Ben Page, chief executive of market research company Ipsos, joins Voternomics this week to outline what he’s discovered about voters and what they think about their politicians, governments and economies.
He tells Stephanie Flanders and Allegra Stratton that trust in politics is the “lowest we’ve ever measured.” Page, who sits on the Economic and Social Research Council at the UK’s national science and research funding agency, explains that voters consider “useless politicians” a more significant issue than inflation or decrepit public services. One challenge for officeholders is that pleasing voters is far more difficult than it was 50 years ago. Part of the reason is what he calls a more diverse “lived experience.”
Compared to the US, where the beliefs that define Democrats and Republicans “have progressively moved apart,” the UK electorate is “more fragmented than polarized,” Page says.
In the UK, voters want governments that can “come up with radical solutions that they appear to be able to execute competently.” Ipsos says it expects Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to win the next general election, but maintains it’s “highly likely” that Labour-as with the Tories today-will be deeply unpopular in a few years. Meanwhile, he says the US presidential election is “too close to call,” but discontent among American voters is “much greater than in the past.”
Also on this episode, Flanders, Stratton and Adrian Wooldridge ask Bloomberg Opinion columnist John Authers whether-given the question of when the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates between now and the election-the central bank can remain above the political fray.
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Stephanie is back with a new podcast series. This is the year of elections. Around 40 percent of the world has the chance to vote in 2024. And those votes will shape the geo-economic landscape for years to come. The implications for business and democracy are huge and worth exploring, which is why Stephanie is joining Opinion columnist Adrian Wooldridge and Bloomberg contributor and former government advisor Allegra Stratton for a new series called “Voternomics.” It’s a weekly look at the way geopolitics - and elections - are upending the longstanding assumptions of policymakers and business people around the world. In short, it’s a series about how elections mean business.
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