Leaver votes split four ways over benefit levels
A recent YouGov poll finds:
Thinking about the level of benefits, do you think they are too high, too low, or is the balance about right?
Benefit payments are too high: 27% Leave voters (19% overall)
Benefit payments are too low: 25% Leave voters (33% overall)
The balance is about right 23% Leave voters (19% overall)
Don’t know: 26% Leave voters (29% overall)
What is meant by “benefits” was left for people to define for themselves in answering the question. That pensioners were more likely than younger people to say benefits are too high makes me suspect that they were not thinking of the state pension as a benefit when answering this question.
Get the essential polling book
Pensioners are correct to think it’s not a benefit, all their working lives they were told they were paying NI to provide them with a pension among other things.
If it was a benefit it would not be based on how much you paid in to NI and would surely be means tested.
Dear Mark This is all to do with perspective and the reality of the unnecessary decade-plus of austerity forced upon the Country by George Osbourne and continued by the Tories that followed him. When the State Unemployment Benefit was started just after the Second World War, it was set at 20% of the median wage. In November 2022 the ONS said the average weekly earnings were £640 per week. The Tories have cut this to 16% or less. The missing 4% (£25.80) is why so many people on benefits cannot afford food and heating! Add to that the two-child rule then families with 3 or more children are hit even harder. At the other end of the scale, it is no better with the UK paying the lowest Pensions in Europe! In the UK it is, without the increase this month, so the same year as the Average wage is £185.15 or 29%. Our closest European neighbour France pays its pension from the age of 62 not 67 as in the UK and pays its citizens approx £226 per week. Again, I would suggest that the difference of £41 per week would allow our Pensioners to both “Heat & Eat”