Dr Patrick English is the Associate Director of Political and Social Research at YouGov.
The cost of living continues to dominate headlines and cause huge political headaches for a beleaguered Conservative Party.
Inflation remains stubborn, refusing to drop below ten per cent; supermarket prices rose 19.2 per cent in the 12 months leading up to February; a typical household energy bill is currently capped at £2,500 – a 96 per cent rise on the winter 2021/22 price cap.
Yet despite all that gloom, and the depth with which the cost of living crisis reaches across social and political divides, there is a significant group of the British public who are struggling with the cost of living crisis, but who are nonetheless relatively warm toward the Conservative government and their efforts to help them out of it.
They are named by YouGov’s as the ‘Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers’, identified as part of our cutting edge cost of living segmentation project.
In contrast to the overwhelming narrative that the Government’s handling of inflation and the economy at large has resulted in masses of low income households fleeing the Conservatives, this steadfast group of economic strugglers are sticking with Rishi Sunak’s party.
So, just who are they?
This intriguing slice of the population are certainly feeling the pinch of the cost of living situation, and are likely to have had to made cuts and struggled to pay bills and afford emergency or surprise payments.
This is not an asset-rich group, with only 21 per cent owning their own home outright (another 27 per cent own with a mortgage). Average incomes in among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers end to be somewhere between the £20-£39k mark.
They also tend to be young, containing many people who are at the very beginning of their careers.
Fascinatingly however, despite financial worries and a lack of capital, they have among the most positive general outlooks of any group towards the British economy and their own personal finances going forward – rivalled only by the asset-rich, largely retired, and economically sound ‘Calm and Comfortable’ segment.
In each and every way you look, they are very similar in terms of financial situation to the ‘Worried and Suffering’ group, but much closer to the ‘Calm and Comfortable’ in terms of their attitudes and opinions.
Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers are the smallest of all five cost of living groups identified by YouGov, representing around one in seven adults living in Britain today. Nonetheless, that’s still around eight million people.
This group have a history of backing the party in blue: no less than 59 per cent of them voted Conservative in 2019, versus just 25 per cent who voted Labour.
As with virtually any group you care to mention in British society at the moment, the Tories have certainly lost ground among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers since then, dropping to 42 per cent of vote intention at the time of YouGov’s last check in. But they still outpace Labour, who are back at 30 per cent.
Furthermore, they are among the most likely to think that the Government is doing a good job at handling the economy – not an attitude you find too often in polling right now. Back in March, 43 per cent of them thought the Government were generally managing their economic charges well (45 per cent said badly).
To perhaps illustrate the puzzle here, just five per cent of the Worried and Suffering – a group very similar in terms of financial precariousness as the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers – thought the same.
In this regard, as in many, attitudes among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers reflect much more closely the asset-rich, classic Conservative voter in the Calm and Comfortable segment (51 per cent of them thought the government was doing a good job with the economy in March).
Could they form part of a winning Conservative 2024 electoral coalition?
To win the next general election, Sunak needs to bring back into the fold the millions of voters who have drifted away from the party in the last 18 months or so. What began as concerns around inflation and food shortages in 2021 spiralled into fury and outrage at Partygate and then the brief (but eventful) Truss-Kwarteng experiment.
Feelings over what has happened to household budgets for millions up and down the country in the last two years run deep, and the majority of the blame falls squarely at the Government’s door.
That said, there are already some signs that a decent number of those 2019 Conservative voters who were telling pollsters a few months ago that they ‘did not know’ how they would vote if an election were being held tomorrow are returning to Sunak’s column.
However, that current rate of return would not enough to avoid a big Labour victory. Could Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers provide a fruitful group for the Conservatives to target in order to further reduce Labour’s polling lead?
The Prime Minister may well feel that his much-discussed five pledges to the British public will be effective in disarming Labour’s attack lines on him and his party’s record, and help win back voter groups like them.
But polling suggests this might not be so effective – particularly in terms of controlling prices and the cost of living.
When More in Common polled the public this month, they found no less than 40 per cent believed that Sunak’s pledge to “halve inflation by the end of the year” meant that the average price of a pint of milk would be coming down if that goal was achieved.
So, even if Sunak and the Conservatives were able to cut inflation in half, that would not actually be meeting expectations for millions of voters; it thus isn’t at all clear therefore that the public would reward them all that much for it.
But so-called mall-c conservative offers on issues such as housing, wealth development, and long term financial security, which would surely see many of the 15 per cent or so who have drifted away from the party come back, could be made.
Pitching to the aspirational working and middle classes is nothing new to Tory electoral strategies, and could well quickly pull back in significant numbers of their 2019 voters ahead of what will be a difficult 2024 contest.
But the Labour Party will be making pitches to the same group: less-affluent, disillusioned, working-age voters who flocked away from the party under Jeremy Corbyn are high on the priority list for Keir Starmer as he continues to build his own electoral coalition and cement his party’s significant polling lead.
And he is able to do so without having to own the country’s poor recent economic record.
