Sunak records lowest best Prime Minister score as Labour lead by 17pts

Rishi Sunak‘s best Prime Minister score stands at the lowest it’s ever been, according to the latest polling from Savanta.

Just 32% of the public now believe that the incumbent Prime Minister would make the best PM, down two points from July. Keir Starmer’s score remains unchanged on 39%, indicating the largest lead Starmer has had over Sunak since the latter entered No.10 Downing Street.

The lead also represents the fourth consecutive lead Starmer has had over Sunak in this metric in a Savanta poll. Starmer did enjoy larger leads over Truss (28 points) and Johnson (15 points) at the end of their respective tenures.

The Prime Minister, along with other government ministers, also sees his net favourability rating plummet by six points, from a net -14 in July to -20 in August. There are similar drops for Hunt (down 7pts to -25) and Braverman (down 4pts to -26), although James Cleverly remains unchanged (-13).

Keir Starmer’s net favourability remains virtually unchanged (down 1pt to -1).

Labour’s voting intention lead remains fairly consistent, at 17 points. Labour is currently on 46%, down one point from the previous poll in July, with the Conservatives on 29%, up one point in the same period.

Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta said, “In years gone by, whenever we’ve been unsure about voting intention polls, the two other key indicators to how voters feel about parties tend to lie in their perceived economic competence, and the merits of their leaders as Prime Minister.

“In 2015, while Labour were neck and neck with the Conservatives in the voting intention, Cameron led Miliband comfortably in the Best PM metric, and the Conservatives led similarly comfortably over Labour in terms of economic competence.”

“Starmer’s increasing lead over Sunak in the Best PM metric – a metric that always tends to skew towards the incumbent anyway – feels really significant. Four consecutive leads for Starmer over Sunak are beginning to tell the story of a Prime Minister who’s not been able to rescue his party following the controversial reigns of its predecessors.

“Starmer’s had larger leads over Conservative PMs, but they’ve almost exclusively come in the last throes of Johnson and Truss’s tenures, and while Sunak isn’t struggling quite to the same extent (yet), there is no obvious remedy to his ailing polling numbers that offers much hope for his party as we exit summer.”