Autumn Statement 2015: is the grass always greener?
Autumn Statement 2015: is the grass always greener?
In our poll, substantial proportions of voters believed that raising the tax free allowance to £12,500 (63%), freezing fuel duty (61%) and spending an extra £2 billion on health services (48%) would make them better off.
Interestingly, despite many of the popular complaints made about the amount of tax revenue that is lost to tax havens and tax avoidance, only one in four (27%) thought a new tax aimed at multi-national companies who store their profits offshore would make them better off.
View our full post-mortem infographic here:
How believable is the Autumn Statement?
Since many financial proposals by a chancellor often seem to have a positive reaction in opinion polls, we decided to look behind some of the results by asking how likely they thought the government would successfully implement each one.
Regarding the proposals which voters most thought would make them better off, two thirds (65%) believed the government would successfully implement the increase in the tax free allowance while 55% thought the same about freezing the fuel duty. 60% also thought the change in stamp duty would be successfully implemented.
However, voters were more divided on the the extra health spending and the tax on multi-nationals.
The difference in opinion among supporters of different parties was the main cause for these differences in believability. For example, Labour voters were only half as likely to believe the government would successfully implement the £2 billion of extra funding to the health service as Conservative voters (40% vs 75%).
Yet aside from these results, whether George Osborne’s promises will prove effective in wooing floating voters will depend more on the voting trends we see in the coming weeks than the immediate reaction to the individual policies in this Autumn Statement.
Opinium Research carried out an online survey of 1,940 GB adults aged 18+ from 3rd to 4th December 2014. Results have been weighted to nationally representative criteria.
