Will the Tories get any post-Budget bounce? Early opinion polls suggest not

Three new national opinion polls published on Friday include some survey work carried out after the Budget, and all three show Labour leads of more than 20 percentage points.

But even if the Budget did affect public opinion, it would be too early to say what the effect was. YouGov and Techne started their interviews on Wednesday, and so most of them would have been conducted before the Budget headlines landed. People Polling did all its interviews on Thursday, so was more likely to capture any Budget effect. But as one pollster told me the other day, “almost nothing changes public opinion”, and the news stories that so interest the Westminster bubble rarely scratch the surface of the public’s consciousness.

We should be cautious about reading too much into any of these polls. People Polling has caused a stir because it puts the Conservative share of the vote on 18 per cent – the first time it has been below 20 per cent since Rishi Sunak became prime minister. But the polling company, although it is a member of the British Polling Council, on average records the lowest support for the Tories and the highest support for Labour.

In the last week of Liz Truss’s premiership, for example, it put the Tories on 14 per cent, with Labour a full 39 points ahead on 53 per cent. Now People Polling puts Labour on 46 per cent, a mere 28 points ahead.

According to research by Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov, his old company and Techne also both tend to record bigger leads for Labour than the average – although not as big as People Polling. Friday’s YouGov poll puts Labour 27 points ahead, while Techne shows Labour’s lead at 21 points.

So we should wait for more polls, especially from pollsters such as More in Common, Opinium and Savanta, who tend to give smaller Labour leads.

But it does not look as if there will be much reassurance for the Conservatives in the local elections to be held in May. A rare poll in Tees Valley by Censuswide for the communications agency, Yasper, suggests that Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor, is heading for defeat, with 45 per cent saying they intend to vote Labour and only 19 per cent saying they will vote Tory.* Given that Houchen has been one of the Tory stars among directly elected mayors, in Labour’s north-east heartland, a Tory loss there would be a bitter blow to the prime minister, whose Yorkshire seat is nearby.

Overall, the opinion poll picture since Sunak took over has not been encouraging for the prime minister. In the early months of his time in 10 Downing Street, the average Labour lead was 19 points. Now, the average Labour lead is 21 points. Public opinion has been remarkably stable ever since the disruption of the Truss interregnum. The only shift has been a slight widening of the gap, and a rise in support for Reform UK in the past six months, going from an average of 6 per cent to about 11 per cent now.

Although a Budget speech is unlikely to change people’s voting intentions, the measures in a Budget might have an effect if they are big enough and have enough time to be felt. Sunak and Jeremy Hunt must hope that the cuts in national insurance by 4p in the pound, worth about £900 a year to someone on average earnings of £28,000 a year, will make people feel better off by the time of the election. If the sun shines this summer and earnings continue to outstrip prices, this may be possible. Whether it will shift any votes, though, is another question.

* Note added 9 March: The Tees Valley poll is unweighted, and therefore is of limited use in assessing relative voting intentions.