Every month Ipsos publishes the Issues Index, Britain's longest running measure of public concern. It arrives as PDF data tables. We loaded two years of them into Platinum, the AI research agent built by Bayes Price, and let it do what it does for our clients: host the tables, chart the trends, read the crossbreaks, and answer questions in plain English.
The Issues Index is brilliant research locked in a static format. Each wave is an 18 page PDF of significance tested tables. Platinum ingests exactly those tables, at any scale, and turns them into an asset every team and client can query.
This is the same engine Platinum runs in production for clients such as Sky: 72 waves of brand tracking, 1.7 million data rows, 1,500 tables, AI analysis tailored to the insight team's own methodology.
The headline Issues Index measure: the share of British adults naming each as an important issue facing the country. Toggle the issues. Hover for any month. Every figure is Ipsos's own published number, May 2024 to May 2026.
No public data tables were published for Dec 2024 and Jan 2025; lines break across the gap. Telephone methodology throughout. Source: Ipsos Issues Index monthly data tables, ipsos.com.
The May 2026 wave, split the way the published tables split it: by age, social grade and household income. Pick an issue. The gradients tell the story the topline hides.
For every wave it hosts, Platinum writes the analysis a researcher would: what moved, what didn't, and what the crossbreaks say about why. This is its read of May 2026, every claim cited to the tables.
Concern about immigration rose nine points in a month to 41%, re-establishing it as the public's top issue after a spring in which the economy had drawn level. The move is concentrated where concern was already highest: over 55s (52%) and C2DE households (47%) drive the rise, while under 35s sit 20 points lower.
Inflation is back on the public's radar: 25% name it, up from 21% in February and the highest since spring 2023 levels seen in this dataset outside April's 30% spike. Tables 4 to 6, Apr and May 2026.
The defence spike is unwinding: 31% in March after the Iran conflict, 25% in April, 15% in May. Concern is settling back toward its pre conflict band of 12 to 17%. Trend series, Mar to May 2026.
The NHS continues its quiet decline as a named concern: 22% in May against 47% in July 2024. That is the lowest sustained level in this two year window. Trend series, Jul 2024 to May 2026.
Economic pessimism remains near its record: 9% expect the economy to improve over the next 12 months against 73% expecting it to worsen, barely off April's worst ever reading of 6% vs 78%. Tables 7 to 9, Apr and May 2026.
Platinum answers from the tables, shows its working, and builds the chart or report on request. These are real answers computed from the dataset behind this page.
Everything here was built from public PDFs. Inside Ipsos the Issues Index runs back to 1974, sits alongside the Political Monitor, the Veracity Index, Global Trends and the AI Monitor, and every study carries the full tables. Platinum is built to host exactly that: every wave, every crossbreak, every open end, conversational for every team and every client.
"When did the NHS last lead public concern for a full year?" On the full archive, that answer takes seconds, with the chart to prove it.
Brand trackers, political polling, syndicated studies. If it lives in tables, Platinum hosts it, charts it, summarises it and theme tags the verbatims.
Ipsos's own AI Monitor tracks the wonder versus worry divide across 32 countries. We would love to show it as a living dataset: an AI research agent reading the world's attitudes to AI.