With the budget tomorrow, I thought I’d update this chart from a year ago. It shows the two YouGov polls preceding each of the last eight budgets, and the two YouGov polls that followed each one, giving us a sign of whether the budget gave the government a boost or not.

As you can see, budgets have generally not given the government much of a boost – the most positive one was 2005, which took Labour from three points behind to two points ahead. I am sure is it no coincidence that it was a pre-election budget!
As someone has pointed out, it was actually 2006, so not a pre-election budget – my earlier cynicism was unwarrented. The actual 2005 budget didn’t have much of an effect at all.

The two most recent budgets have been disasterous in terms of Labour’s position in the polls. In both cases Alistair Darling was forced to deliver news about just how bad the economic situation was, and both turned a Labour deficit of around about 6 points into a Conservative lead in the mid teens. Clearly a similar result from tomorrow’s budget would be disasterous for Labour, but with the country out of recession a more positive message from Darling may be able to avoid a similar result to 2008 and 2009.

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Filed under: Economy

There is a new Opinium poll in the Daily Express with topline figures of CON 37%(-2), LAB 30%(+2), LDEM 15%(-1). “Others” remain at a very high 18%.

Looking at the back data of Opinium, they have some rather contrarian results – last autumn their polls would have been showing the lowest Conservative leads, in the last few weeks they have been showing some of the larger Conservatives leads. They do not use any political weighting on their polls, and I suspect this contributes to a higher level of volatility.

Later on tonight we should have our usual YouGov poll in the Sun.

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Filed under: Opinium, Voting Intention

The full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are on their website here.

On the regular trackers Gordon Brown’s job approval rating is down since a fortnight ago (a net rating of -28, from -24) and Cameron up to +10 from +4. With the Lib Dems still enjoying higher ratings than YouGov were showing before their spring conference, Nick Clegg’s approval rating is at +20 from +12 a fortnight ago, the second highest YouGov have ever given him.

YouGov asked a series of questions on trade unions and Unite. 49% of people thought that Unite had a great deal or a fair amount of influence over the government. 17% though it was ever thus – that Labour had always been controlled by the unions, 28% thought Labour had distanced itself, but control was now shifting back. 32% thought that Labour used to be controlled by the unions but no longer was (including a majority of Labour supporters). More generally, 22% of people think trade unions are too powerful in Britain today, 19% thinki they are not powerful enough with 45% thinking they have about the right level of power.

Asked specifically about the BA strike, 35% of respondents thought the government should have condemned the strike more strongly, 18% thought the government got their criticism about right (a sum of 53% supporting the government criticising the strike). 30% said the government should not have taken sides, with 4% saying the government should have supported the strike.

Hardly anyone says the strike would actually change their vote at the election (and most of those that do can be dismissed – the 4% who say it makes them less likely to vote Labour are mostly Conservative voters anyway, while most of the 1% who say it makes them more likely to vote Labour are already Labour voters). However, while it may not be a direct consideration, it could still have an indirect effect in terms of the government’s response and the effect upon their party image.

Moving on, YouGov also asked about the budget. Only 25% of people said they expected Alistair Darling to tell to truth about Labour’s plans for the economy in the budget, with 64% saying he would not. Taken alone that sounds like a very negative finding for the government… but when asked the same question about George Osborne the figures are much the same, 24% expect him to tell the truth, 62% do not.

Finally there were questions on Methedrone (63% think it should be banned), and Gordon Brown’s comments on defence spending at the Chilcot Inquiry (64% agree with the criticism that he underfunded defence).

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Filed under: YouGov