Ipsos MORI - 36/39/14

Ipsos MORI's monthly political monitor for Reuters has been published. This is the first November poll from a company other than YouGov - all the regular polls seem to be coming in the second half of the month these days.

Topline figures with changes from last month are CON 36%(-3), LAB 39%(+3), LDEM 14%(nc), echoing the shift towards Labour that we've seen in YouGov's polls this week. Populus, Angus Reid and ComRes all showed Labour leads towards the end of last month anyway, so we are currently in a position where every regular polling company except ICM is showing Labour ahead (and I'd expect ICM to follow suit once their regular poll for the Guardian arrives next week).

One particularly interesting question in MORI's poll was how concerned people were about particularly areas being affected by cuts. I'm not always a big fan of questions that ask about whether people are concerned about stuff - it's easy to say you are, and there's a social desirability bias towards saying you do at least care a bit about old people's services being closed, but nevertheless, the constrast between issues is meaningful. Looking at those people who say they are very concerned about issues, 46% said they were very concerned about local services like libraries and social care, 44% said they were very concerned about policing, 44% about tuition fees, 42% about the armed services, 38% about public sector job cuts. Lowest were benefit cuts (27%) and 21% changes to social housing.

This is mostly in line with other polling we've seen that has shown the cuts to welfare benefits meeting with approval, and cuts to defence and tuition fees being opposed. The top one, cuts to local services, we haven't really seen polling on simply because it is local - you don't see national polls about a library in this town or an old people's home in that town closing, but if they are blamed on the government rather than local councils then can still end up having an impact.