Whose policy is that anyway? Asking the public which party is proposing what
By Tom Hamilton and Tommy Gale
At Public First, we’ve been pulling together a policy tracker which follows the parties’ announcements across all policy areas throughout the campaign, to help answer the question: who is promising what? This week – manifesto week – is the big one for announcements, and frankly a bit of a logistical nightmare so far as filling in the tracker is concerned. But it means that we think we know who is promising what, because that’s our job. What about the public? Do they actually know which policies belong to which parties?
We decided to find out by asking them. Our poll of 2,011 UK adults, carried out over the weekend (7-9 June), showed people 12 policies which are being proposed by various parties and asked them a simple question about each one: whose policy is this?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “don’t know” is a popular answer on almost all of them. But there are some striking trends.
Conservative policies have achieved cut-through – for better or worse
The policies most likely to be identified correctly with a particular party are Conservative ones. 77% of people know that introducing a new form of national service is a Conservative policy, with just 10% thinking it’s Labour’s idea. 75% of people know that the policy of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda also belongs to the Conservatives. These are the two most correctly-attributed policies in our poll, and we can add that 51% of people think – rightly – that the “Triple Lock Plus” is a Conservative policy. Our poll does not answer the question of whether any of this is helping them.
Labour have achieved less cut-through with their policies than the Tories, but they are getting the credit for policies that aren’t even theirs
None of Labour’s policies have achieved quite the same level of cut-through as these best-known Conservative ones. Putting VAT on private school fees is their most recognised policy of those we tested, with 63% correctly attributing it to them. But even then, a combined 34% either didn’t know whose policy it was or thought it was a Tory policy.
48% of people think that the policy of free breakfast clubs at every primary school in England is Labour’s – which it is. And 42% rightly think that the policy of launching a new Border Security Command with hundreds of new specialist investigators and counter-terror powers is Labour’s, compared to 18% who identify it with the Conservatives. Labour might have mixed views about the fact that 42% of Reform voters think that Labour’s Border Security Command policy is a Reform policy (whilst 33% of them correctly attribute it to Labour).
Interestingly, the only Green Party policy we polled, a new wealth tax for people with more than £10 million, is attributed to Labour by 50% of people. Only 10% think it is a Green Party policy – less than the 14% who believe it is a Conservative idea.
The public think NHS policies are Labour policies – whether they are or not
The biggest area we found where people give Labour credit for policies they don’t actually have is health. Policies to improve the NHS are strongly associated with the Labour Party – whichever party is actually proposing them. The policy of cutting NHS waiting times with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week, one of Labour’s flagship pledges, is correctly identified as a Labour policy by 55% of people. But 37% of people think, wrongly, that it is also Labour’s policy to build or modernise 250 GP surgeries and free up 20 million appointments by letting people go to their pharmacist instead of their GP for some common conditions, compared to just 28% who think – correctly – that it is actually a Conservative idea.
And just to complete the set, the Liberal Democrat policy of recruiting 8,000 more GPs and giving people a legal right to a GP appointment within a week is identified as a Labour policy by 46% of people, and as a Lib Dem policy by just 9%. Even Liberal Democrat voters are more likely to think this is a Labour policy than a Lib Dem one, by 41% to 18%.
Lots of people just don’t know – although some people think they do
Having dug into the minutiae of who thinks which policy is whose, it’s worth pointing out that the second-placed party for most policy areas was ‘Don’t Know’. This was a particularly common answer for undecided voters, who were disproportionately likely to have no idea whose policy was whose. Equally, supporters of every party were disproportionately likely to think that policies belonged to their own party – regardless of whether the party they support had announced it or not.
A good example of this is apprenticeships. Of the policies we tested, the one with the lowest “winning” attribution score is the Conservative plan to provide 100,000 new apprenticeships, funded by abolishing poor quality university courses. People are more likely to say that this is a Conservative policy than anyone else’s, but not by much: just 36% think this, compared to 31% who think it is a Labour plan and 26% who say they don’t know.
Where parties have the same policy, it is as you might expect difficult for them to stand out. The commitment made by all three main parties not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT in the next parliament is slightly more associated with Labour (40% think this is a Labour commitment) than the Conservatives (37% think the Tories have promised this) or the Lib Dems (8% have noticed that this is their policy). 23% say they don’t know.
Finally, you always have to be careful with small subsamples in the crossbreaks, but this one is too good to miss. The group most likely to think, wrongly, that abolishing poor quality university courses to pay for new apprenticeships is a Labour policy is people with doctorates. 55% of the 34 people we polled who have a PhD or a DPhil (like we said, it’s a small sample) wrongly think that Labour is proposing this, compared to 27% who correctly think it is a Conservative policy. Just 11% of them say they don’t know. They’re a confident bunch.
You don’t need a PhD to know which policy belongs to which party. You just need to look at our tracker. It’s worth keeping an eye on. But in a week where each party is releasing hundreds of policies and Westminster pores over each of them, you shouldn’t assume voters can tell the difference.
Polling Tables
Public First surveyed 2,011 respondents in an anonymous, online survey as part of our weekly election omnibus, from 7th – 9th June 2024. All results are weighted using Iterative Proportional Fitting, or ‘Raking’. The results are weighted by interlocking age & gender, region and social grade to Nationally Representative Proportions.
Public First is a member of the BPC and abides by its rules. For more information please contact the Public First polling team:polling@publicfirst.co.uk