Miliband would do almost as well as Brown at a GE?

Populus's monthly poll for the Times as usual includes a hypothetical question asking how people would vote with Gordon Brown as Labour leader. As usual this shows the Conservative lead growing with Brown as Labour leader - to 11 points - though not as much as last month. What is slightly more interesting is that the lead under David Miliband would be 12 points. On this basis, Brown would perform better than Miliband but only just so, and Miliband is clearly advancing: earlier polls showed Brown performing better than Miliband by a substantial margin (a 13 point deficit compared to a 20 deficit with Miliband).

Now, in themselves I don't think these polls are particularly meaningful. As I've said before, you probably can draw some rough conclusions about present negative perceptions of Brown, but hypothetical questions like this can in no way be a genuine prediction of what will happen once Brown becomes Labour leader. They are even less meaningful when it comes to David Miliband because, unlike Brown who the majority of people know and have formed an impression of, most ordinary people have very little idea of what David Miliband is like and what he stands for (though Populus did find that over half of respondents were able to pick Miliband out of a line up of photos, those who got it wrong did tend to pick Peter Mandleson though!).

Miliband's advance since last month is probably due to no more than increased name recognition. However, where polls like this may yet be very important is if the trend continues and polls start showing Miliband performing better than Brown would in a hypothetical general election. Whether such polls would be particularly meaningful or not, they would be given huge media coverage and would be yet another bit of pressure behind Miliband to stand for leader.