EXCLUSIVE: My New Year Polling

Unique insight into British voters at the end of 2023

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As we prepare to say goodbye to 2023 and hello to 2024 —a year that will see the next big general election battle in Britain— I thought you’d be interested to see some brand new polling on what people out there are really thinking and feeling.

The polling is based on a nationally representative sample of British adults and was undertaken by my firm People Polling, on behalf of GB News. If you are in Team Sunak or the Tories you might want to look away. Everybody else, keep reading …

1. The first thing to say is that Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party remain firmly on course for victory at the rapidly-approaching election, now rumoured to be held as early as the spring. Labour is on 45%, the Conservatives 23%, and both the Reform party and Liberal Democrats are tied on 10%. This 22-point lead is more than enough to deliver a Labour majority government, a remarkable turnaround given that their result at the last election, in 2019, was their worst performance at any election since 1935. Look beneath the headline numbers and there are some interesting things to note. One reason Labour is doing so well now is not only because the party is holding more than 80% of the people who voted Labour in 2019 but because the party has also captured more than two-fifths of the Liberal Democrat vote and more than one-quarter of the Brexit vote. Rishi Sunak, in sharp contrast, as I’ve been warning for sometime, is still struggling to win back his core voters — only a little over half the people who voted for Boris Johnson and the Tories in 2019 currently plan to vote Tory in 2024, while only 40% of Brexit voters plan to do the same (more than one in five of them have now decamped to the insurgent Reform party which is getting stronger in the polls).

2. Most voters are not feeling the economic ‘recovery’. True, inflation is falling and interest rates will likely soon follow. But while Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is now frequently on the airwaves proclaiming Britain’s economy has ‘turned a corner’, the blunt reality is that most people out there are not feeling it. The average voter is deeply pessimistic about the economy and their own financial position. In fact, I asked voters the following: “Generally speaking, do you feel better off or worse off than you did a year ago?” More than half of all voters, 54%, feel “worse off”, and only 9% feel “better off”, while 28% say they feel “no difference”. Worryingly for Rishi Sunak, only 14% of his own Conservative voters feel “better off” while a plurality, 43%, feel “worse off”. This does not bode well for turnout at the election. Few Conservatives appear inspired or enthusiastic about the economy. So, if Sir Keir Starmer is going to follow my advice by going into the next election asking voters the ‘Ronald Reagan question’ —are you better off than you were a few years ago?— then most Brits will deliver an emphatic “no”.

3. A large majority think it’s time for a change in Westminster. In polling, there are questions that throw more light on the public mood than others. And one of my favourites actually has nothing to do with leaders, parties, or policies. It’s simply to ask voters what they think about the following statement: ‘It is time for a change in Westminster’. And when you give British voters this statement today, exactly two-thirds, 66%, agree with it while only 12% disagree. Furthermore, so widespread is this public disillusionment that 93% of Labour voters, 90% of Liberal Democrats, and 51% of Conservative voters agree in thinking “it’s time for a change”. Clearly, this might not only be about the next election but is also tapping into a more diffuse sense that politics in Westminster is broken and not really working as it should —that nothing in Britain seems to be going well and nobody in power seems to have the answer. Either way, what is clear is that these kind of numbers are very bad news for incumbent governments and add to a sense out there in the country that something needs to change —and fast. If most voters feel their position is deteriorating and an even larger number think it’s time for a change in Westminster then this really does not bode well for the prime minister.

4. Voters know what they want to prioritise in 2024. What might change the dial? What are the key issues voters really want the big parties to prioritise going into the rapidly-approaching general election campaign? Well, I asked them and there are some important differences among different voters …

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