The FINANCIAL — A new poll by TNS UK reveals that Labour is now the most trusted party in three key policy areas: investing more in healthcare, reducing unemployment and improving education. The Conservatives are the most trusted party on generating economic growth.
The survey of 1193 adults shows that the top three policy priorities for the British public are investing more in healthcare, reducing unemployment and generating economic growth. This does however change for different demographic groups, such as UKIP supporters, who are most concerned about stricter border controls to reduce immigration. UKIP supporters then place investing more in healthcare as their second priority, with renegotiating our position in the EU ranked third.
The poll also asked respondents about the performance of the main party leaders and all three main party leaders have negative scores: David Cameron (-3), Ed Milliband (-31), Nick Clegg (-36%). Nigel Farage is the only party leader with a positive approval rating with a net score of 5 – though this has dropped since our previous poll, when he had a net approval rating of 17, according to TNS.
Expectations remain high that no one party will have a majority after the General Election (76%). When specifically asked about potential coalition partners, there has been a notable switch in the findings for Conservative voters, who are now almost twice as likely to prefer the Liberal Democrats (42%) to UKIP (22%). Last month these figures were Liberal Democrat (32%) and UKIP (30%).
Given the challenge of standing candidates in over 600 constituencies, one in five (21%) supporters of smaller parties say they will not vote if there is no candidate from their preferred party standing in their constituency. Amongst supporters of smaller parties (including UKIP, Green and BNP), 18% said they would lend their vote to the Conservatives and 17% said they would vote for Labour if no candidate from their preferred party was standing, according to TNS.
Commenting, Jamie Willard, Director at TNS said “Albeit just one poll, there is evidence that Labour have made some gains in recent weeks. However, arguably the bigger story is the continued resilience of the minority party vote share with fewer than 80 days until polling day. A loss of trust in traditional institutions combined with major social change – including economic growth without wage inflation – is resulting in a Britain in flux.”
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