In contrast, most people credit Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage, for putting forward his policies on Europe because he feels strongly. This is what we found:

It’s notable that two of Cameron’s Cabinet colleagues who have broken cover in recent days – eurosceptic Michael Gove and europhile Kenneth Clarke – are far more widely thought than the Prime Minister to put strength of feeling ahead of tactics. In contrast, Ed Miliband shares Cameron’s reputation for being driven mainly by tactical calculation.

Does this matter? Evidence from another YouGov survey conducted earlier this week suggests it does:

These figures fit a broader picture. Voters, and especially floating voters, tend to decide which party to support on character more than policy. Parties and their leaders attract more support if they are regarded as principled and competent. If they are thought to be driven by tactics rather than belief, they risk being seen as weak and losing respect and votes.

That is the risk that Cameron now faces over Europe. He could end up losing more votes by appearing unprincipled than he gains from adopting a stance on the EU that appears to be closer to the public mood. In contrast, the popularity of UKIP and Farage is being driven not just by his stance on the EU, but also by respect for being thought to restore principles to politics.

Our polls also contain a clear message for Miliband. Like Cameron, he risks losing votes for being tactical rather than principled. At present he is resisting committing Labour to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, though he has not ruled out the option of matching Cameron’s commitment at the next election.

He needs to be careful. Like Cameron, any tactical shift designed to attract public support could backfire.

Opinion polls are sometimes criticised for distorting the political process by encouraging parties and their leaders to abandon principles and do what they think the public wants. Politicians are normally daft to act in this way. A proper reading of polling data, and certainly of this latest research, suggests that politicians should say and do what they genuinely think is right – not just because that is how people in leadership roles should behave anyway but because this is actually more likely to maximise their vote. 

See YouGov's European tactics survey results

See YouGov's respect for politicians survey results

This blog discusses a creeping change in attitudes that is invisible from week to week, and barely noticeable from month to month, but which could have huge ramifications for Britain’s politics in the years ahead. Slowly but inexorably, our gloom about our living standards has been lifting. It’s not that confidence has come roaring back. Pessimists still outnumber optimists. However, increasingly, we feel that the worst is behind us.

This is the consistent picture from three different sets of YouGov data: our measure of the “feelgood factor”, which we test each week for the Sunday Times; our monthly Prosperity Index; and our monthly Household Economic Activity Tracker (HEAT). (Full details of our HEAT and Prosperity Index data are available on subscription.)

Let us take each of these in turn.

1. Feelgood factor. Each week we ask: How do you think the financial situation of your household will change over the next 12 months? This is a question Gallup first asked in 1981, and which YouGov took over a decade ago. The following table shows how sentiment has changed since the start of 2011. (To iron out sampling fluctuations, I have averaged the four polls conducted in January 2011 and the three latest surveys.)

By historic standards, the feelgood factor is still weak, but it is vastly improved on where it was.

2. Prosperity Index. Each month this combines responses to four different questions, of which the feelgood factor is one. The others concern satisfaction with living standards, plans to buy big-ticket purchases such as a television, computer or furniture, and (for working people) whether they expect the number employed at their workplace to rise or fall in the months ahead. The chart below shows how the overall index has moved since before Britain’s economy started to hit the rocks in 2007.

(Each question produces an index score. If positive answers match negative answers, the score is 100; the net difference between positive and negative moves the number up or down from 100; the overall index is calculated by adding the individual index scores and dividing the total by four.)

In July 2007 the index touched 100, for the first time since we started it in 2003. The economy was still growing, and Gordon Brown, the new Prime Minister seemed, for a very brief period, to get everything right. Then, at the end of the summer, the Northern Rock debacle saw people queuing round the block to get their money out, and confidence started to turn down, reach a low of 66 in September 2008, the month when Lehman Brothers collapsed. The index slumped from its highest ever figure to its lowest in just 14 months.

That was the nadir. Afterwards, as governments round the world stepped in to stop recession turning into depression, the mood started to brighten again. By January 2010, the index was back up to 93. It then reversed, with decline gathering pace after the general election and the austerity measures announced by the incoming coalition government. In January 2011, the index dipped even lower than it had in the wake of Lehman’s collapse; it stood at just 63.

Since then, the story has been one of recovery. The gradient has been gentler than that between 2008 and early 2010; some months have seen slight set-backs. But the direction of travel is clear; and the latest overall index, 83, is the highest since David Cameron became Prime Minister.

3. HEAT provides a much more detailed analysis of consumer sentiment, covering immediate behaviour, business activity, future prospects, house price expectations, job security and so on. This too has shown a gradual recovery since early 2011 to a post-election peak.

Both HEAT and the Prosperity Index suggest two main drivers of recovery. The biggest is house prices. Two years ago home-owners were fearful that the value of their biggest asset would decline. Those days have gone, at least for the time being: just 8% expect prices of homes in their area to fall over the next 12 months; more than 80% expect price stability or prices to rise.

The other driver is increasing job security. Subjective attitudes match the official employment data: despite the flat lining economy, more people are employed today than ever before. Of course this aggregate figure conceals a great deal of churn. Many jobs have gone. But whereas two years ago, millions of workers feared for their job, now those fears are less.

Not surprisingly London is leading the way. Its overall Prosperity Index now stands at 92, nine higher than the national average of 83; and it has risen slightly more than the rest of Britain over the past two years. But the bigger picture is that pessimism has declined across the board: in the North as well as the South, among those earning less than £20,000 a year as well as those earning more than £50,000; among those who live in rented homes as well as home-owners. Prosperity Index LEVELS continue to vary significantly from group to group; but the CHANGES are all in the same direction and roughly similar amounts.

All this should cheer the Conservatives. Should recent trends continue, and if Britain’s economy resumes steady growth, then this should help the party to persuade voters that their medicine is working. However, they should remember 1997. The Tories were thrashed, despite having presided over four years of vigorous growth, declining unemployment, rising living standards, low inflation and cheap mortgages. These counted for naught against the bitter memory of Black Wednesday five years earlier, when Britain was forced out of Europe’s currency club.

