Over 70% of the public are in favour of Miliband’s policy to fund the NHS with extra taxes on tobacco companies and mansions, according to a new poll

Poll shows Ed Miliband's policies backed by public, particularly his pledge on the NHS

Every one of Ed Miliband’s pledges from his speech yesterday has popular public support, according to a new poll.

A new Survation poll for Labour List of 1,037 people shows that 72% of the public are in favour of the policy to fund the NHS to the tune of £2.5bn extra a year, partially using taxes against tobacco companies and mansions as well as closing loopholes. Only 12% were against.



The polling suggests this pledge was particularly popular among Labour (81%) and Lib Dem (84%) voters from 2010, which is useful for a leader hoping to woo disaffected voters from Nick Clegg’s party.



Pledges in full at bottom of the page

Miliband’s pledge to raise the minimum wage to £8 an hour also was supported by the majority of the public and played even better with Liberal Democrat voters (80.1%) than Labour (78.6%).



His pledge to break up the high street banks was the least popular (but still had 43.9% of people in favour of it). Only a quarter of people (24.9%) said they were opposed to it with 31.4% saying they didn’t know how they felt.

The way this poll is structured may be flattering to Labour’s prospects. By using Labour’s own phrasing, the poll presents each policy in quite a generous light, which makes it difficult to disagree with – not many people would say creating “a “world class” health service” is a bad idea, for example

This has the effect of making the policies look popular – and they may well be – but it may be that if the same policies were presented differently, the poll numbers could change a lot.

More cleanly worded is the question on participation in the conflict with Isis, on which Miliband’s stance (wait for a UN Security Council Resolution on Syria) appears to be the most popular one.



Despite the caveats we have given for these figures, it does seem that Miliband was very much on pulse by pledging more funding for the NHS.



The Ipsos MORI political monitor suggests that Healthcare/NHS/hospitals is the single most important issue for 29% of voters - only beaten by managing the economy (31%), and asylum and immigration (30%).



Before the speech, 39% of those saying healthcare was most important to them identified Labour as the best party to deal with the issue (18 points more than the Conservatives at 21%).

It’s little surprise then that this is what Miliband chose to talk about.

Pledges in full