The Tories have dropped to a devastatingly low approval rating of just 20%, according to a new poll.
An Ipsos UK survey for The Standard found that support for the governing party fell from 27% in January to 20% in February – the worst result for the Conservatives since the political tracker began in 1978.
This rating is lower than those recorded for the Tories just after Liz Truss’s brief time in No.10 (23%) and after Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 (23%).
The poll has landed days before the government reveals its spring Budget, widely seen as Downing Street’s last significant chance to woo voters ahead of an anticipated general election.
It also follows a string of unflattering headlines for the Conservatives, including the fallout from former Tory MP Lee Anderson’s attack on the London mayor.
As head of political research at Ipsos, Gideon Skinner, told The Standard, the organisation has “never recorded a Conservative vote share this low”.
It also means, after 14 years in power, Rishi Sunak’s party is an embarrassing 27 percentage points behind Labour, who are in the lead at 47% – and support fort he Tories among adults under 35 fell into single figures.
It does not look like that seven-point drop was just voters switching their allegiance to Labour, though.
The survey did find that Keir Starmer’s party also lost two percentage points between January and February.
It was the smaller parties who gained in the first two months of 2024; the Liberal Democrats climbed up from 2% to 9%, the Greens have crept up to 8% and Reform UK doubled its support to 8%.
While this poll spells more bad news for Sunak, it will not be a surprise considering his own declining approval rating – he has a net score of -54, and the government as a whole has a new net score low of -73.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt secured a personal low when it comes to his approval rating too, as it has dropped to -34.
But, Starmer can take a little solace in knowing that Starmer’s personal approval rating also is not doing too well, dropping to net score of -26, his second-lowest ever.