Datawatch: shift in priorities for UK voters since 2010

When the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition took office in 2010 the majority of the public told pollsters that the economy was the most important issue facing the country. As the economy has recovered and the financial sector appeared more stable, it declined in importance in voters minds.

However, concern about the economy fell faster and further than worries about unemployment. In fact the percentage saying that unemployment is one of the important issues facing the UK is roughly the same as it was in 2010 despite record job growth. Either voters aren’t paying attention or they’re using unemployment as a shorthand for wider concerns about insecurity and the conditions of employment.

Or perhaps living standards: low pay and housing have risen in importance at the same time as the economy has declined in importance. The proportion mentioning them has tripled in the last five years.

Ipsos Mori ask two question: “What would you say is the most important issue facing Britain today?” and “What do you see as other important issues facing Britain today?”, and they ask them every month. The answers are unprompted; voters do not have to choose from a list.

Coinciding with the decline in the importance of the economy to the public has been the resurgence of the National Health Service and immigration as political issues. In April, which was when the latest survey was completed, voters ranked them as the two most important issues with NHS at the top and immigration second. Despite this relatively little has been said about them during the general election.

Both the NHS and immigration are cultural shibboleths for some groups within the UK — the NHS was featured in the opening ceremony for the Olympic games — and for some an immense source of national price as a communal endeavour, while questions of immigration are inherently bound up with nationhood and identity. That both surged in salience as the economy declined is perhaps a sign that Britain is struggling with questions of what it is for.

Defense is another policy area that has been barely touched upon during the election campaign, with foreign policy in general seen by many as neglected. It declined in relevance to voters after the UK’s involvement in Libya in 2011 but rose again in 2013 around the time of the vote on whether the UK should intervene in Syria to deter the use of chemical weapons.

However it’s started rising in salience again, possibly due to the prominence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the descent of Libya into civil war.

Crime, on the other hand, has seen a secular decrease in interest as violent crime falls across western societies and has instead moved online.