This suggests that to harvest the electoral rewards of a recovering economy, the Tories need to do something else. They must continue to persuade voters that our economic troubles were Labour’s fault in the first place, and fend of charges that the flat-ling of the past three years is George Osborne’s fault. Whatever happens to the economy in the run-up to the next general election, the contest to secure credit and deflect blame is far from over.

See our Political Trackers 

See the latest YouGov / The Sunday Times results

Learn more about YouGov's Household Economic Activity Tracker (HEAT)

These are some of the key findings:

• Only 14% think they are better off today than they were at the time of the last election. 53% say they are worse off.


• There is a widespread sense that the corner has not yet been turned. By 46% - 19% people expect to worse off than today, rather than better off, by the time of the next election.


• One reason for pessimism about living standards between now and 2015 is that less than half the public – 43% - think living standards will return to their pre-recession levels within the next five years (or ten years after the crisis erupted in 2008).


• This pessimism in turn is fed by fears that the problems are too deep-seated for better government policies to make much difference in the short term. 49% think that ‘whichever party was in government, they would be unable to alter this central fact’. Rather fewer, 38%, believe that ‘with the right government policies it would be possible for things to improve fairly quickly’.


• Voters are divided on whether reducing the deficit or expanding demand is the immediate priority. This what we asked:

So more people prefer the Keynesian to the anti-Keynesian way forward, but not decisively.

Put together the pessimism and the lack of a clear public consensus over what should be done, where does this leave the government and opposition? My judgement is that this is actually better news for David Cameron and George Osborne than for Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

Here are two reasons why. The first is that for an opposition to make headway, voters must feel not only that the government is failing (which, as I reported last week, they do think), but that there is a swift route back to prosperity. Only if enough of them think that austerity can be vanquished, will they go on and ask themselves the next question: does the opposition have what it takes to slay the dragon? Today, too few people even get to that question, and fewer still answer ‘yes’.

Secondly, the very fact that most voters have discounted the prospect of recovery in the next two years gives the government the chance to win votes if it can confound the current mood of pessimism. To adapt Mr Micawber’s dictum: ‘Expectation no growth; reality, 2% – result, happiness. Expectation 3%; result 2% – result, misery.’

Of course, even if the next two years do see 2% annual growth, GDP per person will still be less than it was five years ago. Labour will be able to say that the government had snuffed out the recovery that was under way at the beginning of 2010, and has presided over a slower return to pre-recession prosperity than Britain achieved in the 1930s. But the Tories and Liberal Democrats will be able to say that recovery is under way and the mess that Labour left is finally being cleared up. And rightly or wrongly, if steady growth has returned, even at a fairly modest rate, then I suspect that the government’s message will prove more persuasive than the opposition’s.

See the full survey results for the Resolution Foundation - March 2013

See the full survey results for the Resolution Foundation - February 2013

The reason for doing this now is that government ministers are finalising their plans for next month’s Queen’s Speech. This is when we shall find out which new laws they propose. One of the candidates is a bill to require tobacco manufacturers to sell cigarettes standard, olive-coloured packs with prominent health warnings. The brand name would be printed in modest, standard type. The days of bright, eye-catching packs would be over.

This is an example of what the new packs could look like:

The thinking behind the new law is that it would be a logical extension of reforms over the past 15 years – the ban on cigarette advertising, the banning of smoking in offices, pubs and other indoor public places and, most recently, the ban on displaying cigarettes openly in supermarkets (now in force) and small retailers (on the way).

Over the years, the law has supported a social revolution: far fewer people smoke than a generation ago. Perhaps the biggest challenge now is to discourage teenagers from starting to smoke. De-glamourising smoking is one way to help meet this challenge. Banning bright packs is part of that campaign. Australia has already banned them – successfully fighting a strong legal challenge from the tobacco industry. Will the UK now follow suit?

The issue is in the balance. Last Friday, John Humphrys interviewed Anna Soubry, the (Conservative) Public Health Minister, on BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme. This is part of that exchange:

AS: There is work to be done on smoking and that’s the next debate that we’ve got to have.

We’ve had a consultation on what’s called plain, it’s not, it’s very colourful very intricate, but standardised packaging, and there’s a real debate now to be had on whether or not we should introduce it like they have in Australia.

JH: Are you in favour of that?

AS: I am.

JH: So it’s going to happen?

AS: Oh no, it doesn’t mean to say it’s going to happen because we haven’t had the debate. We need now to have that debate. I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve seen the consultation. I’ve been personally persuaded of it, but that doesn’t mean to say that all my colleagues in government on both sides of the house are persuaded, and that’s the debate that we now have to have.

So the consultation is over. The relevant minister is convinced. The Liberal Democrats support a new law – indeed they were the first major party to embrace it, back in 2009. Yet the issue remains in the balance. So let me help ministers by setting out the pros and cons.

First the pros:

1. Reform would be popular. Last month YouGov showed respondents the above picture and asked whether they would support or oppose a new law ‘requiring tobacco to be sold in plain standardizing packaging with the product name in standard lettering’. 61% support the plan while just 14% oppose it. 21% said they neither supported nor opposed it; 5% said ‘don’t know’. These are comparable to the levels of support ahead of past measures to bear down on cigarette smoking; each time support for reform has gone even higher once reform has been enacted. There has never been the public backlash that some feared and parts of the tobacco lobby predicted.

2. Reform would be cheap. It’s an ideal measure for austere times, when ministers look for ways to make life better without spending money.

3. There is a real prospect that, over time and in conjunction with other reforms, fewer teenagers would take up smoking. We would become a healthier nation.

4. Of all the reforms that have been enacted or proposed, this is the least disruptive. It does not deprive newspapers of advertising revenues; it does not force smokers to change their habits in pubs or offices; it does not make retailers alter the way they lay out their wares. These things have already happened; the ‘civil liberty’ arguments of the tobacco industry have been rejected; democracy and freedom have survived. The latest measure is more modest than any of these and should cause less fuss.

Now the case for the antis:

1. The tobacco industry doesn’t like it.

And that’s about it. As in the past, the industry has been highly imaginative in trying to link their opposition to arguments about civil liberties, intellectual property rights, tobacco smuggling, free trade and unemployment. The bottom line is that, as for the past half century, they have been fighting a rearguard action to defend their right to kill their customers.