Dr Patrick English is the Associate Director of Political and Social Research at YouGov.
The cost of living continues to dominate headlines and cause huge political headaches for a beleaguered Conservative Party.
Inflation remains stubborn, refusing to drop below ten per cent; supermarket prices rose 19.2 per cent in the 12 months leading up to February; a typical household energy bill is currently capped at £2,500 – a 96 per cent rise on the winter 2021/22 price cap.
Yet despite all that gloom, and the depth with which the cost of living crisis reaches across social and political divides, there is a significant group of the British public who are struggling with the cost of living crisis, but who are nonetheless relatively warm toward the Conservative government and their efforts to help them out of it.
They are named by YouGov’s as the ‘Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers’, identified as part of our cutting edge cost of living segmentation project.
In contrast to the overwhelming narrative that the Government’s handling of inflation and the economy at large has resulted in masses of low income households fleeing the Conservatives, this steadfast group of economic strugglers are sticking with Rishi Sunak’s party.
So, just who are they?
This intriguing slice of the population are certainly feeling the pinch of the cost of living situation, and are likely to have had to made cuts and struggled to pay bills and afford emergency or surprise payments.
This is not an asset-rich group, with only 21 per cent owning their own home outright (another 27 per cent own with a mortgage). Average incomes in among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers end to be somewhere between the £20-£39k mark.
They also tend to be young, containing many people who are at the very beginning of their careers.
Fascinatingly however, despite financial worries and a lack of capital, they have among the most positive general outlooks of any group towards the British economy and their own personal finances going forward – rivalled only by the asset-rich, largely retired, and economically sound ‘Calm and Comfortable’ segment.
In each and every way you look, they are very similar in terms of financial situation to the ‘Worried and Suffering’ group, but much closer to the ‘Calm and Comfortable’ in terms of their attitudes and opinions.
Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers are the smallest of all five cost of living groups identified by YouGov, representing around one in seven adults living in Britain today. Nonetheless, that’s still around eight million people.
This group have a history of backing the party in blue: no less than 59 per cent of them voted Conservative in 2019, versus just 25 per cent who voted Labour.
As with virtually any group you care to mention in British society at the moment, the Tories have certainly lost ground among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers since then, dropping to 42 per cent of vote intention at the time of YouGov’s last check in. But they still outpace Labour, who are back at 30 per cent.
Furthermore, they are among the most likely to think that the Government is doing a good job at handling the economy – not an attitude you find too often in polling right now. Back in March, 43 per cent of them thought the Government were generally managing their economic charges well (45 per cent said badly).
To perhaps illustrate the puzzle here, just five per cent of the Worried and Suffering – a group very similar in terms of financial precariousness as the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers – thought the same.
In this regard, as in many, attitudes among the Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers reflect much more closely the asset-rich, classic Conservative voter in the Calm and Comfortable segment (51 per cent of them thought the government was doing a good job with the economy in March).
Could they form part of a winning Conservative 2024 electoral coalition?
To win the next general election, Sunak needs to bring back into the fold the millions of voters who have drifted away from the party in the last 18 months or so. What began as concerns around inflation and food shortages in 2021 spiralled into fury and outrage at Partygate and then the brief (but eventful) Truss-Kwarteng experiment.
Feelings over what has happened to household budgets for millions up and down the country in the last two years run deep, and the majority of the blame falls squarely at the Government’s door.
That said, there are already some signs that a decent number of those 2019 Conservative voters who were telling pollsters a few months ago that they ‘did not know’ how they would vote if an election were being held tomorrow are returning to Sunak’s column.
However, that current rate of return would not enough to avoid a big Labour victory. Could Cautiously Hopeful Strugglers provide a fruitful group for the Conservatives to target in order to further reduce Labour’s polling lead?
The Prime Minister may well feel that his much-discussed five pledges to the British public will be effective in disarming Labour’s attack lines on him and his party’s record, and help win back voter groups like them.
But polling suggests this might not be so effective – particularly in terms of controlling prices and the cost of living.
When More in Common polled the public this month, they found no less than 40 per cent believed that Sunak’s pledge to “halve inflation by the end of the year” meant that the average price of a pint of milk would be coming down if that goal was achieved.
So, even if Sunak and the Conservatives were able to cut inflation in half, that would not actually be meeting expectations for millions of voters; it thus isn’t at all clear therefore that the public would reward them all that much for it.
But so-called mall-c conservative offers on issues such as housing, wealth development, and long term financial security, which would surely see many of the 15 per cent or so who have drifted away from the party come back, could be made.
Pitching to the aspirational working and middle classes is nothing new to Tory electoral strategies, and could well quickly pull back in significant numbers of their 2019 voters ahead of what will be a difficult 2024 contest.
But the Labour Party will be making pitches to the same group: less-affluent, disillusioned, working-age voters who flocked away from the party under Jeremy Corbyn are high on the priority list for Keir Starmer as he continues to build his own electoral coalition and cement his party’s significant polling lead.
And he is able to do so without having to own the country’s poor recent economic record.