Voters Feel More Optimistic After Labour's Election Win

A major survey carried out following the Labour party's victory at the General Election has found a significant rise in public optimism.

The poll, conducted by Thinks Insight and Strategy and shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, found that net optimism had grown from -23 in March to -7 in July.

The online survey was carried out in the days following last week's election (5-8 July), and interviewed 2,422 people nationwide.

The findings suggests the change in government — the first Labour election victory since Tony Blair's in 2005 — has caused people to feel less pessimistic about the year ahead facing the UK.

Most optimistic are people who voted for Keir Starmer's Labour on 4 July, with net optimism among these people being +41. The least optimistic were those who voted for Nigel Farage's Reform UK, whose net optimism was net -44.

The results suggest voters are prepared to be patient with the Government as it tries to deal with a large in-tray of problems like the overcrowded prison estate, NHS waiting times and cost of living.

Nearly two thirds of people (62 per cent) said that even if the Starmer administration is effective, "it will take a year or two before we start seeing improvement." Around a third (29 per cent), meanwhile, said they would expect to see "real improvement within the next year" if the Government is effective.

This finding will likely come as good news to Prime Minister Starmer and his newly-assembled ministers, who have repeatedly sought to stress the scale of the challenge they face after replacing the Tories in Downing Street, and in recent days have said the issues they inherited are even worse than they initially realised.

Speaking in the US on Thursday, Starmer said the crisis in prisons, where the