Amidst generally woeful scores, the Conservatives still lead on terrorism and defence, and run Labour close on law and order, asylum, and – still – the economy.
Even were this not the case, such ratings only weakly correlate to general election outcomes. There is no getting around the hard work of repairing the Party’s standing with voters.
The Government’s failure to do anything about London’s housing crisis means the capital is now starting to export voters into its wide commuter belt.
YouGov research has revealed an important section of the electorate that Tory strategists would do well to target ahead of 2024.
Together with other recent by-elections, it is broadly in that electoral territory – but it is also consistent with a least one recent survey suggesting a wipeout for the Conservatives.
But if the blue party succumbs to a blue funk, pondering the headline figures only, defeat risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These results are in effect identical to a YouGov poll published earlier today. If both we and they are right, Sunak needs a massive game-changer to turn this contest round – and he’s running out of time.
The two candidates have less than ten days to bring to the campaign her conviction that sticking with the status quo simply won’t do.
Taken together, our survey and YouGov’s polling suggest that the Chancellor has narrowed the gap between him and his opponents among Party members. But he is running out of time in which to get ahead.
It would also make a mockery of any hustings held later than early August, since many of those present will by then already have voted.
The public will react very badly if they come to see the strikes as essentially political, but the Conservatives won’t want to appear unable to govern.
To date, Boris Johnson has been able to “dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge”. But a more than usually chaotic U-turn narrows his options.
It is absurd that people willing to work must instead sit on their hands and depend on state benefits.
According to a YouGov poll conducted only six days after the atrocities, a staggering 49 per cent of 18–24-year-olds in the UK ‘don’t know’ whether Hamas is a terrorist organisation. This is obscene and abhorrent.