We know from other ConservativeHome surveys that some 60 per cent of our readers also read the Daily Telegraph – the highest total for any other media outlet.
I suspect that the Telegraph, which has been running an enthusiastic campaign for tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget, has influenced the return above.
Some three in five Conservative Party panel members want the Chancellor to prioritise tax cuts rather than deficit reduction, while about one in three don’t.
I doubt the response would have been very different had we asked whether or not the Budget should prioritise tax cuts over reducing inflation.
One take on this finding would be that a majority of Party members have lined up behind a policy that manifestly failed when Liz Truss tried it last year.
But not so fast: the question didn’t ask which particular tax cuts – it would have been rather complicated to do so – and it may not tell the whole story.
For last October, only one in four respondents said that higher borrowing (i.e: a bigger deficit, at least in the short term) and lower taxes should go together in the Government’s economic strategy…
…while three in five said that those lower taxes should go together not with higher borrowing, but with lower spending. So either the panel has made a seismic shift, or much depends on the way that these survey questions are framed.