100 Days in Office – How is Labour Doing?

100 days into Keir Starmer’s Labour Government, what do the polls tell us about how he, and his government, is performing? 

Helpfully, Ipsos Mori has just the answers, in the form of its latest Political Pulse report.

According to the report, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer now has a net favourability rating of -26, with 26% of those questioned saying they felt favourable towards him (-6 percentage points from September) and 52% are unfavourable (+8).

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has a net favourability rating of -30, with 20% feeling favourable towards her (-3) and 50% unfavourable (+6).

Overall, Labour now has a net favourability rating of -21, having been +6 just after the general election in July. Over the same period, the Conservative’s net favourability rating has increased from -39 to -28.

58% of those who were questioned said that they felt things in Britain are heading in the wrong direction (+3 points from September). Ipsos Mori notes that this is 9 percentage points higher than the first rating recorded after Labour’s victory of 49% in early July.

Overall, 62% of those polled said they were not confident that Labour has a good long-term economic plan, compared to 61% who said the same about the Conservatives.

YouGov has equally difficult numbers for Labour.

Its polling finds that 59% of those questioned disapprove of the Government’s record so far, compared to 18% who approve of it.

63% see the Prime Minister unfavourably with just 27% still holding a positive view of him which, YouGov notes, makes him as unpopular as the Reform leader, Nigel Farage.

YouGov goes on to note: “Three in ten Britons (30%) say they had expected Labour to do well in government, but have been left disappointed by what they have seen so far, with only one in eight (12%) saying their positive expectations have been met. For a further 37% of Britons Labour’s poor performance is what they were expecting in the first place.

“Perhaps most alarmingly for the government, nearly half of those who voted Labour in the election (47%) say they had positive expectations of Starmer’s government but feel let down so far, with only three in ten (30%) feeling Labour has done as well as they had hoped.”

The party however should find some solace in the fact that just 28% think it reasonable to expect Labour to have made much progress by now, with 57% considering this an unrealistic expectation. YouGov notes that this includes 77% of those who backed the party in July, which, the pollster notes, suggests “that the government still has some time to convince their voters that they made the right choice.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buyers Regret Over Brexit?

This week marked five years since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a decision which has shaken British politics in a way that few would have foreseen. To mark the occasion, Savanta ComRes this week published polling suggesting that if the referendum were held today, remain would just win, with 51% of respondents saying they would vote to stay in the EU compared to 49% who would vote to leave. The poll shows that there would be little switching from either side, with 6% of those who voted remain in 2016 saying they would not vote to leave, and 7% of those who originally voted to leave saying they would now vote remain. Savanta ComRes go on to say: “That means the Remain edge in this poll comes from those who did not vote in 2016, with this group being more than twice as likely to vote for Remain (71%) than Leave (29%).” The poll found however that if the public were asked instead to choose between joining the EU or not, 51% would vote not to become a member, whilst 49% w...
Read more

Can Labour Look Forward to a Decade in Power?

Speaking at the start of the year the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, spoke of a "decade of national renewal" being the "central, defining purpose" of a future Labour government. Fast forward to today, and for those now in Government the question will be whether the election results can give Labour any confidence at the prospect of a decade in power. Some might conclude that it is absurd to be asking this question, given Labour’s 172 seat majority in the Commons. That is just 7 short of the majority New Labour secured in 1997 which ushered in 13 years of Labour rule. However, dig deeper, and the reality is that Labour’s victory is thin. According to the election results Labour won on Thursday having secured around 9.7 million votes, equivalent to 33.7% of the votes cast. To set that into context, according to House of Commons Library data , that compares to the 13.5 million votes (43.2% vote share) Labour got in 1997. What is more, the total number of ...
Read more

Rishi’s Ratings Sink

Rishi Sunak has registered his weakest favourability ratings since becoming Prime Minister according to new polling by Ipsos Mori. It reports that whilst the Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, has a net favourability score of -7, Rishi Sunak’s has sunk to -19. With Boris Johnson continuing to breathe down Rishi Sunak’s neck, Ipsos goes on to note: “More than half of 2019 Conservative voters are favourable to Johnson (55%) while 49% say the same for Sunak. Overall, among 2019 Conservative voters, Johnson scores +29 while Sunak scores +23.   However, Johnson’s lead owes more to falling ratings for Mr Sunak rather than improving ratings for the former PM.” Looking at the parties as a whole, Labour has a net favourability rating of +2 with the Conservatives on -29. When it coms to Brexit, 55% of respondents told Ipsos that leaving the EU had had a negative impact on the country, with just 21% saying it had been positive. It continues: “If we subtract the proportion saying Brexit has...
Read more