Election special: No-one likes anyone

There’s a strong narrative developing in the comment pages of the press that basically has Rishi Sunak as Luke Skywalker.

The odds are strongly against him, goes the thinking, but he’s not as awful as the evil empire that went before him, and the force is with him.

The Evening Standard on The rise of Rishi asked if he is more popular than his party.

The polls have been hugely against him for ages. One by Ipsos back in December said he had no chance in the 2024 election, even though he had reasonable levels of personal popularity.

The budget shifted that narrative somewhat, just on the basis that Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt looked competent. No dribbling in front of the camera, no Boris-esque floundering around after clearly failing to do any homework whatsoever.

Yesterday the i offered the view that Sunak’s allies are starting to see the path to a victory.

Is there evidence for this? Well, a bit.

For our Find Out Now poll this week we asked: If there were to be a general election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?

The Labour lead has indeed been dented, down by 5% to 43% on the same poll at the start of March.

But wait, the Tories are also down, off 3% to a meagre 22% of the vote.

So the swing, so far as is there is one, is from the two main parties and towards the Lib Dems, the Greens and Reform.

Keir Starmer still polls highest on who would make a better Prime Minister.

But the strongest vote on that is for a man called I Don’t Know.

No one really likes anyone, is how it looks.

You can see the full results below.