The 2010 election in hindsight

I posted about this on the YouGov website earlier this week, but wanted to note it here too. A YouGov poll this week we asked about people’s opinions on the result of the 2010 election in hindsight. Do people think Labour deserved to lose, did the Conservatives deserve to come top, and would rather that Labour had won?

Firstly, YouGov asked whether people thought that Labour did indeed deserve to lose the election - 59% of people think that the did deserve to lose, 34% disagreed (this was, as you might expect, a largely partisan answer, although 16% of people who said they voted Labour in 2010 also said they deserved to lose. This is not necessarily an illogical stance to take; one might well think that a government has run its course and deserves to lose, but want to maximise their representation in opposition and prevent them losing too many seats).

The other side of the coin is whether people think the Conservatives deserved to come first in the General Election. Here only 38% of people agreed, while 53% disagreed. Unsurprisingly the vast majority of people who voted Tory in 2010 said the party deserved to come top (though 9% disagreed, and were presumably voting for the least worst option), majorities of Labour and Lib Dem voters thought the Tories did not deserve to come top.

Putting these together YouGov asked whether people thought that "with the benefit of hindsight and thinking about all that has happened since" it would have been better if Labour had won. 34% of people think it would have been better for the country had Labour won, 38% think the Coalition has done better job for the country than Labour would have.

In the same survey YouGov asked who people most trusted to make the right decisions about dealing with the government's deficit. 38% picked the coalition to 29% for Labour, with 22% saying neither. This is interesting, considering other polls are now pretty consistent in showing that a majority of people think the government are cutting too fast, too deep or too unfairly - it's a reminder than while people may be unhappy with the incumbent's policy on an issue, it doesn't necessarily follow that they automatically trust the alternatives to do better.