LONDON (Reuters) – Support for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party has risen following last week’s budget statement, slashing the opposition Labour party’s lead to just 1 percentage point, according to two opinion polls published on Sunday.
Conservative chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne announced a surprise revamp of Britain’s pension system on Wednesday, giving retirees more freedom to access their pension pots, in an appeal to older voters ahead of an election in 2015.
Having consistently trailed Labour for the last two years in polls, the two surveys conducted after the budget announcement and published on Sunday showed the gap had almost disappeared.
A YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people in the Sunday Times newspaper gave Labour 37 percent of the vote and the Conservatives 36 percent – closing the gap to 1 percentage point from 7 points in a similar survey a week ago.
Series data for the same weekly poll showed the Labour lead had previously varied between nine and four percentage points this year.
A second poll conducted by Survation and published in the Mail on Sunday put the Conservatives on 34 percent with Labour on 35 percent.
YouGov’s associate director Anthony Wells said on his website that further evidence would be required in the coming days to confirm the gap had narrowed beyond the margins of error associated with opinion polls.
Osborne’s budget statement included other measures aimed at winning public support like a cut in beer duty and lower levies on bingo.
Despite the popular headline measures, the Conservatives are building their election campaign around fiscal prudence, painting themselves as voters’ best option to restore the country’s debt-laden public finances to health. (Reporting by William James; Editing by Rosalind Russell)
Source Article from http://uk.news.yahoo.com/post-budget-boost-britains-conservatives-closes-polling-gap-133425906.html
Post-budget boost for Britain's Conservatives closes polling gap
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