Royal Holloway and Survation have released an update on their quarterly issue importance tracker which found that nearly three-quarters of residents across the UKs 632 Westminster constituencies have cited health as an important issue, overtaking energy issues for the first time since the tracker was started in July 2022.
Ranking as in issue in 448 out of 632 constituencies means that more constituencies than ever before have health amongst their top two issues.
Professor Chris Hanretty, from Royal Holloway’s Democracy and Elections Centre, said: “The purpose of this tracker is to gain a deeper insight into the important issues across the UKs Parliamentary constituencies.
“As the results show, health is an increasingly important issue to UK residents. Perhaps this is because it’s hard to read or watch the news without seeing a report on how the NHS is struggling.”
The economy continued to be the most commonly selected issue with 627 out of 632 constituencies selecting this as their top issue. The dominance of the economy is now even greater than it was in July 2022, when it was the most picked issue in 587 out of 632 constituencies.
Brexit came in at number three in the top issues with energy coming in at fourth place.
The fifth edition of the quarterly issue importance tracker, is based on fieldwork carried out between 3 October 2022 and 5 January 2023. The survey had 10,718 participants who were given a list of 20 issues and asked to pick the three which were most important to them. An interactive map of the results can be found here.
