Tracking public opinion on the cuts

11 Oct 2010, by Nigel Stanley in Politics, Public services

In my lengthy post on the best strategy for the anti-cuts campaign, I emphasised that we did not start with majority support and needed to make changing minds the key objective.

I’ve just discovered that YouGov have been tracking some good questions in a number of polls since the election.

I’ve put three of these onto a graph, so we can track the trend.

Firstly they ask whether the cuts are “good or bad for the economy”. I’ve taken the percentage saying bad away from the percentage saying good to give a net “good for the economy” figure.

Secondly they  ask whether the cuts are being done fairly or unfairly – this gives me a net “fairly” measure.

Thirdly they ask whether the cuts are having an impact, or not having an impact, on your own life. This gives me a net “personal impact” measure.

As can be seen (and you can click on the graph for a bigger image), there was a slow gradual shift away from the government after the emergency budget, but the Conservative Party conference seems to have been good for the coalition, and they have quickly recoved from their least favourable results that coincide with the TUC Congress.

Whether this is correlation, causality or coincidence I’ll leave others to judge.