Good spot, wrong conclusion
John Craig over on the Sky News blog picks out that today's Populus poll shows 61% of people think the Conservatives are tainted by financial sleaze, up from 51% in February (and even that was in a poll taken shortly after the Conway affair, so this is worse than then). It does appear that the stories are gradually associating the Tories once again with financial sleaze in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately John Craig concludes that this is "evidence, if it were needed, that sleaze is a monster vote loser for David Cameron and the Tories".
This is rubbish - my guess is that an association with financial sleaze should be damaging for a party, but this poll certainly isn't evidence to support the hypothesis: the poll shows the Tories up five points on 45% and with a record lead over Labour. The question this poll provokes should be why hasn't financial sleaze been a monster vote loser for David Cameron and the Tories? One answer we can give now is that Labour are seen as worse - 68% thought they were tainted by financial sleaze (from 69% in February), and polls are pretty consistent now in showing that of those who don't think they are all as bad as each other, people tend to think Labour are sleazier than the Tories.
Another possible factor is how well people think the parties and leaders react to financial sleaze - if both the main parties are seen as full of MPs on the take, the dividing line suddenly becomes what the party leaders are prepared to do to about it and who the public think is more likely to stand against it. From the top of my head, I can't think of any polling evidence on that yet.
Finally, of course, there is the possibility that people don't actually care that much when it is compared to other issues. Obviously no-one thinks it desirable to have corrupt MPs and if asked if it is important that politicians are not sleazy and corrupt they will agree... but put it alongside things like tax, the economy, immigration, crime and so on. MORI's monthly question on what the most important issues facing the country classifies people who say things about sleaze under "morality/personal behaviour" - as you can see, it was at 7% in the last poll, and it was only one factor with the grab-bag of concerns MORI would have heard about the standards of behaviour in Britain today. That means at the very least it's seen as less important than crime, defence, immigration, the economy, tax, drugs, education, housing, inflation and the NHS.
I think that probably underestimates its importance, because as well as the direct effect it also impacts on the image of a party, and whether that party is seen as in touch or out for itself, but the fact remains that its easy to overestimate how important sleaze actually is as an issue, especially when it is an issue where people do not see much, if any, of a dividing line between the parties.
