are the worst figures for any government on this question since Ipsos started asking it in July 1980. The only governments that have done almost as badly on this measure were John Major’s before his 1997 defeat and Gordon Brown’s before his 2010 defeat. (People aren’t always right; by the end of the Major government, the economy was doing rather well. But it’s perceptions that matter when people vote.)
4) And people have even less faith in the government’s ability to improve public services. Only 19% of people think government policies will improve the state of public services in the long term, and 75% of people think government policies will make them worse. These are the worst figures for any government on this question since Ipsos started asking it in 2001.
5) Some 50% of people think public services would improve under Labour, and 37% of people think the economy would improve. While not as good as they might be, these figures are decisively better than the equivalent ones for the government. People clearly do not think both main parties are the same.
6) Some 29% of people think they would be better off under a Labour government, against 16% who say they would be better off under a Tory one. This is a key measure, and Labour’s lead on it is substantial.
