This morning's voting intention figures for the Sun are Conservative 40%, Labour 40% and Liberal Democrats 11%. This is the first time that Labour has caught the Conservatives in our daily polls since the end of the Labour party conference. For three days our daily polling has shown the two main parties within 1 point of each other, compared to the slightly larger Conservative leads before the spending review - this suggests a small but genuine narrowing of the Conservative lead since the cuts were announced.
Much of the debate around the cuts has been on whether the coalition are cutting in a fair and progressive way – but given that public services are inevitably utilised more by poorer people, is it even possible to cut services without impacting most on the poor? The majority of people think it is – 27% thought it was definitely possible to make large cuts to spending without the least well off suffering the most, and 35% thought it may be possible. 28% thought it was probably or definitely not possible.
If they had to choose between cutting the deficit or protecting the least well off, 19% would still cut the deficit, 24% would rather protect the least well off. 49% believed it was possible to do both at the same time.
