Sunday Mirror / Independent on Sunday December Political Poll

Voters see the Conservatives as more right wing than the UK Independence Party, according to a ComRes opinion poll for the Sunday Mirror and The Independent on Sunday. The poll asked people to locate themselves and political parties and leaders on a spectrum ranging from 0, very left wing, to 10, very right wing, with 5 in the centre.

UKIP’s average score was 6.6, as was Nigel Farage’s, while the Conservative Party was 6.9 and David Cameron was 6.8. The average voter places him or herself just to the right of centre, at 5.3. Nick Clegg is on 5.1, the Liberal Democrats are at 4.9, and Labour and Ed Miliband are on 4.1.

The findings suggest that Labour attempts to portray UKIP as “more Thatcherite than Thatcher” have not worked, and may help to explain why UKIP is attractive to some disaffected Labour voters.

Labour’s lead in the poll stands at one:

Lab            34% (0)
Con           33% (+3)
UKIP         18% (-1)
Lib Dem     8% (0)
Green         2% (-1)

Changes since last month in brackets.

Left-right spectrum

“Politicians and political ideas and opinions are often described as being on a left-right political spectrum, being either on the left or on the right, or being left wing or right wing. On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is very left wing, 10 is very right wing, and 5 is in the centre, where roughly would you put each of the following …?”

Ed Miliband (4.11) and the Labour Party (4.13) are perceived to be closer to the average person (5.26) than David Cameron (6.81) or the Conservative Party (6.91) are.

The Conservative Party is considered more right wing by Conservative voters (7.11) than UKIP is by UKIP voters (6.28).

UKIP voters see themselves as less right wing (5.86) than Conservative voters see themselves (6.44).

Labour voters give themselves an average rating of 4.39, similar to their opinion of Ed Miliband (4.48).

The Green Party is seen as the most left-wing party, but only just to the left of Ed Miliband and the Labour Party.

Prince Charles is seen as slightly to the right of the average voter, while Russell Brand is seen as the most left wing of the people and parties tested.The most popular leading politician to have a meal or spend Christmas with is Boris Johnson (43% and 44% respectively), while Nick Clegg is the least popular (10% and 11% respectively).

Conservative voters are more likely to say they would most like to have a meal or spend Christmas with Boris Johnson (50% and 54%) than with David Cameron (34% and 33%).

A similar proportion of British adults say they would most like to have a meal or spend Christmas with David Cameron (14% for both), Ed Miliband (15% and 16%) or Nigel Farage (17% and 15%).

The public is most likely to say that it would prefer David Cameron to run the country (31%).

However, Ed Miliband performs better on social issues, with a quarter of Britons (26%) saying that they would most like him to give advice to the poor on how to feed themselves and a third (33%) try to improve living standards for working people.

Only one in six Conservative voters (17%) would prefer Boris Johnson to run the country, while three quarters (76%) say they would most like David Cameron to.

Johnson appears to be significantly more popular than Cameron among Labour and UKIP voters too. Almost two in five of each (36% and 39%) say that they would most like to have a meal with the Mayor of London and only one in twenty with the Prime Minister (4% and 6% respectively).

Labour voters are more likely to pick Ed Miliband as their choice to run the country (72%), try to improve living standards for working people (76%) or give advice to the poor (60%) than have a meal with him (42%), spend Christmas with him (43%) or have him on their pub quiz team (34%).

Just one in ten British adults who intend to vote for the Conservatives or Labour (8% and 10% respectively) say that they would most like to have a meal with Nigel Farage.

However, those who intend to vote for the Conservatives are even less likely to say that they would most like to have a meal with Ed Miliband (3%) and those who intend to vote for Labour with David Cameron (4%).

Date Published: 13/12/2014

Categories: Politics | Public and communities | UK

Client: Sunday Mirror / Independent on Sunday

Methodology

ComRes interviewed 2,014 GB adults online between 10th and 12th December 2014. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all GB adults. Data were also weighted by past vote recall.

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