In the next few weeks we shall find out whether the ministers find the pro- or anti-arguments more persuasive.

See the full survey results here

At one level, it should matter little whether the economy grew or contracted in the first quarter of this year. Either way, the change will be tiny; and the ONS’s initial estimates are prone to substantial revision in months, and even years, to come. What looks like a triple-dip recession at first may turn out in time to have been nothing of the kind. But that prospect won’t curb media coverage on Thursday, or diminish the symbolic importance of the ONS figures.

The larger truth, which future revisions are unlikely to overturn, is that the economy is bumping along the bottom, neither growing steadily nor collapsing. This is why the International Monetary Fund has joined the ranks of those who think Osborne should change course. And recent YouGov data, including our latest survey for the Sunday Times, suggests that the Government’s reputation for managing the economy is bumping along the bottom, too.

• By two-to-one (60% - 30%), voters think the government is managing the economy badly rather than well


• By 52 - 22% people think the coalition government is bad, rather than good, for them personally


• After last month’s Budget, just 22% thought George Osborne was doing a good job as Chancellor; 50% thought he was doing a bad job


• By 56 - 30%, voters think the government is implementing its programme of spending cuts unfairly rather than fairly

Some of these figures are not quite as bad as they were last spring, following last years’ ‘omnishambles’ Budget; but they are still pretty grim. And they have fed a climate of pessimism. Two thirds of us are worried that we won’t have enough money to live comfortably. Only 11% expect to be better off in a year’s time than we are today.

Perhaps our most startling finding emerges from a YouGov-Cambridge survey whose results were published last week. It concerns long-range expectations. We offered two statements and asked people which came closer to their view. The statements are worth quoting in full:

‘Despite today's economic problems, I am basically confident that our children’s generation will end up enjoying a better standard of living than our generation, just as our generation has mostly been better off than our parents’: 19%

‘I am not at all confident that the pattern will continue, of each generation becoming better off. I fear the younger generation will find it harder than ours to enjoy a reasonable standard of living’: 64%

Personally, I should be astonished if living standards in 25-30 years time aren’t substantially higher than they are today. Innovation and technical change won’t stop. Productivity may be down a bit compared with two or three years ago, but at some point, the underlying upward forces will reassert themselves.

However, what drives attitudes is perception rather than reality. The past five years of economic troubles have left their mark. There is no obvious end to them in sight. And these troubles are reflected in people’s lives, not just GDP statistics. Graduates saddled with debt and finding it hard to get a decent job; couples waiting a decade longer than their parents to buy their first home, and so on. Long-term pessimism may be misplaced, but it is not surprising.

All of which suggests that the government should be flat on its back and heading for a massive defeat at the next election. Except that it isn’t. Labour had never established the kind of commanding 20%-plus lead that successful oppositions have secured in the past. Its underlying lead in YouGov’s daily polls has seldom crept above 10%, and in four of the five polls we conducted last week, for the Sun and Sunday Times, it was just 7-8%. This may be a blip but, given the state of the economy and the government’s reputation, it is remarkable how close the two main parties are.

Here are other recent YouGov findings that help to explain why Labour is not further ahead:

• By 36-24%, voters still blame the last Labour government more than the present coalition government for the public spending cuts. (A further 30% blame both equally)


• The public may think the cuts are being imposed unfairly but, by two-to-one (59-29%), they believe significant cuts are necessary


• Asked which party has leaders who are ‘prepared to take tough and unpopular decisions’, the Conservatives outscore Labour by as much as 50-10%


• Osborne’s rating is poor but, even so, by 31-25% he is preferred to Labour’s Ed Balls as Chancellor.

These figures are much the same as they were two years ago. But then the coalition was just a year old. Memories of Gordon Brown’s administration were fresh. Coalition policies had had little time either to work or fail. It is now three years since Labour was in power – three years in which Osborne’s plans to revive prosperity have been blown off course and his hopes for a growing, deficit-reducing economy dashed. Labour’s failure in these circumstances to shift these polling numbers in its favour should worry Ed Miliband and his shadow chancellor. The recession of 2008-09, and the rise in government borrowing, caused a stain in Labour’s reputation that has so far been impossible to shift.

The party has two years left to persuade voters that it can be trusted once again to run the economy competently; the Conservatives have two years to show that their medicine is working. If one party achieves its goal, it will almost certainly win in 2015. If neither – or both – do, expect a close result.

See the latest YouGov / Sunday Times survey results

See the YouGov-Cambridge survey results

Yesterday YouGov conducted the first survey of attitudes to Parliament's decision to back a Royal Charter to oversee a new system of press regulation. We questioned 681 adults between 10 am and 4pm - that is, after MPs had debated the matter and newspapers had responded to the all-party deal.

Among those who take sides, a three-to-two majority backs the Royal Charter; but with as many as 30% saying 'don't know', the results suggest that public opinion may not have settled down:

Q.  Parliament has voted to support a new system, governed by a Royal Charter, to regulate newspapers. Newspapers will not be forced to join the new system, but will have some advantages if they do (such as paying smaller damages when they are found guilty of libel). From what you know, do you think the vote to establish the new system is...
The right decision, as it should encourage newspapers to act more responsibly without curbing their ability to expose bad behaviour by the rich and powerful	43%
The wrong decision, as it is wrong in principle for politicians to have any say in the way newspapers operate and risks curbing free speech	27%
Not sure	30%

However, when we tested two specific facets of the new system, the verdict was far more clear cut. Big majorities think newspapers SHOULD be directed where to print corrections when they publish inaccurate statements; and courts SHOULD have the power to impose bigger fines on papers that decide to remain outside the new system. And this time, the don't knows are much smaller. On these matters voters do seem to have made up their minds:

Q Do you support or oppose these features of the proposed system of press regulation?
a) When newspapers print inaccurate statements, being told not just to publish correction but where to print them (e.g. so that a major front-page error has to be corrected on a future front page)
                                                                                                           Support	81%
Oppose	6%
Don't know	13%
b) Giving courts the power to impose much larger fines on newspapers found guilty of libel, if they have chosen to stay out of the new system of regulation.
Support	70%
Oppose	12%
Don't know	18%

A larger degree of uncertainty returns when people are asked whether they would approve or disapprove of a major newspaper group choosing to stay outside the new system in defence of the principle of free speech. Only one person in four say they would side with a refusnik publisher; but while substantially more people would condemn them, the proportion falls short of half the public. Once again, the high number of don't knows suggests that large parts of the public have not (yet?) engaged with the basic principles of what is proposed.

