New polling: the voters have tuned out of Brexit, and are turned on by big cheques

“Get Brexit done,” they tell us. “No, this impasse requires a second referendum,” they shout, or failing that “just revoke Article 50!” Whatever the perspective, this election was supposed to be the final Brexit referendum. The big plunger that would unblock the Westminster Brexit drain.

But as we approach the end game, the only drain that actually seems to be working is the one which flushes out the emotional energy from voters, many of whom are now just desperate for an ending to a story that they no longer care much about and have often ceased to follow. What a remarkable prospective end to the most passionate debate in political memory: the general election that was finally meant to resolve Brexit ends up being one that is about everything else. 

This isn’t just my own jaded musing. It is the only conclusion to draw from Deltapoll’s analysis of how emotionally connected with the manifesto offerings the voters really are. Over the last five years we’ve tested hundreds of political messages and polices to see what cuts through to people, rather than those that just secure transient “support” from orthodox polls. We are, in other words, looking at the intensity of people’s preferences, the quality as opposed to the quantity alone. 

How on earth can a pollster do that? As well as the number of people who say they support something, we can also ask them how strongly they feel it, and—here’s the clever bit—look at how quickly they respond. The faster they do, the more they believe it. Just as you can tell when you chat with a friend whether they are just mouthing an opinion as the right thing to say, or whether they are passionately fired up, we can, for example, look at the speed with which people answer a particular question to get a sense of how settled they are in their opinion and how eager they are to give it. Through such techniques, we’ve developed an Emotional Resonance Score (ERS), which combines both the breadth of support for a policy with the emotional intensity underpinning it. The maximum score is 100—complete support with maximum emotional certainty in it; a score of zero implies the opposite. In the past, we’ve seen the sugar tax, and extra cash for social care and—yes—the original “Take Back Control” message scoring highly on this measure. Meanwhile, “Project Fear” warnings about Brexit, and various proposals to raise taxes which voters might nod along with when the question is just a “Yes or No,” suddenly get much less traction.

And so to the great Brexit showdown, that election 2019 was supposed to provide. None of the three Brexit propositions are reaching Britain’s emotional heart. Boris Johnson’s deal scores a miserable 11/100, with the Lib Dems’ dramatic idea of simply revoking A50 doing little better (16) and Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed neutrality (18) also leaving us pretty cold. If this really is the end of our Brexit fun, few are going to be cheering for whichever outcome is secured.

Instead this election, like the last scheduled showdown in 2017, has moved on to other, more familiar territory—at least in the hearts and minds of the voters. The things that matter to people on a day-to-day basis will influence how they vote just like they always did, including their sense of the NHS, their own security and their own finances. 

The largesse being offered by the parties has earned rebukes from the likes of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but—from our analysis—writing big cheques looks like it could be gaining traction with the voters. Traditionally, the idea of paying more in tax was the “right” thing to signal to a pollster. It took more qualitative exercises such as focus groups to pick up the truth that many people might actually vote for the opposite. But not anymore it seems—weariness with austerity probably underpins strong acceptance of expensive policies, including the Tories’ pledge of an extra 20,000 police officers (which touches record scores (79)) and—whisper it quietly—also Corbyn’s vow to plough a vast £150bn into schools, hospitals and housing (76).

There are many Labour duds too. Free education for life inspires little emotional connection (27), and the thumbs-up that nationalisation of trains, water and WiFi might earn on conventional polls turns out to be half hearted: they hit the emotional buffers (27).

The Tories have made a “points-based immigration system” into a rallying cry, but it won’t stir many hearts—it clocks up a score of a mere 30. The much-vaunted Green Industrial Revolution—central to Labour’s message, but with aspects that are also peddled by the Tories—is not really doing the business with hearts and minds either, notching up just 34. 

And maybe, before getting carried away about a new big spending consensus, we should observe one potential small sting in the tail. The Tories’ “no rises in income tax, NI and VAT” scores a pretty respectable 44/100. That suggests that there is still a sizable constituency out there who don’t mind all the largesse, just so long as some other bugger gets to pay for it.