Economic optimism at its lowest since 1980

Ipsos MORI's monthly poll has appeared after what appears to be a lengthy delay - the fieldwork was carried out way back between the 13th and 18th March, so actually about the same time as the first ICM and YouGov polls that showed big Conservative leads back in the middle of the month. I have no idea of quite why there was such a delay.

The topline figures, with changes from MORI's February poll, are CON 40%(+1), LAB 35%(-2), LDEM 18%(+2). It's obviously not in the same league as the double point leads YouGov and ICM produced at the time, but the trend was in the same direction.

While there are already more recent voting intention figures than these, there are some interesting findings looking at some of MORI's other regular trackers. The economic optimism figure continues to get worse - this month 67% of respondents told MORI they expected the economy to get worse with only 7% expecting it to get better. The net score of -60 is now worse than the poll straight after September 11th 2001, which was the lowest point in recent years, far lower than Black Wednesday and the stock market crash in 1987 - you have to go all the way back to March 1980 to find such pessimistic public expectations about the economy.

At the same time, the economy continues to sneak up the agenda as one of the most important issues facing the country - this month 23% of people named it, behind immigraion on 44%, crime on 40% and the NHS on 24%. This is the highest level of concern about the economy since 1998, though still not nearly as high as it was in the early 90s - after Black Wednesday 53% of people thought the economy was an important issue. People are far, far more likely to be pessimistic rather than optimistic about the economy and concern is definitely growing, but at the moment its still seen as a less of an issue than things like crime and immigration.