Labour members and public disagree on election defeat

Labour members and public disagree on Labour's election defeat. While the recession is common to both, the public put immigration & Gordon Brown ahead of other factors.

Earlier this week, the Demos think tank examined the views of voters that Labour lost in the 2010 election. A new poll by YouGov for Left Foot Forward shows that Labour members and members of affiliated trade unions have a different assessment to the reason for defeat to the general public.

The YouGov poll shows that, from a limited list of ten statements, Labour party members and the general public have different interpretations of the election defeat. Labour party members and members of affiliated trade unions, who share much in common as they do on policy, list the top three reasons for Labour’s defeat as:

• The economic recession destroyed Labour’s reputation for economic competence;

• Labour ministers became out of touch with ordinary voters; and

• Labour failed to do enough to help its natural working-class supporters.

But while the general public also put the economic recession in their top three, they consider “Labour was too soft on immigration” to be the main factor and “Gordon Brown was a poor Prime Minister” to be the third main reason. Labour being “out of touch” came 4th but not helping its “natural working-class supporters” came a distant joint 6th.

The chart below shows the net support levels* for all ten statements from Labour members, members of affiliated trade unions, and the general public.

While the main reasons cited for Labour’s defeat differ between the voters of each political party, there are some striking similarities too. Labour being too soft on immigration was the number 1 issue for Tory voters, number 2 issue for Labour voters, and number 3 issue for Lib Dem voters reflecting a worrying finding for the Labour party and its activists. The issue was 6th on the list for Labour members and 5th for trade union members.

In terms of the raw numbers agreeing with each of the statements, Labour party and trade union members have most in common with the general public in agreeing that “Labour was far too subservient to the United States over Iraq and Afghanistan” and that “Labour ministers became out of touch with ordinary voters”. Among each group, between two-thirds and three-quarters agree with the statement.

As the debate around Coalition cuts continues, Labour activists will be pleased by the finding that although 59 per cent of the general public agree with the statement that “Most of the extra spending on the public services under Labour was wasted”, under one-in-three voters saw this as one of the main reasons that Labour lost.

* The difference between the percentages of those approving and disapproving

Download the full results here.

UPDATE 14.04

Anthony Wells of YouGov has his own fascinating analysis of these data on his UK Polling Report blog. His conclusion is particularly interesting:

“we shouldn’t go away from this polling thinking that it says a harsher immigration policy is the necessarily the answer. Firstly, people are not always good judges of what drives public opinion or sometimes even their own decisions, so just because immigration was seen as a main driver of Labour’s defeat, it doesn’t mean it necessarily was. Secondly, it may not make good strategic sense for Labour to change their stance on immigration anyway – while it could please their traditional working class supporters, the Labour party is a broad church and also contains middle-class intelligentsia who would be repelled by an anti-immigration policy.”

37 Responses to “Labour members and public disagree on election defeat”

  1. Smelling the Coffee…. «

    […] it thinks Ed Miliband is the Labour leadership who has ‘smelt the coffee’ provided by a YouGov/Left Foot Foward poll. We have to treat this poll with a little bit of caution; for example, the perception that […]

  2. Chris

    @Mouse

    Firstly, LOL!!! Like all madmen you really believe you’re the sane one and the rest of the world is mental.

    Secondly, that wasn’t me at 3:17 although I agree with the sentiments expressed.

    “If you believe that Gove is a lame duck when he is a minister for the next five years whilst Balls is in opposition shows you are exactly one of the slavish, dogmatic and tribal Labour zombies that I describe.”

    Gove’s reputation has been severely tarnished not only by BSF and the massive exaggeration about academies and free market schools but also in the less well publicized decisions. Such as his “reforms” to A-Levels, like all his ideas they’re nothing new just a rehash of previous tory policy, which has already been denounced by academics at Cambridge. Gove is an arch-Cameroon and isn’t well liked by many tory backwoodsmen jealous of his rapid promotion, if his academies & free market schools don’t take off soon he’ll be moving on from education.

    “You lost the election Chris – look at Will’s graph – that’s what this is about. Your opinion and view is not shared by normal people Chris – that’s the point of Will’s article. You lost the election because you will not listen and you are still wrong. If you weren’t you’d still be in government. You’re not.”

    If you read the article, rather than just looking at the pictures, you’d realise its rather more nuanced than your childish bleating.

    “My “alternate reality” as you describe it is called normality – I’m in the majority Chris.”

    Well maybe you are in the majority of your secure unit but I bet the other window licker’s have grown bored of your political punditry and now just agree with everything you scream out.

    “Are you really not getting this or am I on Candid Camera or game for a laugh?”

    No, the camera in the corner of your padded cell is their your own safety.

    “Balls was useless in government (let me guess you liked Gordon Brown as well, not that you’ll answer – you people never do)”

    Yep, I thought GB was a good PM. Brown’s problem was he wasn’t a great communicator like Blair, if TB had been around in 2008/9 he’d have been all over the telly reassuring and soothing voters about the banking crisis. Brown should have done the big live from 10 Downing St address, showing who was in-charge and framing the debate.

    “and his “coherent economic argument” as you describe it was comprehensively undermined on the very 5Live debate I mentioned earlier – you remember the one where he said the governor of the Bank of England was wrong and he was right.”

    Erm, again your alternate reality has filtered that debate and given you a warped view of events. What I heard when listening to the debate was EdB being the one prepared to respond to the economic questions and counter the masochistic debt-is-evil arguments. Which I was impressed by even though I support EdM.

    And since when has King been the great economic genius? He fucked up badly at the start of the banking crisis by going on an insane rate rising spree before doing a complete 180 degree turn and slashing the rates.

    “Chris you lost the election and that doesn’t surprise me. Detachment from reality may be nice for you but every time you send posts to a blog remember to tell yourself this. We lost the election. We hold a minority view in this country. I may be wrong because we lost the election…”

    Yawn, I’m struggling to say something other than Fuck Off…

    “Does that not seem familiar to you Chris? That’s when Labour was a democratic party that cared about the poor.”

    Oh, I see, now I get it, you’re not a tory but an embittered trot? Or worse of all your probably a LibDem!

    “Sad that it has gone from this to people with your Stalinist views…”

    You’re in the alternate reality again.

  3. Matthew Bradford

    @peterdes Views on why Labour lost, party members vs general public http://is.gd/e5SVk – also see http://is.gd/e5T6M and http://is.gd/e5T7U

  4. The Election Blog

    @peterdes Views on why Labour lost, party members vs general public http://is.gd/e5SVk – also see http://is.gd/e5T6M and http://is.gd/e5T7U

  5. Gerry

    Demos Go Home

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