Q. Some publishers of major national newspaper have yet to decide whether to join the new system. How would you feel about a publisher that chose NOT to join the new system?
Approve - they would be standing up for the principle of free speech	25%
Disapprove - the new system is necessary, and every major publisher should join it	43%
Not sure	32%

Overall, these figures fit a pattern that YouGov surveys have detected throughout the phone-hacking, Leveson and regulation saga. Voters are appalled at many of the things that have been disclosed in the past two years. They feel strongly that newspapers must be forced to behave better than some have done in the past. However, there is less consensus when it comes to the role of politicians and Parliament.

Just now, in the aftermath of yesterday's debate and vote in the House of Commons, supporters of the Royal Charter clearly outnumber its detractors. But just as we have yet to hear the last word from a number of major newspaper groups, we have yet to hear the last word from their readers.

See the full YouGov survey results

We asked:

Q. Some people say that many immigrants to Britain play a positive role - bringing skills we need and fresh ideas, starting new businesses, enhancing British culture and helping to keep vital public services going, such as the NHS. As a rough guess, what proportion of immigrants to Britain in recent years do you think are making a positive contribution to British life?

With figures like these, politicians have good reason to fret. When Ed Miliband and Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, intervened in the debate last week, they did so at a time when almost half of Labour’s own supporters think only a minority of immigrants play a positive role in British life.

As for David Cameron, the most telling figures show how public fears over immigration are boosting Ukip. Among those who say most immigrants play a positive role, just 3% say they would vote Ukip. But among those who say the number is ‘very few’ or ‘none’, Ukip’s vote share jumps to 21% (though only 1% of this group back the BNP, whose support has collapsed).

Given these perceptions, it’s not surprising that big majorities want to restrict the access of new immigrants to welfare benefits and the NHS. And, as might be expected, those who like immigrants least like the idea of restrictions most.

However, the difference between ‘pro-immigrant’ and ‘anti-immigrant’ voters is not as great as might be expected. Thus, among those who say few, if any, immigrants play a positive role, 89% would support changing the rules to restrict welfare benefits to those who have been here at least a year – but so do 77% of those who think most immigrants play a positive role.

What about a similar 12-month rule for accessing non-emergency treatment on the NHS? Support among the same two groups is 86% and 56% respectively – a larger gap than with welfare, but a reform still backed by a majority of those Britons who are broadly pro-immigrant.

Some people say that these figures simply show how pernicious have been all the anti-immigrant stories of recent years, and that rather than change the rules, politicians should work far harder to stress the truth, that immigrants typically claim fewer welfare benefits and make fewer demands on the NHS than non-immigrant families.

That looks to me like a tough ambition to fulfil. But even if it were achieved, I doubt that many voters would change their minds on curbs on welfare benefits and the NHS.

This is because the arguments over these curbs play into a far wider debate about public spending. YouGov research has shown consistently that people see too little connection between the taxes they pay and the way the government spends the money. They like the broad idea of the contributory principle – that people should pay in when they can and obtain help when they need it. They have great difficulty nowadays seeing the link between the two. Immigration is only one facet of this debate; scroungers, cheats, individual and corporate tax avoiders, and the sheer, mind-blowing complexity of the system, also play their part.

David Cameron’s mantra, ‘we are all in this together’, strikes precisely the right tone. His trouble is that few voters think he really means it – or, if he does, they don’t think he knows how to apply it. And it’s not just Cameron who has work to do. Voters don’t believe politicians in any party have all the answers.

That is why the debate over the access of new immigrants to welfare benefits and the NHS should really be seen as part of a much wider national conversation about how and when we all help each other. At the heart of this, politicians across the board must find ways in these austere times to devise a system whose principles we can all understand and which works in practice.

See the full YouGov / Sunday Times survey details and results here

Don’t believe it. It is not complete nonsense, but nearly so. Take that ICM poll. ICM is one of Britain’s best polling companies. But, like YouGov, it cannot repeal the laws of probability. Those 51-36 stories were based on tiny samples: 218 men and 234 women. The margins of error were huge. At the very least, the stories should have carried health warnings. (I don’t blame ICM: the report on their own website does not refer to this remarkable gender gap.)

So what is really going on? YouGov’s data suggest seven home truths:

1. MEN AND WOMEN VOTE IN SIMILAR WAYS…

Traditionally, women have been slightly more Conservative than men in British elections. The gap closed in the 1990s. In 2010 women were probably slightly more Labour than men, but the gender gap (which YouGov measured at the time from responses of more than 90,000 electors) was tiny. Our best estimate of the current position is based on the 33,000 people we questioned last month. This shows women dividing Labour 44%, Conservative 33%, and men dividing 42-32%. We reckon that as far as Labour’s vote share is concerned, the gender gap is two points, not 15.

As for those pesky C1s and C2s, the swing to Labour in each social class since 2010 has been: ABs 8%, C1s 8%, C2s 8%, DEs 11%. Within each group, the swing has been virtually identical for men and women. The real story about social class relates to DEs – those with the least-skilled jobs, or living on state benefits. For them, the political impact of higher tax allowances, designed to help low-paid workers most, has been outweighed by cuts (actual and feared) in public services and the coalition’s plans to curb welfare spending.

 2. ...ARE EQUALLY WARY OF THE PARTIES AND THEIR LEADERS…

When people are asked which party most ‘wants broadly the kind of society I want’, men divide 31% Labour, 27% Conservative, while women divide 26-22%. In other words, Labour leads by four points among both. The big difference is that 40% of women say ‘none of them’ or ‘don’t know’; the figure for men is just 29%. But this reflects something that is common to the great majority of polling questions: more women decline to take sides.

