It is often said in life that “no news is good news”.
For the Conservatives in this General Election campaign the opposite is true when it comes to the opinion polls.
Labour’s average poll lead since the election was called is 21 points. Labour’s average lead in May before the election was called was 21 points. In April it was 21 points too. You get the idea. There is no obvious sense of movement.
It should be stressed that not all pollsters agree with the size of Labour’s lead.
At times in this campaign we have seen Labour leads as low as +12 or +14 (although the pollsters producing these leads have since seen them grow to +17 and +20 respectively). Pollsters have different ways to account for turnout and for those who say they don’t know how they will vote, so numbers can vary for methodological reasons, as well as moving around within the margin of error.
Regardless, the fundamental message from the polls so far is that Labour are ahead by a wide margin and not much appears to be changing.
Why no movement in headline figures? Well in truth, the public simply haven’t changed their minds on the parties, their leaders and the issues that matter to them.
Our Ipsos Campaign Tracker showed that in the first week of the campaign 22% were favourable towards the Conservative Party and 57% unfavourable. And whilst the public were split on Labour, 39% favourable and 38% unfavourable, they are more popular than the Conservatives.
Numbers for both parties are almost identical to before the election. A similar picture is observed looking at party leaders, whilst Labour continues to be seen to have the best policies on the two issues that matter most to the public – the NHS and the cost of living –by a margin of 23 and 11 points respectively over the Conservatives. This is despite a recent increase in optimism over the economy showed in Ipsos’ polling for the Standard.
What will also worry the Conservatives is not just the lack of change but a scenario in which things could get even worse. The return to frontline politics of Nigel Farage this week is many Tory strategists’ worst nightmare.
Ipsos data shows 8 in 10 Reform UK voters voted Conservative in 2019, with 7 in 10 placing immigration as their number one issue. Sunak and his team had hoped to squeeze this vote to their advantage this campaign, though they have yet to noticeably do so.
Farage’s return will make this harder and if he manages to increase Reform UK’s support, this could easily be at the Conservatives’ expense. As Rishi Sunak takes to the stage in the first leader’s debate this evening, the stakes for him and his party could not be higher.
