As we all know, polls are shit, but…
Last week’s autumn statement was one of the most important government announcements since Theresa May became prime minister and we’ve got the first set of Guardian/ICM polling since it took place. As everyone knows, polling is not always an exact predictor of how people will vote but it is a much better guide to public thinking than guesswork and so, with those caveats, here are the figures.
State of the parties
Conservatives: 44% (up 2 points fromICM earlier this month)
Labour: 28% (no change)
Ukip: 12% (up 1)
Lib Dems: 7% (down 2)
Greens: 4% (up 1)
Conservative lead: 16 points (up 2)
ICM’s director Martin Boon urges caution about attributing the two-point increase in the Tory lead just to the autumn statement. But he says the Conservative score, 44%, is the highest the party has achieved since October 2009 and just one point off the highest it has ever hit in Guardian/ICM polling going back to 1992. The Tories have reached 45% on just five occasions, three of them just after John Major’s election victory in 1992 and two after the 2008 financial crash.
Boon also says the figures for Labour are bleak. The tables, which ICM will publish later today (I will post a link as soon as they’re online) show the Tories ahead of Labour amongst every social grade, even DEs (where the Tories are on 33% and Labour 32%). The Tories are also ahead amongst all age groups, apart from 18 to 24-year-olds.
Economic confidence
Respondents were asked to think about the economy, their financial position and their ability to keep up with the cost of living, and were then asked “how confident do you feel about things at the moment?”
Confident (very or fairly): 53%
Not confidence (not very or not at all): 43%
Overall that amounts to a +10 confidence measures (those who are confident minus those who are not). Boon says this quite a drop from August, when the net measure was +34, but that it is still relatively good. Over the last decade the net measure has often been negative.
Living standards
Last week, after the autumn statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said rising inflation meant that by 2021 workers would have gone more than a decade without an increase in wages in real terms. ICM asked respondents to think about their own living standards over the last 10 years and to say what had happened to them.
Got better: 31%
No change: 34%
Got worse: 29%
These are hardly figures that a government would want to boast about: only a third of people think their living standards have got better over the last decade. But, equally, only about a third of people are saying their living standards have actually got worse. These figures might help to explain why the government’s ratings are so high.
ICM Unlimited interviewed an online sample of 2009 adults aged 18+ on 25-27th November 2016. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
