Despite what the Sun says, Brown damaged by leadership row
This blogs top advice in judging a poll is always judge a poll on what the actual figures say, not on what the newspaper or group commissioning them, or indeed I say they say. Despite the way that the Sun has presented it, what a new YouGov poll in Friday's Sun actually suggests that, while Tony Blair and the Labour party have not suffered unduly from the leadership row, Gordon Brown may have damaged his public image.
Topline voting intention figures with changes from the Telegraph poll a week ago are CON 38% (-2), LAB 31% (-1), LDEM 18% (+1). The last poll was however conducted immediately after Tom Watson's resignation while the news was still dominating the media. Looking at the YouGov poll a week before that, todays figures are identical suggesting that Labour's leadership crisis hasn't really had much effect upon any of the parties' levels of support. Where the events of the last week do seem to have had an effect is on opinions of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair - overall 51% of people think Gordon Brown was engaged in a plot to oust Tony Blair, and it has damaged peoples' opinions of him.
Asked if Tony Blair or David Cameron would make a better Prime Minister, a week ago Cameron led Blair by 10 points. Cameron's lead is now down to 6 points, suggesting Blair has won some admiration, or at least some sympathy, for his handling of the last week. In contrast, asked whether they would prefer Cameron or Brown, last week Cameron had a five point lead, this week it is up to 9 points.
Similarly, Brown's huge lead as the person people who would most like to see replace Blair as Labour lead is being slowly whittled away. At the time of the last General Election 47% of people told YouGov they wanted to see Brown as the next Labour leader, by last week it had fallen to 31%. This poll has it down to 28%. John Reid remains up second place on 15% (up from 14% last week), with Alan Johnson third on 7% (up from 4% last week). Amongst Labour voters there is a simialr movement - Brown down to 54% (from 56% last week), Reid up two points on 11% and Johnson significantly up on 7% (from 2% last week) - with a lead of 43% though, Brown still absolutely dominates Labour supporters' preferences.
The percentage of people thinking that Brown will make a good Prime Minister is unchanged on 30%, but the proportion of people thinking he will be a bad Prime Minister has risen from 38% last week to 43% now. There is a similar movement amongst Labour voters - 13% thought he would make a bad Prime Minister last week, now 18% do.
Asked about several statements about Gordon Brown, 53% think he has run the economy well, 22% think he is more passionate and idealistic than Blair, 25% of people think that, as a Scot, Brown does not really understand the English, and 28% of people think him "psychologically flawed".
Asked to compare how they think Cameron and Brown would perform as Prime Minister, more people (46%) expect Brown to be a strong leader than think the same about Cameron (41%), and the two men had almost identical ratings on honesty. On the other measures Cameron outpolled Brown, with more people seeing him as likely to improve the lives of "people like you" (by 26% to 18%), having good ideas for the future of Britain (40% to 32%) and being able to govern Britain from the centre (33% to 28%).
The Sun claim that the survey shows that Gordon Brown's "public support for the Prime Minister in the last few days has restored the public's faith in him". The poll does show that supporting Blair might well do that in the future - 74% said they like to see Brown publically support Blair for as long as he remains PM - but for a poll that shows Brown falling further behind Cameron than last week, shows the proportion of people who think he will be a bad Prime Minister rising and shows the proportion of people who want to see him as the next Labour dropping, it's a somewhat unusual interpretation...
