Economy still the number one concern

Last month I was dismissive of the way the Telegraph had interpreted a YouGov poll as showing that immigration was the public's number one issue, when actually YouGov had only asked about a limited number of specific policies, that didn't include things like health or the economy.

I said then that proper questions asking about the most important issues show that the economy is - as you'd expect - far and away the most important issue to the public. Well Ipsos MORI's monthly issues tracker, the one I prefer since it is entirely unprompted, is now available and does indeed show the economy remains easily the public's major concern.

It's worth noting that immigration has risen up the agenda slightly this month, and was cited as an important issue by 25% of people. In the context of recent years however, that is actually quite low - from 2003 until 2005 MORI tended to find a much higher proportion of people mentioning immigration as an issue, in fact going back to 2006 and 2007 it was sometimes the number one issue mentioned.

On the subject of MORI, there is also a good article by Bob Worcester on their website about spotting dodgy question wording.