Over 80% of LabourList readers back Labour’s housing pledge

Election day is less than a week away, and it looks like a lot of LabourList readers will be pretty busy before then. We asked whether you would be campaigning between now and next Thursday. 66% have said that they will be, while 25% said they definitely won’t. So many of you reading this will be working on getting those extra 1 million conversations in the bag.

At the start of the week Miliband unveiled his 6th and final pledge: to begin building 1 million homes by 2020. Since the pledge card has been re-vamped with this announcement, we wanted to ask readers a question we asked a couple of weeks ago: Which is your favourite pledge?

As with last time, the largest proportion of people (34%) chose the NHS pledge. 14 points behind the NHS is higher living standards for working families on 20% and in third, with 19%, is the newest pledge: homes to buy and action on rents.

Labour’s education policies – including their promise on apprenticeships, are in fourth with 15% – less than half the percentage of the NHS. Which may be because one of the party’s key policies – to reduce tuition fees to £6,000 a year – is at odds with readers’ preferred policy. In the past, they have voted for higher education funded through taxation.

The party’s pledge on the deficit (A strong economic foundation) has dropped to fifth place since we last asked this question, with 8%.

Yet as with our previous survey question on this topic, Labour’s promise to control immigration got the lowest amount of the vote with 4%. Perhaps unsurprising because while there is some support for this policy, the party have come under some criticism for their approach.

When it comes to the new pledge itself, opinion is overwhelmingly positive. 82% of people are in favour of Labour’s policy (44% said very good and 38% said good). While 11% rated it okay – that could be down to the fact that they’d like to see more houses built in the time frame Labour are suggesting, and at a faster rate.

Either way, only 7% are negative about the policy (4% said poor and 3% said very poor).

543 people voted in this week’s survey. Thank you to everyone who took part.