Attitudes to the Lib Dems - less anger, but less clarity
At the weekend the Sun had some YouGov polling for the conference, that I said I'd come back to once the tables appeared. Most of the questions were repeats from the same Sun pre-conference polling a year ago, and show some interesting changes in attitudes towards the party. It's not necessarily good or bad for the party... just that the challenges they face are changing.
The changes from last September are predictable, given how the Lib Dem poll ratings have continued to decline since then - Clegg's approval rating is now at minus 29 compared to plus 8 a year ago, the proportion of people who support the coalition agreement is down to 34% from 43% a year ago. Asked to pick from a list of positive contributions the Liberal Democrats have made to the government, 40% say nothing at all, compared to 34% a year ago.
The more subtle and interesting movements come in the list of statements about the Lib Dems that were repeated from January. YouGov asked if people agreed with various statements about the Lib Dems, 5 broadly positive for them, 5 broadly negative.
Two of the statements sought to measure perceptions that the Lib Dems had broken people's trust or betrayed their supporters - agreement with both of these fell. The statement that people "could never trust the Liberal Democrats, even if they left the coalition" had net agreement of +13, down from +25 in January. Net agreement with the statement that the Lib Dems have "broken their promises and betrayed their supporters" was down to +32 from +43. There was smaller movement on the statement that the Lib Dems had sold out their principles, or were propping up an extreme government, but nevertheless, it suggests some of the public are starting to view the party through less of a prism of betrayal, some of the hostility is starting to fade.
Less good news is on how distinctive they are. "I'm no longer sure what the Liberal Democrats stand for" was the most agreed with statement (63% agreed), and its net agreement was up from +29 in January to +41 now. Tempering that slightly, 30% agreed with the statement that the Lib Dems offered "different and distinctive policies from the other two parties", up from 25% in January.
Looking at agreement with the more positive statements, 26% of people agreed that by entering coalition the Lib Dems had managed to get "real Liberal policies put into action", 36% agreed that they had made the coalition more moderate and centrist (up from 33% in Janary), 41% agreed they had done the responsible thing by entering government at a time of crisis - the most agreed with positive statement, but marginally down since January.
