Who do people think a Labour government would make life better for?
Interesting new polling from YouGov asking, “If Labour were to win the next election, what impact, if any, do you think this would have on the day to day lives of each of the following groups over the next few years?”
- People like you: +1 (30% picked positive impact, 29% negative)
- Working people on low incomes: 32% (48%/16%)
- People who are on out-of-work benefits: 31% (43%/12%)
- People working in public services: 30% (46%/16%)
- Ethnic minorities: +27 (38%/11%)
- Young people: +21 (35%/14%)
- Older people: +3 (28%/25%)
Although over these categories (and others in the full poll) the net scores are generally on the side that Labour would want them to be, it’s notable how relatively low the positive scores are. Especially for the “people like you” question, where it’s only a sliver of a difference, within the margin of error, of more people saying a Labour government would have a positive impact than a negative one.
As the Parliamentary by-elections showed, Conservative unpopularity is widespread but Labour’s popularity is more a default ‘not Conservative’ one than a positive popularity. That said, all you have to do is beat the opponent you’re up against, and I’m pretty sure similar questions about a future Conservative government would have got much worse results.
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I what the results would be like if they were asked what impact the Libdems would have.
We need to be promoting our values more and solutions more.
It would indeed be interesting to see what the results were like if people were asked what would improve for them under the Lib Dems. However, unlike millionaires such as Lord Ashcroft, we are in a very poor position to be requesting any given Pollster to do such a poll !
Or maybe Mark can help here – can we and do we commission polls other then internal ones ?