As for the approval ratings of the three main party leaders, these are the figures from our latest Sunday Times poll: 

Thus the relative positions of the party leaders are much the same for men and women. For all three, similar numbers of men and women agree they are doing well; but in each case, women are less likely to say ‘badly’ and more likely to say ‘don’t know’.

3. …AND WORRY ABOUT THE SAME THINGS…

We regularly ask people which three or four issues, from a list of 12, are the most important ‘facing you and your family’. Here are our latest figures:

On only one issue, health, is the gap more than five points. On the rest it is too small to make any practical difference. Plainly, wise politicians take account of the people’s priorities; but it is wrong to suppose that those priorities are dictated by gender rather than, say, age, circumstance, experience or social class.

4. …BUT WOMEN ARE MORE PESSIMISTIC...

One area where there is a modest but consistent difference concerns the way things are heading:

It’s much the same when we ask people about the next two-to-three years. 73% of women, compared with 64% of men, fear they will ‘not have enough money to live comfortably’; and 74% of women, compared with 66% of men fear they will ‘suffer directly from cuts in spending on public services such as health, education and welfare’.

Those differences are statistically significant. However, they are not vast. Both men and women are pessimistic; it’s just that the degree of pessimism varies slightly.

5. …MORE WARY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION…

In our most recent survey on British membership of the European Union, shortly after the prime minister’s recent speech, women told us that, on balance, they would vote to leave the EU while slightly more men would vote to stay in:

6. ...AND CONSISTENTLY BACK MILITARY ACTION LESS THAN MEN...

Consider these figures from the past ten years:

There seems to be something close to a cast-iron rule: when it comes to military action, there is a persistent gender gap of around 20 points. Politicians, sociologists, anthropologists and biologists might usefully discuss its causes. If they conclude that the differences are deep-seated, they should then ask themselves this question: why is the gap so small?

 7. …BUT OVERALL THE SIMILARITIES MATTER FAR MORE THAN THE DIFFERENCES

Most of the time, men and women view politics in much the same way. Occasionally we find a gender gap of ten points or so when we ask people whether they are for or against a particular policy. But these are rare, and only in the case of military action are they consistently more than ten points. Most of the time, the levels of disagreement between men and women are negligible. Where differences are real, they are modest. On Europe, and fears for the future, the level of agreement is 90%, and on military action around 80%.

Does this mean that politicians can safely disregard such issues as equal pay, support for single mothers, nursery provision, domestic violence, the rights of part-time workers, women’s state pensions, and the lack of women in boardrooms and Parliament? Absolutely not. Indeed, the lack of a gender gap in our political attitudes is a reason for taking these things more seriously, not less. By attending to them, we create a better, fairer society, and this is an ambition that inspires millions of men as well as millions of women. Likewise, imagine a less hectoring way of debating politics in Parliament and in our TV studios. This is sometimes lazily labelled as a more feminine form of discourse. In fact, it would appeal to most voters regardless of gender. To be sure, women dislike politicians who shout at their rivals and fail to give straight answers to straight questions. But most men dislike these things, too. The gap between men and women is sometimes portrayed as a chasm. Our data suggest that it is seldom more than a hairline crack.

See the full latest YouGov / Sunday Times results here

See the full YouGov / Sunday Times results for 24-25th January 2013 here

All in all, it looks as if the Tories are up two-three points since David Cameron’s speech. His own rating is virtually unchanged. He has held the gains I reported last week, but not advanced further.

So the Tories have not bounced as high as they hoped or Labour or Ukip feared. Of course, these are early days. There is a school of thought that major policy announcements take longer to sink in. Look at the figures after ten days instead of two, say the folk in this camp.

Well, we’ll see: one of the advantages of YouGov conducting five polls a week is that we can track such changes, and also to tell in time which shifts are real and which are simply the result of sampling fluctuations.

One early comment could be taken either way. One of most astute of the BBC’s political team lamented that on the day of Cameron’s speech, when it dominated the news, the main report of it on the BBC’s website failed to make the top ten most viewed news stories. This could mean that the promise of a referendum has yet to sink in, but might do so in the days ahead – or that most voters simply aren’t that interested in the subject and are unlikely to be swayed by anything almost any politician says. If the second interpretation is right, then we can expect the continuing grim news about Britain’s flat lining economy will matter more to party fortunes, and the Tories will soon lose the modest bounce they have gained.

Why does this matter? Why should anyone beyond the world of obsessive number-crunchers care whether the bounce is two points or five, and whether it lasts two days or two months, more than two years before the next election?

The reason is this. A sustained bounce of four or five points would tell us that there are many voters for whom Europe and the prospect of a referendum are crucial to their choice of party at the next election. In particular, it would tell the prime minister that his best way of winning back the support his party has lost to Ukip is to maintain a tough Eurosceptic line and to attack the European Union whenever he can.

On the other hand, if the bounce in small and short-lived, the conclusion to be drawn is very different. It would suggest that Cameron made the right judgment when he first became party leader eight years ago: that the Conservatives don’t win support by ‘banging on about Europe’. Having delivered his speech – which contained a number of thoughtful ideas about EU reforms, including the expansion of the single market – he should now pipe down on the subject, and return to the task of burnishing his reputation as a caring and competent prime minister who has what it takes to rebuild Britain’s economy and improve our schools, hospitals and welfare system.

I suspect that piping down on Europe will serve him better than banging on. Which is the better course should become clear within the next few days.

See the full survey details and results of the latest YouGov/Sunday Times survey here

The shift in recent weeks has been marked. Here are the results of YouGov’s four most recent polls when we have asked:  If there was a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, how would you vote?

	Remain in EU %	Leave EU %	Would not vote %	Don't know
Nov 27-28, 2012	30	51	5	14
Jan 2-3, 2013	31	46	6	16
Jan 10-11, 2013	36	42	4	17
Jan 17-18, 2013	40	34	5	20

In less than two months, a 21-point lead for leaving the EU has been replaced by a six-point lead for remaining a member. Some clues to what has happened come from the following breakdown by party.

