What do the polls say about Sunak's immigration gamble?
What do the polls say about Sunak's immigration gamble?
Welcome to this week’s edition, taking a look at the polling around immigration and what this tells us about the possible political impact from Sunak’s decision to focus on small boats crossing the Channel.
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Polling small boats and immigration
Within a minute of each other earlier this week, emails from two different professors of politics (
and ) landed in my inbox. Both were laden with evidence about polling, immigration and the Conservatives.But they came to contradictory conclusions. Which at least saved me from defaulting to ‘oh, this argument is from Rob/Ben, therefore it must be right’.
So being forced to think more closely, what does the polling really say?
Let’s start with the big picture. The long-term trend is one of Britain becoming more liberal on a wide range of issues, as I’ve covered before.
That includes on immigration:
Similarly, levels of public concern over immigration have dropped hugely (and stayed low even as the country has headed towards recession):
(Whether concerns over immigration have dropped primarily because of that long-term liberalising or because of changes in immigration policy following Brexit is a hot topic for another day.)
Alongside the big drop has come Labour catching up with the Conservatives on immigration, even going into the lead on the issue, though recently dropping back a bit:
(Again, there are competing explanations, in particular whether this is about immigration specifically or whether it’s due to the overall fall in the Conservative Party’s reputation across the board.)
So far, then, the decision of Rishi Sunak to focus on stopping the boats seems unlikely to be a political success.
Especially as the apparent popularity of the government’s small boats policy is very dependent on how the question is worded.
You can find apparent very strong support for the policy with some poll question wording, such as:
But… those results are very dependent on the wording. In particular, this question uses the word ‘illegally’, doesn’t mention any of the potential downsides and suffers from acquiescence bias.
One of the people who runs the firm that did this polling was in pugnacious mode in responding to other pollsters who criticised the wording. Though even his poll had Sunak only two points ahead of Starmer (16% - 14%) on who people most trust on the small boats issue. None of the above dominates answers at 40%.
We do also have polling results from other firms with other wording that give a very different picture:
Of course, this one question wording isn’t perfect either with detailed, nuanced answer options on a survey that most people will completely very quickly. It does however show that how the issue is presented matters.
Which is where the Conservative Party’s overall standings and their ratings on immigration in particular could be a problem. They are not a popular messenger with the broad public on policy issues.
Especially as the public thinks the government’s Rwanda policy is not going to work:
However, the difference between electoral disaster and triumph is narrow: 42% vote share nationwide normally makes a leader Prime Minister, 32% normally makes a leader resign. A swing of just 1 in 10 voters (10%) takes up from champagne to P45s.
Now normally I’d caution against thinking you can dig out some special small niche of the electorate and treat them completely differently, because overall the pattern of views among different parts of the electorate has much more similarity than people appreciate.
In this case, however, the other professor who emailed me makes a good case. It’s that the key group Rishi Sunak may want to win back are those who were Conservative in 2019 and are now either ‘don’t know’ or Labour. These are the second and third bars in his bar chart:
In other words, they are a pretty socially authoritarian group. Britain may be getting more liberal, but for the Conservatives, the voters who matter most to win back are people for whom non-liberal arguments still appeal.
What’s more, although overall the NHS (pink line) is rated as a more important issue than immigration (purple line, and switching to YouGov data for a moment):
Among Leave voters they two are closely matched:
As Ben concluded:
So on social issues - social authoritarian attitudes and Brexit - there is ample space for Sunak to encourage Dispirited Conservatives and to win back Switchers. I don’t want to claim that Brexit might not be done - Boris wouldn’t lie would be? - but perhaps the old dog might have one more election in him.
This certainly explains why the small boats were in Sunak’s list of five pledges. It’s an issue that could appeal to social authoritarians and Leavers as it’s about both being anti-immigration and about blaming other European countries, with an extra opportunity to bash ‘lefty lawyers’ on top.
Concentrating on this issue to appeal to that niche could, however, backfire for three reasons.
First, the tone it sets for the Conservative Party. The populist rhetoric doesn’t only get heard by those it is designed to appeal to, it gets heard by plenty of others too.
Second, will the policy work? Or at least, if it fails, will Sunak be able to blame lawyers and the EU for the failure? That’s a policy issue and this is a polling newsletter, but those two questions are likely to be what determines if the polls move. A civil servant would perhaps call it ‘brave’ to draw so much attention to a policy area where so many experts think the policy will fail and where the public doesn’t have much confidence in the government to deliver either.
Third, even if there is a net gain in support for the Conservatives from this policy, it may produce a worse general election result for them. That’s because of tactical voting. Issues such as small boats may make some voters revert to the Conservatives but also make, say, some Labour voters more willing to vote tactically for the Lib Dems. Increased tactical voting could swamp the hoped-for electoral boost for the government if Labour voters decide they dislike the presence of Suella Braverman in office more than they dislike the presence of Nick Clegg in their memories. (Though of course, they’re wrong about Nick.)
People’s willingness to vote tactically is fearsomely hard to measure in polls ahead of time as the answers vary so much depending on how the question is put. So again there’s a limit to what the polls can tell us.
What they do tell us, though, is that at best this is a high risk gamble by the government - trying to appeal to a niche, with a policy that might not work and which might provoke an electoral backlash, and all the while spending time and attention on immigration rather than on the issues which come out top of people’s concerns overall.
Which means that the clearest lessons we can learn is the one we already know: about how bad the polling is for the Conservative Party and hence their need to take a high risk gamble to try to avert landslide defeat.
National voting intention polls
Here’s the latest from each currently active pollster:
For more details and updates through the week, see my daily updated table here.
Last week’s edition
Less drama, more consistency: the truth behind current polling trends
Know other people interested in political polling?
Views on Gary Lineker tweeting and other insights from this week’s polling…
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