First poll since Sunak became leader suggests there has essentially been no honeymoon effect for the Tories at allThe polling catastrophe for the Tories during Liz Truss' brief premiership, which may well have already guaranteed a Labour government after 2024, occurred in three distinct phases. The public's immediate reaction to the mini-budget was poor (certainly much less favourable than BBC Scotland's reaction!), and there was a marked drop in Tory support. But it wasn't until a few days later, when the public had seen the chaos in the markets unleashed by the unfunded tax cuts, that the Tory vote really fell off a cliff. And then in Truss' final few days there was yet another big drop as voters punished the Tories for the leadership chaos.
The first poll since Sunak took over as leader comes from YouGov, and suggests that he's only managed to reverse that third phase of the disaster - in other words, the Tories are merely back to where they were after their vote dropped like a stone when the markets hammered them.
GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 25th-26th October 2022)
Labour 51% (-5) Conservatives 23% (+4)
Liberal Democrats 9% (-1)
Reform UK 6% (+1)
Greens 4% (-)
These numbers come from Britain Elects, and as usual we're hampered by their exasperating insistence on editing out the SNP figure, regardless of whether that is above or below or equal to the Greens' standing. Usually the SNP are somewhere between 3% and 5%, with 4% or 5% being the recent norm. No sign of the fabled Union of Equals on Britain Elects.
Although a 5 point drop for Labour and a 4 point recovery for the Tories looks substantial, the results of this poll are in fact more or less identical to a YouGov poll conducted on the 11th and 12th of October, some three weeks after the mini-budget.
Perhaps Sunak can very gradually claw his way back, but my guess is we're now into a 1992-97 style scenario where the public have already made up their minds, and we're just waiting for an election with a near-inevitable outcome.
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