Labour’s lost 2005 voters
Over on Political Betting someone accidentally linked to last month’s Populus tables thinking they were for today’s poll. However, in doing so they’ve highlighted a fascinating question that I missed at the time.
In last month’s survey Populus found that 53% of people who said they voted Labour in 2005 would vote Labour in an election tomorrow. They then asked the other 47% to say, in their own words, why not.
The most popular answers were along the lines of it being time for a change, Labour having been in office for too long or having run out of steam – this reason was given by 17% of people. This is the drip-drip cost of government, over time they get tired, and people get tired of them. It’s hard (though not impossible) for a government to renew itself and look fresh again while in office.
Joint top on 17% were reasons connected with the poor economy, unemployment, too much borrowing, etc. This is more interesting – if that is a major reason for Labour’s previous drop in support, it makes sense that as economic optimism has recovered we are now seeing a shift back towards Labour in voting intention.
Third, with 14%, was Gordon Brown himself. Not much more we can add there.
Those were the big three reasons, and only ones that got over 5% – the total sample of former Labour voters was only 162, so we can’t really even rank them, those are just the big three things that people claim have driven them from Labour.
Other reasons that were were mentioned were immigration (3%), Labour “not being for ordinary people anymore” (3%), too soft on crime (2%), defence (2%) amd expenses (1%). Only 1% said they had abandoned Labour because they were impressed with another party or party leader.
As a caveat, it’s worth remembering that people aren’t always very good at accurately identifying the causes of their own opinions and attitudes (for example, we know packaging makes a massive difference when selling groceries, but I bet you’d get very few people who consciously explain their buying decisions on the grounds of it being in a pretty coloured box), so don’t take this as gospel. It does fit nicely with economic optimism being a factor in Labour’s recent recovery though.
I am glad to have it pointed out that Labour are committed to uprating the state pension. But if Labour is going to ringfence at least front-line services in education and health, the police and international development, they are going to keep troops in Afghanistan and then they are going to increase pensions, what are they going to cut back on to meet the current financial crisis? Not least because what the Government really must do is get people into jobs where they will no longer require benefits and will generate income on which they can be taxed.
JohnTT, I quite agree with your points about the likely clamour for detail and lack of rationale for parts of the PBR. Many people believe that this is because Labour does not expect to be in Government after next May or June. Pensions are a good example: it is all very well Labour, or indeed the Tories, promising they will uprate pensions, but how many people believe they can deliver?
Incidentally, my first point on this thread was that the PBR wouldn’t make much difference to voting intentions because many electors think whoever is in government next year will have to take similar financial decisions. In general, I stick to this view, as the previous paragraph in this post reflects.
However, I don’t think anybody has mentioned yet on this site that “The Sun” published a cracker of a front-page headline yesterday, comparing Darling to Tiger Woods. To the extent that people still read papers (and “The Sun” is only 20p, and can be read on the way to work or indeed at work), this was the sort of headline that can stick and shift votes.
Is it as much as 20p?
Rethe debt – i think everyone is aware that the issue must be addressed soon after the election. It’s interesting to see that Moody’s, and the markets are concerned, but not to the extent that AAA is imminently to be lost. Stable is the outlook, so there MUST be a general understanding that as soon as the election is out of the way, a detailed plan must be presented to sustain confidence.
If no such understanding exists, then Sterling would be going through the floor right now.
I personally hope the Govt has the guts to go in March and publish that Budget during the campaign,
The headlines might just do something, I agree. I believe there’s a large chunk of floating votes who go with the flow (your own decision I’m sure will be made on sounder grounds than a popular newspaper headline)
Having said that, if Tiger were a UK political leader, I reckon his ratings would ahve shot up as a result (didn’t Paddy Ashdown’s once?), so I’m not sure comparing Darling to Woods is the cleverest move.
The influence of The Sun depends on the skill of its editor and writers (I hesitate to call them journalists).
So far, I don’t think they’ve done very well.