Have you heard the term ‘just about managing’ (JAM)? Politicians and the media have used it to talk about people who are ‘just about managing but you worry about the cost of living and getting (their) kids into a good school’.

We thought that described parts of our customer base pretty well. They’re in work and mostly getting by, but every now and then they need a bit of short-term financial help.

So we thought it would be interesting to find out how they felt about the upcoming Election with a survey. As almost 2/3 of our respondents agreed that they’d describe themselves as ‘just about managing’, we’ve gathered their specific results. [1]

What did we see when JAMs responded to our survey?

1 – JAMs are at least as Politically Engaged and may be more politically engaged in terms of election turnout. And most of JAMs (65%) agree that this election is a good idea.

69% voted in the last election (compared to 66% nationally) [2]
72% voted in the EU referendum (which is the same as nationally) [3]
76% intend to vote in the upcoming election – if the national turnout is the same, this’ll be the highest turnout in an election for 25 years! [4]

2 – This election is mainly about the NHS

33% said the NHS was the most important issue to them. That’s the same as the next 2 issues combined!
The economy was the next most important at 20%
Immigration came third with 12%
The lowest result on our list was Pensions, which received just 2% of the votes.

3 – There’s a preference for Labour, but it could change…

Labour’s in first place at 35%, up 3% from how JAMs said they voted in the last election
Conservatives are second with 21%, down 3% from 2015
UKIP have lost two thirds of their support, from 10% in 2015 to 3% in 2017
But ‘Undecideds’ and ‘Prefer not to say’ are both at 16%, so it could be a close one either way.

For more info and findings, check out our infographic.

[1] Survey of 802 people who had taken out a loan with Lending Stream in the last six months. When shown the definition ‘just about managing but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school’ and asked them if they would describe themselves this way, 503 responded with ‘definitely yes’ or ‘probably yes’.

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

[4] http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm

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