What the polls (currently) say about ULEZ

Welcome to the 71st edition of The Week in Polls, which looks at polling on the ULEZ expansion in London, what it current says and why it might not matter.

Then it’s a look at the latest voting intention polls followed by, for paid-for subscribers, 10 insights from the last week’s polling and analysis. (If you’re a free subscriber, sign up for a free trial here to see what you’re missing.)

As ever, if you have any feedback or questions prompted by what follows, or spotted some other recent polling you’d like to see covered, just hit reply. I personally read every response.

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Three opinion polls about ULEZ

With ULEZ expansion in the news,¹ let’s take a look at what the polling says.

First up, there’s a PeoplePolling poll, fieldwork 22 August, for GB News (and thanks to Matt Goodwin for providing me with the tables for it):²

Transport for London currently charges £12.50 every day to people who drive small cars, motorcycles, vans and other vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards for driving within the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ).

To what extent, if at all, do you support or oppose the existence of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone in London?

Support: 32%
Oppose: 42%

London respondents only (small sample caveat, warning and red flag):³

Support: 43%
Oppose: 45%

There are strong age gradients and Remain/Leave splits - younger people and Remain voters are much more supportive. The poll doesn’t split car owners/non-owners, but as car ownership rises with age, it’s not straight forward as to which is the driving factor here - age, car ownership or views on Europe - as each is to an correlated with the other two.

However, that headline national figure isn’t what other pollster have found looking at London specifically. A few weeks earlier (fieldwork 10-12 June) we had Redfield & Wilton polling, asking Londoners:

That looks much more favourable, though when people were asked a different question, which gave a choice between the full expansion, scrapping the ULEZ entirely and keeping it to its North and South Circular boundary, only a third (32%) favoured full expansion.

Anyway, as it’s an older poll, perhaps views have changed as implementation of the expansion has been in the news and neared?

We have a third poll to help answer that. It’s from YouGov and more recent. Again of Londoners, and with fieldwork 9-14 August, ending only a week before the PeoplePolling poll. It found net support for the expansion of the ULEZ scheme, though note that unlike the previous two polls it didn’t specify the £12.50 charge:

In London, the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is an area in which a fee is charged to the most polluting vehicles driving into the centre of the city. To what extent do you support or oppose the expansion of the ULEZ area to cover all London boroughs?

Support: 47%
Oppose: 42%

The poll though also found that by 50%-26% Londoners think the Mayor should be doing more to help those with non-compliant vehicles.

So far, so confusing⁴ you might think. There’s not a tidal wave of opposition to ULEZ or its expansion, but it’s not a simple story of the popularity of these policies either.

Which is why perhaps the most significant question is a different one, again from that YouGov poll:

Note how low transport comes in the list even though the Mayor has significant direct control over the issue. This suggests ULEZ is not going to be a big swinger of votes in the Mayor election in May next year though the Conservatives are likely to use opposition to drive to drive up turnout amongst their supporters in outer London, especially if the general election is not on the same day as the Mayor elections. That could be a trend to watch.

All that said, my hunch is that what will matter most is the march of time. That’s because - baring a dramatic twist in British politics which gives us a pre-Christmas general election, a hung Parliament and a second general election in January⁵ - there will be just over eight months between the ULEZ expansion coming into force and those May Mayoral elections.

My hunch is that after that time we’ll have seen four things happen. First, the Mayor’s last minute changes to the scheme to improve the transition arrangements⁶ will have had a chance to have an impact. Second, reality will have met some of the fears stoked up by anti-ULEZ expansion campaigning. I suspect a fair number of people will find reality less disruptive or costly than they feared.⁷ Third, more scrappage of old vehicles will have taken place. Once you’re scrapped your old vehicle, the attraction of scrapping the ULEZ expansion or ULEZ in general drops away. Fourth, we’ll have got closer to the promised compensatory public transport improvements becoming a reality.

I might be wrong, as with implementation people using non-compliant vehicles are now having to stump up the hard cash to pay for journey. Plus of course the media always loves a story of crisis and controversy much more than a story about things gradually quieting down and ticking over. So even a politically impartial set of newspapers would be looking for ways to extend the drama and turn implementation into a story of crisis.

Whether I’m right or wrong, the polls will continue to tell us which way things are going. I’ll carry on covering what they say.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy the way three different media outlets managed to report that one YouGov poll in three rather different ways:

A reminder, as ever, of the value of reading beyond the headlines.

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National voting intention polls

Another week without a poll putting the Conservatives on more than 30%. It was back in late June that we had the last poll which did that (31% from Savanta, with fieldwork 23-25 June).

Here are the latest figures from each currently active pollster:

For more details and updates through the week, see my daily updated table here and for all the historic figures, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.

Last week’s edition

Polling on the death penalty, and what The Spectator left out.

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Conservative standing on immigration returns to Truss low point, and other polling news

The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analysis are for paying subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.