How 'important' is housing?
There has been considerable interest in Ipsos’s October 2014 Issues Index which saw housing fall out of the ‘top 10’ most important issues facing Britain.
Now at 10 per cent, housing’s current salience compares to 15 per cent a month earlier; a level it has been at twice this year and only surpassed in recent years by the 16 per cent recorded in July 2007. This was when house prices were reaching their peak during the last ‘boom’ period.
What was most surprising about the latest Issues Index was the surge of concern about health/the NHS, up nine points month-on-month. This meant that several other issues dipped accordingly (we find the Issues Index to be a ‘zero sum’ game with an average three mentions per respondent).
As with all survey findings, some context and interpretation is valuable:
- Housing was as low as 5 per cent in October 2009, six months before the 2010 general election campaign during which housing didn’t really feature
- Across the year so far, housing has polled at 28 per cent in London, where one in eight voters live, and there are several marginal constituencies
- We have seen recent media commentary on a ‘cooling’ in the housing market and house prices. This is important because we know it matters: issue salience is more driven by, than being a driver of, the media agenda (although they cannot be entirely independent of each other). And our recent poll for Jones Lang Lasalle finds house prices more commonly identified as being among the most important issues facing the housing market than anything else
- Housing is more salient when people are reminded about it; YouGov show respondents a list of issues and, last time, housing featured fifth out of 13.
But none of this changes the structural barriers to housing being as salient as first order issues such as immigration and the NHS. For example, it is not seen so readily as ‘the government’s fault’ even though our polling for the CIH and Jones Lang Lasalle has shown housing in general, and housing supply in particular, are something people feel governments can do something about. And to be sticky, an issue has to be considered relevant to sufficient numbers of voters who can see the difference between party platforms, and who think that there is a point to voting on that issue.
The public don’t often make the link between housing problems and the ‘obvious’ solution - supply. While 61 per cent agree that we are not building enough homes, this is identified by far fewer as a government priority from a list of seven (admittedly top, but only just so). People are evidently more doubtful about the local case for expanding supply.
What next? The big picture is that from a very low base housing is on an upward trajectory. But it is competing with other issues for attention and, as Alistair Campbell once said of messaging, “by the time you are sick of saying it, it is probably just about getting through”.
The challenge remains to take the issue of housing creatively and consistently to voters and politicians in the next few months. We should also be careful what we wish for; after all, our Issues Index is a barometer of things to be concerned about. Some might justifiably ask: “How bad would things have to get for housing to be a top five issue?”
- Ben will be leading a session at our Annual North East Conference and Exhibition - State of the Region on 20 November in Durham. Find out more.
The article was published in www.cih.org
