Election poll: Business leaders vote Tory despite Osborne doubts

READERS OF TheBusinessDesk.com say they want Vince Cable to be Chancellor – but they intend to vote Conservative anyway.

In a survey conducted at the end of last week, almost 40% of those polled in the West Midlands, North West and Yorkshire said they would like to see the LibDem treasury spokesman at the helm of the economy – leaving George Osborne and Alistair Darling each trailing more than 10 points behind.

But when it came to actual voting intentions, more than 47% of the 1,000 readers polled in the survey, sponsored by law firm DWF, said they would support the Tories. The LibDems came in second with 24.6% of the vote, with Labour being the party of choice for just 20.6% of business voters.

Our readers, who are typically company directors, entrepreneurs or high-earning business professionals, were polled between Wednesday morning (April 28) and Saturday (May 1) lunchtime – meaning results came in either side of Thursday’s televised leaders’ debate.

As a sample of the views of business leaders in the UK’s industrial heartlands, the results give little comfort to Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling that they have the support of the business community.

The results also come after a weekend in which major national newspapers declared their political colours in the run-up to polling on Thursday.

The Financial Times this morning moved its allegiances to the Conservatives after more than 20 years of support for Labour. However, its switch was not without reservations, particularly on Conservative Euro-scepticism.

In TheBusinessDesk.com poll, of those respondents who favoured none of the three parties’ candidates for Chancellor, there was significant support for veteran Tory Kenneth Clarke to return to the role.

Unprompted, 5% of those polled independently cited Ken Clarke as the man they want to see in Number 11.

In the North West, 35% of respondents would like to see Cable as Chancellor, although only 25% said they would vote Lib Dem.

The only succour for Labour came in the North West, where the party will get more than 25% of the business vote, according to the responses, compared to less than 20% in the other regions.

However, Labour still trails the Tories by almost 18 points in the North West.

Across all regions, more of those polled feared a Labour majority than a hung parliament, and 27.6% said a Conservative majority would be the worst outcome of the election.

Unsurprisingly, almost 90% cited the economy or jobs as the key priority for the next government, although 5% of this business-focused audience said immigration was a more important issue.

Chris Barry, editor of TheBusinessDesk North West, said: “Despite a few regional variations, the results overall offer little comfort to Brown and Darling that they’ve won over the business vote in the regions where this country’s wealth is really created.

“The Conservatives have struck a chord on National Insurance, and small businesses in particular seem to blame the Brown regime for an economic environment which they perceive makes it extremely difficult to get bank funding for even the most solid of business plans.”