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What happens when policy hits reality
In polling, and in politics, “salience” is the term used to describe the relative importance of concerns or preferences to voters.
This morning sees a superb example of salience polling from Public First – looking at the wider issue of education.
My own personal rule of thumb for salience is that people are generally most concerned about stuff they directly experience, followed by stuff they know people have directly experienced, and followed a long way to the back by things they have read about. The only exception to this where they have received information (or misinformation) that links their experiences to a particular issue – the classic example here being immigration as proxy for overstretched public services and a lack of opportunity.
The Public First findings broadly bear this out. When asked how a hypothetical government should spend some imaginary money, overwhelmingly people are concerned about their health and the health of their loved ones (NHS, mental health), their job (employment), and the services they have experienced (local government, social care, schools, pensions). The high salience for climate change is, in this context, a very welcome surprise.
We have to look much further down the list of preferences for apprenticeships, and towards the bottom for universities or FE – and interestingly all three of these are far more salient for people intending to vote Conservative. This is doubly surprising as we learn that some 20 per cent of the sample felt that universities had “got worse” since 2010 – the highest negative rating given to any educational sector (though to be clear, the “got better” numbers are higher, both for universities and across the board).
The second part of the poll test actual polices, as put forward by Labour and the Conservatives during this campaign. If you are thinking “that’s grand, but nobody has really proposed any good new higher education policies”, Public First have added a sneaky fee rise proposal (to £9,750). It’s not quite the worst performing proposal on the slate (Labour’s supervised toothbrushing for the under 4s – I feel compelled to add “yes, and ho!” – wins that one) but it beats everything else for unpopularity, including the Conservative national service plan.
It’s fair to argue that the policy of the Conservatives is to reduce international student recruitment – and that’s something that also polls very badly. Slightly more popular are the Labour hints about a better student support offer, while the “poor quality courses” discourse is practically mid-table.
That’s overall, of course. The splits are fascinating:
You are looking here at net positive/negative ratings for each policy, based on respondents being asked to chose a top four from the full list of policies. Some of the groups, by their nature, will be very small so you should be cautious in interpreting results - and you should also think about intersectional traits (non-graduates are likely to be older, and more likely to vote Reform or Conservative).
The “low quality” discourse plays very well with the over 55s but is net unpopular among younger voters (18-35) and labour voters. But, most, notably, it is particularly popular with parents of children above school age. The bank of mum and dad appear to be unimpressed with the courses they may be supporting their children through.
Nearly everyone buys into the idea of a science superpower – but youngsters and women are net negative (as are Lib Dems). Those intending to vote Labour (and those that have voted Labour in the past) are net negative on the actual Labour policy of widening the scope of the apprenticeship levy. Literally nobody has any time for raising fees, apprenticeships are hugely popular (though less so among the young) and the only people impressed by restricting international students are Reform voters (everyone else is net negative, most notably the graduates who may have studied alongside international students in the past).