Majority for staying in (+) or leaving (-) the EU

                                  

                                         By party supported in 2010

	All %	Con %	Lab %	LD %
Nov 27-28	-21	-48	-12	+4
Jan 17-18	+6	-23	+31	+31
Change since Nov	+27	+25	+43	+27

As those figures show, there has been a marked shift among the supporters of all three parties; but the biggest shift has been among those who voted Labour at the last election. (I have used past vote, rather than current vote, so that we are able to make a like-with-like comparison of the same groups of voters. Opinions by current party support can be found in our detailed tables, but some of the changes in attitude from one poll to the next may reflect the ebbs and flows of people moving to and from each party.)

It seems that some of the shift can be explained by the clear support for remaining in the EU expressed by Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, his shadow foreign secretary. Maybe the widely reported views of President Obama, an especial favourite with Labour voters, have also played a part.

That said, the shifts among Conservative and Liberal Democrat supporters are also significant. Our results are especially comforting for the prime minister.

• Cameron’s approval rating, minus 14, is his best since last March. He has recovered from a low point of minus 30, last May.

• He runs well ahead of his party on Europe. When people are asked which PARTY they trust most ‘to look after Britain’s interests in Europe’, Labour (23%), leads the Conservatives (20%), Ukip (15%) and the Lib Dems (7%). But when the same people are asked which party leader they trust most ‘to negotiate with the European Union on Britain’s behalf’, Cameron (26%) holds a clear lead over Miliband (18%), Ukip’s Nigel Farage (11%) and Nick Clegg (5%).

• Perhaps most encouraging of all for Cameron, Ukip’s support in our latest survey is down to 7%, its lowest since mid-November. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Ukip and the Lib Dems were running neck-and-neck, typically with 9-10% support each. Since the new year, the Lib Dems have edged up to almost 11%, while Ukip has slipped back.

• The swing away from Ukip is even more marked when we ask people how they would vote in elections to the European Parliament. A week ago, Ukip, on 17%, was just ten points behind the Conservatives’ 27%. In our latest poll the gap has almost doubled, with Ukip down to 12% and the Tories up to 30%.

As always with sharp movements in public attitudes, we shall not know for some time whether we are seeing a blip or a trend. Britain and the EU has been the top domestic political news story for the past fortnight. Maybe, when it recedes from the headlines, views about the EU will revert to their normal ‘peacetime’ default position in which the centre of gravity lies somewhere between scepticism and hostility.

On the other hand, if a referendum IS held at some point in the next few years, then Europe will become a headline issue once again; and our latest results confirm the pattern of the past four decades – that when Europe lurks at the backs of peoples’ minds, we would rather keep our distance; but when the talk turns to a decision to withdraw, we start to contemplate the prospects of life outside the EU and fear that this might not be so attractive after all.

See the full survey details and results of the latest YouGov/Sunday Times survey here

Click here to view our Europe referendum tracker

In the past week, Ukip’s EP support has been reported by ComRes to be 23% and by Survation to be 22%. YouGov has sought EP voting intentions twice, once using YouGov’s normal method, and once using the same method as ComRes and Survation. These put Ukip’s support at 17% and 19% respectively.

At this stage, with 17 months to go until the elections, voting figures are of little predictive use. In the past, Ukip has added very significantly to its support during the election campaign itself. All that can be said at this stage is that for Ukip to have support in the region of 20% long before the campaign has begun is excellent news for them. They could easily go on to win 25-30% next year, and very possibly top the poll.

However, there is a tricky methodological issue that needs to be addressed; and it was to illuminate this that YouGov has asked EP voting intention two different ways. To explain why this matters, we must delve into what happened at the last two EP elections in 2004 and 2009.

Back in 2004, when we first polled EP elections, we gave respondents a list of all the parties standing in the election, much as people would see on the ballot paper. This seems intuitively correct, but when the results came in we found our final survey, conducted on polling day for Sky News, overestimated the level of support for Ukip by four percentage points, and underestimated the Conservatives by five points. In other words, our total for the two right-of-centre parties was pretty accurate, but our figures for them individually lay outside the normal margin of error.

When it came to polling for the 2009 European elections therefore we took a different “two-stage” approach, similar to the way YouGov polls for Westminster elections. We reminded people that EP elections are fought under a proportional system, where minor parties do better than general elections, but still offered people the initial choice of the traditional big parties - Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales - and then the choice of 'other.' People who clicked other were then offered a further list including the Greens, Ukip, the BNP and all the other minor parties standing.

This may on the face of it seem odd or even unfair - Ukip, the Greens and the BNP all return MEPs at European elections, why should they be classed as 'other' parties? In practice however it worked, and produced far more accurate results. Indeed, YouGov’s final poll, for the Daily Telegraph, produced the most accurate figures of any polling company. Our average error was just one point and we got both the Tory and Ukip shares of the vote right to within two points. Again, the combined total was virtually spot on. (In fact, we overestimated Ukip’s support by one point and understated the Tories by two). And this was, don’t forget, an election in which Ukip came second, yet the two stage approach still accurately predicted their support.

In preparation for next year’s European elections we have tested both approaches. On two separate polls we asked voting intention as a single list, and as a two-stage question:

Using our usual two-stage prompting, Ukip are doing seven points better in the EP election than in the Westminster election. Using a single list, Ukip are doing eleven points better. This suggests prompting for Ukip in a question on European voting intention would give them a boost of about four points, entirely in line with our experience in 2004 and 2009.

What about the ComRes and Survation polls? Both of their surveys used the single-list method, with Ukip listed along with the main parties (as well as Greens and BNP). So their figures are comparable to YouGov’s 19% share. To put it another way, on a like-with like basis, we all put Ukip’s EP support at 21% plus or minus two.

What about the comparative uplift compared with the general election voting questions? ComRes’s survey did not provide comparative general election voting figures, but Survation did. Its general election figure for Ukip was 16%; so UKIP’s EP uplift was six points. However, the key thing here is that Survation also include Ukip in their main list when they ask their general election voting question. That is why their Ukip figures tend to be higher than those of other polling companies.

In other words, when Survation asks their general election and EP voting intentions in essentially the same way (single lists both times), Ukip receives a six point uplift; when YouGov asks both questions the same way as each other (two-part lists both times), we find a seven point uplift – much the same as Survation.

