Full report on YouGov/ST and new Ashcroft polling

The full tabs for YouGov's weekly poll for the Sunday Times are up here.

On the strikes, 50% opposed headteachers taking stike action (38% supported it), 49% opposed teachers taking strike action (41% supported), 51% opposed civil servants taking strike action (39% supported). The YouGov poll had a cross break by public sector and private sector employment - as one might expect, public sector workers are more likely to support strike action, private sector employees are more likely to oppose it though the difference is less black and white as one might expect. For example, public sector employees support the civil servants' strike action by 53% to 39%, private sector employees oppose it by 56% to 34%.

On the subject of public and private sector workers, note the main voting intention question. Public sector workers are more likely to support Labour than private sector workers... but not monolithically so. Amongst public sector workers this week's voting intention was CON 30%, LAB 46%, LDEM 10%. The sample size was only 404, so give it due scepticism, I mention it solely to knock down the lazy assumption I occassionally see that all public sector workers are Labour voters.

Going back to the issue of the strikes, YouGov asked how well people thought David Cameron and the government had handled the issue of public sector pensions and negotiations - only 23% though he had handled them well, with 59% thinking it had been done badly. Turning to Ed Miliband, YouGov asked if people thought he should support or oppose the strikes - 23% think he should support them, 33% oppose them, 27% neither. Amongst Labour supporters 41% think the strikes should be supported, 14% opposed and 34% neither.

YouGov then asked about various policies and whether people would support or oppose them. Most of these were largely as you would expect - 83% supported cancelling the rise in fuel prices, 64% would support spending more on big infrastructure projects, 54% support building a high speed rail link to the Midlands and North, 48% oppose a new airport in the Thames Estuary, 53% support underwriting mortgages for new build houses.

The full tabs are here, and also have some questions on energy and Rugby.

I also said I'd have a look at the new (presumably Populus) polling for Lord Ashcroft. The poll found Cameron & Osborne were more trusted on the economy than Miliband & Balls (they did some interesting split sample tests, seeing if the answers were different if you asked just Osborne or Balls, or Cameron, Osborne & Clegg. None of it made that much difference though).

There were also some interesting questions on whether people trusted Labour or the Conservatives more on specific aspects of economic policy. The Conservatives were significantly more trusted to cut borrowing and debt, to steer the economy through tough times and to stop Britain getting into the same problems as Greece and Italy. Labour were significantly more trusted on creating jobs. The two parties were pretty much neck and neck on helping business and making banks behave responsibly.

Asked about what aspects of the economy most worried people rising prices easily came top, though I'm slightly sceptical about how much the options in the question led to this. For example, low pay rises wasn't on the list, and while there were some wider issues like national debt and the Eurozone crisis, low growth in the British economy wasn't there. It is probably not a co-incidence that the three top issues on the question (rising prices, national debt and the Eurozone crisis) were the only three that affected everyone - the other options on the list were things that were largely dependent on people's circumstances (job insecurity is not a direct issue for the retired, making mortgage payments only for homeowners, finding somewhere to live only for non-homeowners, etc).

Ashcroft also asked people if they thought the economic situation would be better or worse if we had a Labour government, or Conservative government without the Lib Dems. 21% thought the economy would be better with Labour in charge, but 39% thought it would be worse (41% thought it would be much the same). 19% thought the economy would be better if the Conservatives were governing alone, 24% thought it would be worse, 57% thought it would be much the same.