In the world of insight context is everything. Without context, market research is just data disconnected from reality. Context determines if a KPI is good, bad or indifferent. Context tells us that if consumers are worried about the economy and cost of living then it makes sense that they are spending less. Context explains why certain brand positioning works better than others when looked at alongside what is going on more widely.
The BDRC Group (BVA BDRC and its sister companies Alligator, Perspective, Viewpoint and ESA) collects a wealth of contextual data from a wide range of different sources, many of which are directly tied to the sectors in which we specialise. We know all there is to know about retail and corporate banking. We know how senior financial decision-makers at SMEs think. We know what the UK public thinks about travel, tourism, and transport. We know which hotel brands are viewed most positively. We know how grocery prices vary across channels and retailer brands, including promotional deals. We know about advertising and media content.
We have access to a huge amount of data and can put most problems our clients face into the right context. And now we’re adding to this with Public Pulse.
Introducing Public Pulse
Public Pulse monitors UK opinion about politics, the economy and the major issues facing the country – and we’ll be making the data available to end clients and brands.
For the last four months, starting November 2024, we have been conducting 250 interviews a week representative by age, gender, region, working status and ethnicity. We are reporting the data monthly (and therefore n=1000) but this approach gives us the ability, to see the weekly fluctuations in the data as the opinions of the British public shift in response to events and media coverage.
We will be releasing plenty of data over the coming weeks and months, but to kickstart things it is always instructive to look at what the British public thinks are the two or three most important issues facing the country right now.
Top issues facing the United Kingdom
Unsurprisingly, and as we know from other polling, the economy and cost of living are the top issues and are still increasingly at the forefront of people’s minds. More interestingly perhaps is the increase in the frequency of healthcare and immigration & border security over the last two months – the former is up 7 points from November and the latter up 8. This accurately reflects the change in focus of the media over that period, as both the government and journalists have pivoted to focusing on the NHS and immigration policy.
The overall figures, as always, mask some fascinating differences of priority between groups. For example, people with above average (median in this case) personal income (c. £37,000) and those with a university education are far more worried about the economy (52% and 46%) than the public overall (39%). Both groups have the economy as the top issue, while those with below average personal income or without a university education put the cost of living as the top issue. Men are far more bothered about immigration than women (39% vs 30%), while ( depressingly given what it might indicate about household roles) women are far more worried about the cost of living than men are (46% vs 35%).
What this reminds us is that the level of prioritisation given to these issues varies considerably within the British public, even if everyone is in (more or less) agreement that the same five issues are the most important ones facing the country. Now that we know the issues though, does anyone have any faith that the government can do anything useful about them? As might be expected the answer is… a resounding no.
Confidence in government ability to tackle the issues (or lack of)
Four-fifths, or greater, of the British general public, are not confident in the ability of the government to deal with any of the important issues facing the country. While we cannot say whether this is because they have no faith in this government specifically, or in the ability of any British government to deal with increasingly global issues, the total lack of any form of faith that our elected officials can deal with these issues makes pretty grim reading.
Some have more confidence than others – mainly those who have above-average (again, median) personal income or university education, but even they are a minority. To take two examples, 20% overall have confidence that the government can deal with the economy. This rises to 29% of those with above average personal income, and 35% of those with a university education. Similarly, 12% overall have confidence that the government can deal with immigration and border control, rising to 29% and 29% of those same two groups. While it’s great to have some optimists around, basic maths indicates that if those two groups are more optimistic then their opposites (the below average personal income and those without a university degree) are <much> more negative.
This must be a depressing thing to face up to as a government, to have the vast majority of people in the country lack any confidence in their ability to deal with the issues affecting everyday life and yet very willing to criticise them about those issues. It certainly indicates that the problem is not a party-political one, but one that affects the very relationship between the government and the people of the UK. Of all the problems Sir Keir Starmer inherited from the previous government, this is the biggest one to solve.
Get the full Public Pulse report
These findings offer a small preview of the Public Pulse report, available monthly from late April. It will also include insights such as perceptions of different political figures and a comparison between business leaders and the general public.