What, then, is the best approach going forward? YouGov’s view is that the difference in Ukip’s uplifts – seven points, using our tried-and-tested method, 11 points when switching to a single list for the EP voting intention – mean that the effect of prompting still works in much the same way it did in 2004 and 2009. So we reckon that our two-stage approach is still the more likely to produce accurate results.

However, it is worth stressing the near certainty that the actual EP election results will differ, probably massively, from these figures so long before the contest. Were I David Cameron, I wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief about outperforming Ukip at the European elections just yet. Unless he manages to turn back the Ukip tide, starting with his speech on Europe on Friday, I would be surprised if the Conservatives remain ahead of Ukip when all the EP election votes are counted in June next year.

See the EU voting intention standard question survey results here

Click here for the EU voting intention single list poll results

As recently as last May, a majority of almost two-to-one wanted Britain out of the EU. 51% said they would vote to leave, while just 28% want to stay in. Immediately after the new year, the margin was narrower but still large: 46% said leave while 31% said stay. Now the gap has narrowed to just six points: 42% leave, 36% stay.

That is what people say when asked how they would vote in a referendum held today. However, if a referendum is held, it is likely to be in some years’ time, with David Cameron claiming to have protected Britain’s interests. When we asked people last July how they would vote in these circumstances, we found that 42% would vote to remain in the EU while 34% would vote to leave. Today, the results are far more emphatic. The margin for staying in the EU is exactly two-to-one: 50-25%. The proportion of Tory voters who would vote to remain in the EU almost doubles, from 33% when asked the standard referendum-today question, to 64% when asked the conditional future-referendum question.

These results bear an uncanny resemblance to what happened at the previous referendum on Europe, in 1975. Eight months beforehand, most voters said they wanted Britain to withdraw from the Common Market (as it then was). Then Harold Wilson, Labour’s prime minister, did a deal that he claimed (with not a little exaggeration) amounted to a substantial improvement in Britain’s relations with Brussels. On this basis, he recommended staying ‘in Europe’, and secured a two-to-one majority in the referendum.

Now, as then, the shift in opinion seems to flow in large measure from a change in the way the issue is framed. Until recently, discussion of Europe has been dominated by complaints that the EU strips Britain of its independence and generally messes things up. Far less attention has been paid to the consequences of withdrawal. But in recent days, business leaders and, now, President Obama’s administration, have warned that British jobs and influence would diminish were we outside the EU.

What our latest figures suggest is that the fear factor has begun to kick in. We asked respondents to imagine that Britain left the EU. Would things be better or worse? We tested five different aspects of this issue:

Two things stand out from those figures. The first is that each time, more people say things would get worse rather than better. The second is the large number of people who don’t take sides, especially the 62% who either don’t know what effect leaving the EU would have on them personally (22%) or say it would make no difference (40%).

There are two ways to view those figures: that few people see the upside of withdrawal – or that only minorities are scared of life outside the EU. I reckon that these results should give more comfort to those who favour remaining in the EU. The history of referendums round the world, including Britain, is that the status quo becomes steadily more attractive as decision day draws closer. In order to overcome the mentality of safety-first, the appeal of radical change must be deep as well as wide: a majority must not just favour a change of course, they must want it sufficiently strongly to overcome mounting worries of turbulence that change might provoke. Just now, the EU is unquestionably unpopular, but the appeal of life on the outside is neither wide nor deep.

That said, a majority still wants a referendum. 59% support the idea while just 21% oppose it. But even here, opponents of British membership should take care. Last July, 67% backed a referendum, so here, too, there has been movement. And generally speaking, when people are asked if they would like a referendum on almost any subject, most say they would. 59% is not a particularly high number.

Indeed, great care should be taken by politicians contemplating the merits of holding a referendum. For Cameron it might look at first like a no-brainer. The Conservatives have been losing votes to Ukip. He must win them back if he is to secure a majority at the next election. By promising a referendum, he would hope to do just that.

Perhaps he will. I am pretty sure that if the prime minister makes a firm and unambiguous commitment to a referendum when he delivers his long-awaited speech on Britain and the EU, the Tories will secure an immediate improvement in their poll rating. What is not so clear is whether it will last.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that – as Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative treasurer, has shown in polling he has commissioned on this matter – Tory voters have been switching to Ukip for a variety of reasons that add up to a general sense of dissatisfaction with the government and, in some cases, with conventional politicians generally. Europe is not their only, or even the most important, concern. For this reason, any post-speech bounce for the Conservatives may well be short-lived.

Secondly, there is a danger that the commitment to a referendum could actually be counter-productive. Only a minority of voters care that much about Europe. In our most recent survey of issue saliency, just before Christmas, only 18% said it was one of the three most important issues facing Britain. With the proportion saying it was one of the issues that mattered most to them and their family, the number fell to a mere 7%. It came eleventh out of 12 issues on our list.

Here’s why this matters. Many people dislike the EU and rather like the idea of leaving the club. But for most people it’s not central to their lives. They are far more concerned about jobs and prices and crime and schools and hospitals. The risk that Cameron would run by conceding a referendum is that he might look (a) weak, for giving in to Ukip and his party’s right-wing, and (b) out of touch, for devoting so much energy to an issue that most people regard as peripheral to their lives.

If Cameron doubts this, he should ask his foreign secretary. William Hague led the Tories into the 2001 general election with populist policies on Europe and asylum seekers. His strategy did him more harm than good. He may have shored up the Tories’ right-wing base, but he alienated many in the middle ground who, without actually liking either the EU or the asylum seekers crossing the Channel, regarded the prominence of these promises in Hague’s campaign as a sign that he was veering too far to the right.

The temptation for Cameron to offer a referendum is undoubtedly huge. He badly needs to undermine Ukip’s appeal. But he may find that the best way to do this is not to compete with Ukip's Nigel Farage on who hates Brussels more. That is a contest Cameron can never win. Rather, he must tackle the underlying causes of discontent among centre and moderately right-of-centre voters. That means improving his government’s reputation for running the economy, taxing people fairly and providing decent public services – and reassuring people that he can provide good jobs, good schools and good hospitals into the future.

