Britons are most likely to see Conservatives as having a ‘good campaign’ according to the latest Ipsos MORI report.
In the UK as a whole, 31% of Brits believe the Tories are having a good campaign compared to 23% and 17% for Labour and the LibDems respectively.
The UK-wide poll had a proportionate sample, with the equivalent ratio of Scots matching that of the total population. The SNP, however, were not featured in this research.
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More than a third (34%) expect a Tory majority after the election, a figure that surged seven points since last week. Overall, 63% expect the Conservatives to at least be the largest party.
This is contrasted with figures revealing that a majority (56%) of Brits don’t trust the Conservatives’ current spending plans, saying they aren’t confident that the plans are “credible”. Labour scored worse on this metric with 63% of people lacking confidence.
While the Tories have more people saying their campaign is good, the percentage of people saying they are having a bad campaign (34%) is unchanged.
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Meanwhile the Lib Dems have failed to recover after last week’s fall in scores. In fact, their scores on this measure have fallen further this week. Just 17% think the party is having a good campaign (down 2 points since last week) and 41% say the party is having a bad campaign (up two points). This means their net score has fallen a further 4 points this week and some 15 points since the beginning of the campaign (from -9 to -24).
While roughly a third of people think each Labour (34%) and Conservatives (33%) will increase equality of opportunity, more than half of people say the opposite.
Boris Johnson remains in the lead on favourability scores, however, Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo Swinson and Nigel Farage all have more unfavourability than favourability.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn continues to command the worst favourability scores of the party leaders included in the survey. 60% are unfavourable towards the Labour leader (43% very unfavourable), with just 22% favourable. His net score of -38 is virtually the same as the score achieved at the beginning of the campaign (-39).
Jo Swinson’s favourability figures have not recovered after falling sharply last week. Her net score of -31 is unchanged with 49% unfavourable towards the Lib Dem leader and 18% favourable.
Commenting on the findings, Ipsos MORI research director Keiran Pedley said: “With just over a week to go until polling day, the key indicators in our campaign tracker look positive for the Conservatives.
“The British public are most likely to see the Conservative Party as having a good campaign, more favourable towards Boris Johnson than other party leaders and they are now more likely to predict a Conservative majority ahead of other election outcomes.
“However, as the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics, and it remains to be seen whether or not the Conservatives can convert the positive figures for the party in this poll into a majority next week.”
When prompted with a list of issues that might be important to them in deciding how to vote in the upcoming election, the top two issues for Britons are the NHS (59%) and Brexit (54%). These figures are closely aligned with those seen in previous weeks. The NHS replaced Brexit as the number one issue for voters in this tracking study after week one.
Leave voters are most favourable towards the Conservatives (54% favourable), compared to 40% for the Brexit Party, 14% for Labour and 9% for the Liberal Democrats.
Remain voters are most favourable towards the Labour party (45%) then the Liberal Democrats (40%). Remainers were more favourable towards the Lib Dems in week one but Labour moved into first place in week two and have stayed there in week three and four. Both have a significant lead over the Conservatives (18%) and Brexit Party (5%) among this group.
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