Populus Pre-Budget poll

There was a Populus poll for the BBC on last night's Westminster Hour asking some questions looking forward to the budget.

On balance respondents said they would prefer spending cuts to tax increases in the budget. 21% of people wanted the emphasis to be more (or entirely) upon tax increases, 36% wanted the emphasis to be more (or entirely) upon spending cuts. 37% preferred a roughly even split.

Populus then asked which areas people would like to see protected from cuts, and which areas they think should be cut. Notably these were both unprompted questions - people weren't asked to pick from a list, but answered in their own words, which were then coded up by Populus. Questions like this are costly and time-consuming, but the answers aren't influenced by the options the pollster choses to offer.

Of the 73% of people who said they thought some areas should be protected from spending cuts, the most popular areas identified were by some distance, the NHS (50%) and education (35%). 17% thought the police should be protected from cuts, 11% thought transport should - nothing else was mentioned by more than 5% of respondents.

Of areas that people thought should be particular targets for cuts, 46% of people said don't know. The most popular thing mentioned was MPs pay and perks, which given the comparatively miniscule cost of MPs expenses when put aside public spending as a whole, could only ever make a symbolic contribution. After this was local authorities (9%) and defence (7%). Nothing else was above 5%. The public seem to back cuts in public spending in theory, but are rather more reluctant when it comes to specific cuts.

Since it was a BBC commissioned poll there were, as usual, no voting intention questions. The tables, incidentally, include cross-breaks by party which imply voting intention was actually asked, but reverse engineering that into voting intentions is unlikely to be possible unless Populus also asked likelihood to vote.