Drakeford beats Johnson in public’s opinion

PEOPLE in Wales think that Mark Drakeford and the Welsh Government have done a better job of tackling coronavirus than Boris Johnson and the UK Government.

The findings from our poll show that, despite controversies like the A-level results and ban on selling non-essential items, the Welsh Government is widely seen to have handled the crisis well.

This is a stark contrast to the UK Government and Boris Johnson, with only 7% of respondents believing the Prime Minister had handled coronavirus “very well”.

The poll suggests 54% of people thought Drakeford had handled it well compared to 36% for Boris Johnson. A total of 37% thought the First Minister had handled it badly compared to 59% for the PM. The rest responded “don’t know”.

The perceived gap between the response of both Cardiff

Bay and Westminster was even starker – 60% of people thought the Welsh Government had handled it well, compared to 39% for Westminster. A total of 33% thought the administration at Cardiff Bay had handled it badly compared to 55% for Downing Street.

This is also interesting because respondents thought both Boris Johnson and Mark Drakeford had handled the crisis less well than the governments they lead.

There were other key things that can be drawn from the responses.

These key points include:

■ Conservative voters were far more inclined to say that Mark Drakeford had done a good job at tackling Covid than Labour voters were to say the same about Boris Johnson. Of people who voted Tory in the last general election, 54% said Drakeford had handled the crisis well, whereas only 13% of Labour voters thought the PM had.

■ The support for the First Minister was seen across the political spectrum, with 71% of Plaid Cymru voters believing he had handled the crisis well. This is slightly more than Labour voters (68%)

There was also differences in terms of the age, with the approval of both governments’ responses increasing as you go through the age groups.

This perhaps reflects the fact younger people are less likely to have secure employment and more likely to use certain parts of the hospitality sector or be in education.

There is also a variance in perception of how the respective governments have performed in different parts of Wales. The Welsh Government and Mark Drakeford’s response is looked on most favourably in mid and west Wales, whereas for the PM and UK Government it is in the north.