Are Lib Dems really the most opposed to more money being spent on potholes?
From Deltapoll:
Generally speaking, would you say that you support or oppose each of the following policies, announced in the Budget?
Increase funding to fill in potholes in roads2019 Conservatives – 3% oppose
2019 Labour – 12% oppose
2019 Lib Dem – 13% oppopse
Lib Dems most likely to oppose extra money for fighting potholes? That doesn’t sound right.
And indeed, one shouldn’t read too much into this for three reasons:
- The question is about both attitudes towards potholes and attitudes toward the Conservative government’s budget. It’s common to see answers to such questions tilted by partisanship; for example, many 2019 Labour voters seeing the measure as a Conservative measure and so one they disagree with rather than seeing the measures as being just a question purely about potholes.
- Crosstabs can involve quite small numbers of people. For example, there were (pre-weighting) only 62 2019 Lib Dems in the poll. Add to that the smallness of the difference between 12% and 13% and this is all well within reasonable margins of error.
- I’ve pulled a fast one by only quoting the oppose figures. The support figures don’t form a neat pattern (and it’s a good example too therefore of the point I wrote about in Polling UnPacked about the need to look at all numbers).
Get the essential polling book
and the whole point about potholes anyway, is that they are a local matter, for which we have Local Highway Authorities.. it should never be a matter for Whitehall, except for setting a standard of repair and target reaction time for response to a report of a pothole.
Other than that, local democracy dictates that the actual repair is a local matter, and the funding should be in place to enable it.. But ah, the tories want to centralise control, cut the budgets and blame someone else for the problem. The funding they allocate for the whole country, soundss a big sum but, it is barely sufficient for one region.. (- what happened to Regions?)
Fife LibDems made more money for repairing road defects, including potholes, a ‘red line’ for co-operating with the minority Labour administration.