BMG and The i poll: Voting intention, defence spending and tax reform ahead of the Budget.
BMG Research has undertaken exclusive polling for The i newspaper. The polling covers topics including vote intention, defence spending and tax reform ahead of the Budget.
Robert Struthers, Head of Public Perceptions at BMG, comments on vote intention:
Six months after registering as a party, Restore is already polling at 7%. With the Liberal Democrats and Greens slipping back, that puts Rupert Lowe’s party within touching distance of some far more established players.
Restore is peeling away what Reform once thought was its core vote. It now takes 15% of those who backed Reform in 2024, up from 10% last month.
There are important caveats. We don’t know if Restore can field candidates in every seat or build the organisation to fight a general election, and smaller parties often get squeezed when a race narrows. But as things stand, Restore looks to be blocking Reform’s path to power by eating into its base.
However, it’s still all to play for, as both parties are competing for the same voters, most of whom could back either. Three in five current Reform voters say they’d consider Restore, so there’s clear room for Lowe’s party to grow. Yet a similar share of current Restore backers would consider Reform, showing the scope for them to be squeezed in a future contest.
For now, though, the fragmentation on the right of British politics continues. A year ago, that vote was coalescing around Reform. With no obvious truce or compromise between Lowe and Farage, and Badenoch outperforming Farage on personal ratings by some distance, there’s little reason to expect that to change anytime soon.
Robert Struthers, Head of Public Perceptions at BMG, comments on the Greens and Lib Dems:
The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have both seen their poll ratings dive. The Greens were as high as 16% in April and are now at roughly half that level. The Liberal Democrats a few months back were regularly polling between 11% and 14%. Now they’re at just 8%.
Politics is all relative. Jeremy Corbyn was deeply unpopular going into the 2017 election. Then the public took a closer look at Theresa May during the campaign and suddenly Corbyn didn’t look quite so bad.
Something similar is happening on the left of British politics. When Keir Starmer left the stage, voters suddenly had a new benchmark to judge everyone else against. Andy Burnham has come in with ratings that look strong by modern standards. More people are satisfied than dissatisfied with him, and with trust in politics this low, a net positive score is pretty good.
You can see the knock-on effect in the leadership ratings. Since Burnham became leader, Ed Davey’s net satisfaction has fallen by around 10 points. Zack Polanski’s rating is down around 15 points since April when the Greens were polling at their peak.
A key problem for the Liberal Democrats is they don’t “own” a single issue and the old question of what they stand for is back. The Greens had been gaining ground by placing more emphasis on other issues beyond climate change in early days of Polanski’s time as leader. Post-Burnham, now they only hold a clear lead on the environment so the ground he gained in widening their appeal has gone.
It’s early days, but so far Burnham is bringing the left together behind him, just as the right looks more and more fractured. He’s setting the standard and making his rivals look worse by comparison.
Catherine Lethbridge, pollster at BMG, comments on UK defence spending:
With Sky’s The Wargame putting the prospect of a Russian attack in front of viewers this week, we tested how confident the British public feel in the face of the kind of attack shown in the scenario.
Confidence in the UK’s defences is low. Just 10% are very confident and 24% fairly confident, meaning only a third have any confidence the country could defend itself against a Russian attack. Confidence is particularly low among supporters of parties other than Labour, falling to just 26% among Reform voters.
The political debate about how to address those weaknesses has centred on how to increase defence spending, with cutting benefits put forward as one way to fund it. But the public are split three ways, close to equally. 30% would increase defence spending even if it meant cutting benefits, 26% would protect benefits even if defence rises by less, and another 26% want defence increased without cutting benefits at all.
For Healey, cutting benefits also looks a much harder political sell as a way to raise defence spending. Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters, the coalition Burnham will want to keep behind him as he tries to unite the left, are to varying degrees more likely to want defence increased without cutting benefits, or to protect benefits even if defence rises by less.
Increasing defence without touching benefits is the easiest answer to give in a survey, but it brings political difficulties of its own that I’m sure would have been unpopular if we polled them. In practice, it means higher taxes, more borrowing or cuts to other services, each of which would bring its own opposition.
For a Chancellor making the case for higher defence spending in an uncertain and dangerous world, there is no easy, electorally popular path to funding it.
An article by The i on vote intention can be found here.
An article by The i on tax reform ahead of the Budget can be found here.
BMG surveyed a representative sample of 1,515 GB adults between 23rd and 24th September. BMG are members of the British Polling Council and abide by its rules.
Methodology, fieldwork dates, and a full breakdown of these results can be found here.
As a sample of the population was interviewed, the results are subject to a margin of error around various estimates. This means that, given the random nature of the sampling process, we can be confident that the actual result lies somewhere within the margin of error. For example, with a sample of 1,000 we can be 95% certain that the actual value will fall 3% either side of the result. For a more detailed breakdown of results from this poll, or any other results from our polling series, please get in touch by email or phone.