Snap polls: housing special
(Updated article — first featured in Housing Today on 26 June as
‘How voters look at housing as an election issue — a short history’)
Public opinion about the issue of housing mirrors more general sentiment in Britain today. People are unhappy with the state of things, impatient for change but doubtful about the prospects of improvement.
Housing is usually what academics call a second or third order issue. There are historic exceptions to this. For example, during the 1940s and 1950s housing was part of the ‘MEWS’ (mixed economy, welfare state) consensus. Both the main parties advocated and achieved mass housebuilding.
Polling was still in its infancy then, and it wasn’t until 1974 that MORI started its series tracking the importance people attach to the issues of the day. Then, housing was spontaneously mentioned by a quarter as the most important or among the most important issues facing the country.
Soon after, Margaret Thatcher used Right to Buy to tap into a zeitgeist featuring ‘freedom’ and ‘aspiration’. Throughout the rest of her time as P.M., and then John Major’s, housing was typically mentioned by fewer than one in ten people.
It was not until the 2010s that it consistently hit double figures as house prices and then rents skyrocketed. The ‘housing crisis’ became a staple of national conversation and was recognised by three-quarters of the public.
Breakthrough
In late 2015, a fifth mentioned housing as an important issue, the highest proportion since those early measures in 1974. It remained similarly salient until the Coronavirus pandemic. Mentions fell sharply despite lockdowns throwing the inadequacy of many people’s homes into sharp relief.
But a month before Rishi Sunak called the election, Ipsos recorded 18% for housing, a similar level to that immediately before the 2019 vote. That election was dominated by “getting Brexit done” which squeezed attention devoted to housing and other issues. So, surely, 2024 would be different?
I was sceptical, not least because housing didn’t feature among Sunak’s five key priorities for 2023 nor Starmer’s pledges (or his ‘first steps’). But also, because polls show housing is an issue which doesn’t determine votes (although it is a top-three issue for younger age groups).
This is partly because it is largely thought of in terms of the ‘market’ rather than the ‘government’, in contrast to, say, the NHS or immigration. It seems housing gets filed in the ‘too difficult’ pile.
All of this creates fatalism and distrust. Two-thirds think there is something government can do to solve our country’s housing problems, but the same proportion aren’t confident we’ll fix them.
Build more homes, maybe
The imperative to build more homes has cut through with the public. But politicians trading manifesto pledges about the volume of new building serves only to ‘neutralise’ the issue; where’s the difference between the parties to justify voting along these lines?
For all the photo-ops of politicians in high-vis PPE, are their hearts really in it? Last year, Ipsos found people putting political disinterest as the number one reason for the under-supply of homes, slightly ahead of local opposition (and the planning system).
What else? Ipsos periodically polls people about various housing policies. Without exception they are all popular; at various points, the public have backed rent controls and new rights for tenants, the expansion of social housing, even the extension of Right to Buy (a Conservative policy in 2019).
Also popular are proposals to build new homes (especially on brownfield), a generation of new towns, adopting an ‘infrastructure first’ approach to granting consent, and ensuring design quality. These reflect an often-misunderstood feature of public opinion; people are more maybe, more ‘mimby’ than nimby or yimby.
Emboldened by analysis by academic Ben Ansell, Labour has adopted a different position to the Conservatives, at least rhetorically. While Sunak criticised Labour’s plans to “concrete over” England — potentially influenced by a stinging by-election defeat in Chesham and Amersham in 2021 –Starmer put himself on the side of “builders” against “blockers”.
The Labour leader described “bulldozing” through Britain’s sclerotic planning system to get houses built (a quote some Conservative candidates have used at this election although not exclusively about houses). As a result, he has put his party on course to redefine what Paul Smith described as “one of the most successful exercises of branding in British history” — the Greenbelt.
This will be challenging. In research for The Economist, Ipsos found people in England wildly over-estimating the extent land has already been developed (the mean guess was 47%). Against this backdrop, 60% favoured retaining the current greenbelt ‘even if it restricts the country’s ability to meet housing needs’.
The why and how of reforming the planning system is, though, hardly the stuff of election campaigns; zoning, Section 21 and nutrient neutrality are far too nerdy. Naturally, we haven’t polled people on such topics, but we know that most people think local authorities should have housing targets (something Labour looks set to introduce within its first 100 days) and instinctively favour local decision-making.
Mortgage-quake
Even if housing isn’t a direct vote-winner, it still matters in another way. Since the 1980s, two of the four main tenures have been closely associated with political parties — social renters mostly voted Labour, (older) owners voted Conservative. Mortgage-holders and private renters were ‘bellweather’ tenures, tending to choose the party which went on to form the Government.
This trend was halted in 2017 as private renters swung towards Labour — a phenomenon described as ‘rentquake’ (updating word of the year ‘youthquake’).
But while the ‘Renter Ruth’ voting bloc matters, ‘Mortgagor Marie’ matters at least as much. Even before mortgage rates rose following the disastrous mini-budget of 2022 and the increase in interest rates to control inflation, Labour had taken over as the party of choice among mortgaged households.
Last week, analysis of a new longitudinal survey by Ipsos highlights a significant degree of “under the surface” voter volatility and subtle shifts. Labour is attracting some voters who were previously undecided or unlikely to vote, particularly those dissatisfied with the government and concerned about housing.
Rebuilding Britain
Besides the impact of housing on Thursday’s election result, it offers plenty of political jeopardy and opportunity ahead.
Being successful will be both cause and effect of a narrowing of the gap between politician’s promises and people’s lived experience.
