Starmer beats Sunak in every personality trait and policy area including immigration, crime and defence

Starmer beats Sunak in every personality trait and policy area including immigration, crime and defence – Savanta for The Telegraph

Starmer beats Sunak on every personality attribute such as who is most ‘honest’ and ‘trustworthy’ and every policy area among public, including immigration and defence
New research from Savanta suggests Starmer is seen by UK public as better placed to manage all five of the Prime Minister’s pledges, including stopping the boats
Proportion of public who say government is handling every policy area ‘badly’ is higher than those who say it is going ‘well’
The worst performing policy areas are immigration (73% badly) and the NHS (71% badly), while the best is defence (42% well)
Starmer is seen as more honest, trustworthy and genuine than Sunak
30 May 2024 – Labour leader Keir Starmer beats Rishi Sunak on every single positive personality attribute – including who is more ‘honest’ and ‘trustworthy’ – and on who would be best to manage every policy area among the public, including immigration (Starmer 39%, Sunak 29%) and defence (Starmer 38%, Sunak 32%).

New research from Savanta (24-26 May) suggests that Starmer is seen by the UK public as better placed to manage all five of the Prime Minister’s pledges, including stopping the boats:

Halve inflation (Starmer 38%, Sunak 34%)
Grow the economy (Starmer 40%, Sunak 34%)
Get debt falling (Starmer, 38%, Sunak 31%)
Cut NHS waiting lists (Starmer 47%, Sunak 23%)
Stop the boats (Starmer 34%, Sunak 28%)
On every policy area asked, the proportion of public who say the government is handling that area ‘badly’ is higher than those who say it is going ‘well’. The worst performing policy areas are immigration (21% well, 73% badly) and the NHS (26% well, 71% badly), while the best is defence (42% well, 47% badly).

The Labour leader is also seen as more honest (Starmer, 38%, Sunak 24%), trustworthy (Starmer 39%, Sunak 25%) and genuine (Starmer 41%), Sunak 26%).

Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta says,

“It’s not often you see such unity from the public – who say that Keir Starmer is better placed to manage every single policy area we tested, including traditional Conservative issues such as defence and immigration. Even on inflation, the issue that Sunak framed his campaign launch on, the public back Starmer over him.”

“On personality attributes, Starmer leads Sunak on pretty much every positive chracteristic we tested, such as who was the more honest, genuine or likeable. The areas that Sunak led on were pretty much all negative, such as who is the most arrogant or dangerous. The public may not love Keir Starmer, but they appear to absolutely detest Rishi Sunak, who has the perception scores of a man about to shepherd his party to a historic defeat, rather than lead an unlikely comeback.”