Exclusive: Polling shows voters remain unconvinced by politicians’ response to “Cost of living crisis”

4 out of every 5 voters believe that Britain faces a cost of living crisis – but all three major political parties are a long way from convincing the public that they can deal with it.

Polling produced by Survation for LabourList shows that whilst 79.8% of voters believe that the UK is currently facing a crisis in the cost of living, less than a third (30.1%) would trust Labour to deal with it. The news is worse for the coalition parties though – only 24.7% of the public trust the Tories to tackle the cost of living, and only 12.4% the Lib Dems.

Survation Chief Executive Damian Lyons Lowe told us:

The polling – conducted between Labour and Tory conferences – also shows that Miliband’s agenda shifting energy price freeze policy appears to be less popular than the Tory proposal to put all customers on the cheapest possible tariff (37.9& preferred the former compared to 51.8% who preferred the later). Whilst there’s a simplicity to saying that everyone will be put on the cheapest tariff – even if it wouldn’t actually mean that much. Labour needs to better explain what reform of the energy market would actually mean for consumers – because at the moment it seems that people either don’t realise how big these changes would be, or they don’t see how they would make a difference. That needs to change

However Miliband’s “use it or lose it” plan to take land away from property developers that don’t use it is proving popular with the public – 56.7% said they backed such a plan as a means of constructing more homes. Coupled up with the polling Survation did earlier this year for LabourList, it’s clear that acting on housing is a real priority for the British people. That means there should be no rowing away from or soft pedalling plans to build one million new homes in the next parliament – that should be the minimum of Labour’s housing ambition.

1508 people were surveyed online by Survation between September 27th and September 29th 2013 – you can read the full tables here