Following this year’s Conservative party conference, Opinium’s latest poll reveals the Conservative vote share has not changed, remaining at 29%.
Labour’s vote share recovers by 3 points, taking them to 42% of the vote share and a 13% lead, reversing their drop in the last poll before conferences. The Liberal Democrats are on 11% (-1), the Green party and Reform UK both have 6% (-1) and the SNP remain on 3%.
Looking at approval ratings, Sunak has seen a 3-point increase in his net approval rating in the last week and is now on -24% (27% approve (+3), 51% disapprove (-1)). Keir Starmer’s net approval rating has also seen an uptick, now sitting at -8% compared to -10% last week (29% approve (+1), 37% disapprove (-1)).
Conservatives make gains on trust on immigration and the economy
During this week’s conference, the Conservatives have improved their lead on being trusted to reduce illegal migration, up to 4 points compared to before the conference, and have reduced Labour’s lead on running the economy from 7 points to 4 points. However, the Tories still remain behind in several other areas.
Labour seen as having better thought-out policy ideas
Voters are more likely to think the Labour Party have well thought out policy ideas (32%; n/c) compared to the Conservative Party led by Rishi Sunak (27%; +1 since last week). A larger portion sees the Conservative Party as having poorly thought-out policy ideas (48%; -4 since last week) compared to the Labour Party (38%; -6 since last week).
While 50% of voters think the Conservatives are divided and only 30% believe they are united, No 10 can take comfort from the fact that this is no worse than it was before the conference when these figures were 51% and 30% respectively.
Voters see Labour more as being united (47%) rather than divided (29%) and this will be tested again after the Labour conference.
Only 26% believe the Conservatives are likely to win the next general election, up from 24% before their conference. Just one in ten (10%, up from 9% last week) believe this will be with the Conservatives having an overall majority. 52% of voters believe Labour is likely to win the next general election, either with an overall majority (29%, up from 26% last week) or in a hung parliament (23%, down from 27%).
HS2 dominates Conservative Party conference
There has been relatively high awareness of the Conservative Party conference this year (71% heard a little or a lot about it), as well as the prime minister’s speech (71% heard about it), but this is by far outdone by the cancellation of northern leg of HS2 (78% heard about it, including 46% who heard a lot about it).
Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium said: “After last week’s 10 point lead we’ve seen a reversion to the mean with Labour returning to the low 40s and the Conservatives staying relatively consistent on 29% and little sign of a post-conference bounce.
“In the data on HS2 we can see Rishi Sunak’s problem in a nutshell: Voters have heard about the HS2 announcement, they are split on the decision itself but in the abstract overwhelmingly think the money would be better spent on other rail, road and bus projects. However, only 25% think it is likely that these projects would be delivered on.”
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