YouGov has been conducting a political tracker poll over the last three months and they have released its findings on UKPollingReport tonight. The bottom lines are, according to Anthony Wells are...
1) Labour took a kick on most counts, but the two things that slumped and really stayed down were impressions of Blair personally, and Labour's reputation for competence, which is shot.
2) David Cameron's ratings *were* starting to decline just before the elections, but winning the local elections completely reversed the trend, and he's been on the up ever since
3) It isn't just the media, normal people really don't think much of Ming either
I'll quote the last three paragraphs in full, but if you want to download the whole document click HERE.
Cameron’s approval ratings and positive or negative perception rating both peaked after the Conservatives made the most gains in the local elections on May 4th and have been on a steadly upwards trend since then. The difference is presumably because Cameron is now seen as a ‘winner’, putting him in a positive light. The local elections came along at just to right time to give his image boost; it seems he has once again been very lucky indeed.
Finally there is Ming Campbell. There has been a lot of questions raised over Campbell’s performance as leader by the commentariat, there has been scant evidence until now though of whether real people think he is performing badly. Looking at the YouGov BrandIndex trackers there can be little doubt that this is not just a story within the Westminister bubble. Campbell’s approval ratings prior to the local elections were broadly neutral, with those thinking he was doing a bad job balanced out by those thinking he was doing a good job. Since the local elections they have declined sharply, and his approval rating is now -23. Interestingly the decline didn’t start straight after the election, but in the middle of the week afterwards when the commentariat started questioning his PMQs performance and mutterings about his leadership began.
The last few days of data covered were after a successful PMQs performance by Campbell and positive coverage of the Lib Dems tax plans. As yet they haven’t improved matters, but obviously these things can take time. The only good news for Campbell is that the proportion of people who don’t know what they think about his leadership - while declining - is still in the mid-40s, so there are plenty of people who haven’t mind their minds up yet.
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