Just under half of people in the Netherlands have confidence in the government on the eve of its first budget since taking office two months ago.

A survey by polling organisation Ipsos carried out for NOS found that 44% of people trusted national politicians generally, while 42% had confidence in prime minister Dick Schoof’s new cabinet.

The figures are higher than a year ago, when just 24% of voters expressed confidence in the caretaker government led by outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte, after it collapsed in a row over migration rules.

The biggest shift was among voters with a “low” or practical level of education, whose confidence rating in the cabinet was 49% compared to just 17% a year ago.

Voters at the lower end of the education scale were more likely to back Geert Wilders’s PVV, which became the biggest party in parliament last November, while university graduates favoured the right-wing liberal VVD and the left-wing alliance GroenLinks-PvdA.

Confidence among higher educated voters was unchanged from last year at 34%, while among those with a “middle” or vocational education there was a smaller increase to 38%.

Voters were also less pessimistic about the economy than a year ago, though the mood remains cautious. Only 10% said they were optimistic about the financial future – down from 12% a year ago – but the proportion who said they were pessimistic also fell from 44% to 37%.

The number who said they were comfortable financially rose to 59%, its highest level in a decade, while 9% said they struggled to make ends meet. Young people under 35 were proportionally more likely to have financial worries.