In my judgement (though, admittedly, others will draw different conclusions from the same polling data), he cannot afford to appear obsessed by any subject that distracts him from addressing the issues that really matter to voters. He needs to close down the question of Britain’s future in Europe, or at least prevent it from dominating our politics for the next few years. Were he to commit to a referendum he would unleash years of uncertainty about Britain’s future place in the world. And that could undermine the very reassurance, and reputation for moderation, that will be central to the Tories’ prospects of victory in 2015.

See the full Sunday Times survey results here

Successive governments have known, or quickly discovered, all this. They announce that the system is broken, and set out to change it. That is when they encounter one of the most enduring of all political truths: that when you create winners and losers, the winners quietly pocket the bonus without rewarding you at election time – while the losers scream blue murder and threaten to bring you down.

This problem can be overcome when the Treasury is flush with cash. Reform can please plenty of winners without angering too many losers. On the other hand, when times are good, there is little pressure to reform at all. But if, as now, money is short, reform is vital, but losers are everywhere – and, if there are any winners, they are keeping very quiet.

That is the backdrop to the current contest on welfare between government and opposition. The politics are extremely tricky. And YouGov’s latest research contains lessons for both main parties.

In our poll for the Sunday Times:

• 77% support the Government’s decision to stop child benefit for households where someone earns more than £60,000 a year. Only 13% oppose it. If the implementation is botched, the government might still suffer; but for the moment, opposition is limited.

• Backing is almost as strong for the plan to cap the benefits available to any single family to £26,000 a year. Supporters outnumber opponents by 74-11%.

• Both Labour and the Conservatives are tapping into a rich vein of public support when they talk about stopping out-of-work benefits for people who refuse offers of employment. 76% support this, while just 10% oppose it.

• On other welfare plans, voters are more divided. By 45-35% they back limiting benefit increases to 1% for the next three years. Conservatives divide 4-1 in favour, while Labour voters divide 2-1 against.

• By 43-32% the public opposes the Conservatives’ wish to stop those under 25 years old from claiming housing benefit. This time it is Labour voters who divide 4-1 on the issue (against), while Tories divide by 2-1 in favour.

• The public divides evenly over the idea floated by Paul Burstow, a Lib Dem MP and former welfare minister, that benefits such as the winter fuel allowance should be withdrawn from better-off pensioners. 43% support the idea, while 40% oppose it.

• Overall, voters send the parties a mixed message. Labour is more trusted than the Conservatives over welfare benefits, by 30-22%. On the other hand, just 28% share Labour’s view that ‘the government is being too harsh towards people on benefit, most of whom would like to work if they could’. Many more, 47%, think ‘the government is not being tough enough towards people on benefit, and more should be done to force them into work’. (14% think the government has got the balance ‘about right’.)

These results are broadly consistent with the findings of research we conducted early last year for Prospect. Most people think Britain’s welfare bill is too large and that much of the money goes to scroungers; we are divided on whether the social benefits of universality justify the financial cost when money is tight.

A large part of the problem facing any government is that the welfare system is so complex that few of us have any real idea just where the money comes from or where it goes – which benefits are based on national insurance payments and confined to those with a sufficient contributions record, and those which are paid from general taxation and go to people according to circumstance rather than their NI contributions record.

YouGov research for the Trades Union Congress identifies the gulf between public understanding and reality:

• Average public perception:  41% of Britain’s welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people. Reality: just 3% does.

• Perception: 27% of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently. Reality (according to the Government): 0.7%.

• Perception: an unemployed couple with two school-age children receive £147 a week in jobseeker’s allowance. Reality: £111.45p.

• Perception: only 21% think this family would be better off if one of them got a 30-hour-a-week job on the minimum wage; and this 21% thinks, on average, the gain would be £59 a week. Reality: the family would be £138 a week better off.

There is plainly a link between the perceptions of scrounging, and the lack of public knowledge about the financial advantages of working, even for 30 hours a week on the minimum wage, compared with life on the dole.

What, then, is to be done? Lenin’s old question is relevant: who, whom? In this case, who should pay for our welfare system, and to whom should the money go? Perhaps the biggest challenge is to reconnect the two, so that people feel that we are returning to the insurance-based principles set out by William Beveridge seventy years ago. It won’t be – and can’t be – precisely like private insurance. There is bound to be an element of redistribution from the better-off to the worse-off. But if we are to retain some of the system’s most cherished features, such as universality, it must be on the basis that we all draw out because we all pay in.

The party that will win the welfare debate with the public will be the one that can persuade us that theirs is a prudent, compassionate, workable, something-for-something strategy, replacing a system that most of us, rightly or wrongly, regard as a bloated something-for-nothing mess that drains from the public purse far too much of the taxes we pay.

PS. Like other bloggers I am generally delighted when my words cause fluttering in the dovecotes. However, last week’s blog, when I imagined a Conservative victory in 2015, caused the dovecotes to heave and tremble more than I intended. Judging by the reactions in the blogosphere, I seem to have upset Labour activists who fear that Ed Miliband might lose – and Tory right-wingers who fear that David Cameron might win.

For the benefit of those who thought I was predicting the outcome of the next general election, let me explain. I was not. My blog was my response to a challenge from a well-known MP: suppose that the next election has taken place and the Conservatives have won outright. What has happened?

To answer this hypothetical question, I considered where Labour is vulnerable – on Europe, welfare and the economy – and also sketched the conditions that could give Cameron an overall majority – the economy coming good, UKIP’s support collapsing, the Tories winning back two dozen seats from the Lib Dems and doing better than nationally in Con-Lab marginals. My contention was, and is, that IF Labour succumbs where it is vulnerable, and IF conditions prove clement for the Conservatives, then Cameron could end up heading a majority government.

‘If’ is the key word. David Cameron’s problem is that the events I imagined are unlikely all to come true. Ed Miliband’s problem is that some of them probably will. That is why I still think, as I have thought for the past few months, that it is 50-50 whether Labour or the Conservatives will be the largest party in the next parliament, but, say, 80-20 that the result will be a hung parliament rather than an overall majority for either party.

But if things pan out precisely as I imagined last week I shall, of course, claim amazing powers of foresight.

See the full YouGov/Sunday Times survey results here

Click here for the full YouGov/TUC survey results