More from the Sunday Times poll
The full results of the YouGov poll are still up on their website here. As usual they asked a wide variety of subjects, so here's a run down of some of the other findings.
Gordon Brown's figures continue to plummet, his net "good job" in the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times was down to -20, as compared to -10 in November. Cameron's figures are up at plus 25. There were figures for Nick Clegg, but so far these mean very little indeed, with well over half of respondents saying don't know.
Less good for Cameron was one of those focus group style questions asking what animal people thought politicians resembled: Brown was seen as a bear, a nice strong image there. Cameron was seen as a snake, oh dear.
In reality these questions aren't really suited to a quantative survey, it depends too much on what options you give them, I remember arguing about the wording for we did about whether tortoise should be included in the list, since it was so obvious it was just leading people to give that negative response about Ming Campbell. In this case there was one very obvious "positive" animal for Brown, so Labour supporters all said bear - negative repsonses from Conservative supporters were split between things like Ostrich, Hippo and snake. For Cameron it was the opposite, negative responses were concentrated on snake, but positive responses from Tory supporters were split between leopard and bear (neither of which are particularly Cameronish). If the question tells us anything, it is that for those who still have a positive view of Brown, his qualities are very well defined. In Cameron's case his negatives are well defined, but his positives aren't. (My favourite outcome in one of these comparison questions was an ICM focus group that found Cameron was seen as a some upmarket BMW saloon car, the type slightly flashy salesmen would drive. Ming Campbell was a nice old Jaguar. Brown was a tank.)
Moving on, the Sunday Times poll also covered nuclear power. Asked if they approved of a new generation of nuclear power stations to replace current ones, a majority (59%) approved, with 27% opposed. Conservative supporters were most supportive, but even a plurality of supporters of the Lib Dems - the only one of the three main parties to oppose the plans - were in favour, 48% to 39%. Overall 39% of respondents thought the proportion of Britain's energy needs filled by nuclear power should increase in the future, 17% though it should stay the same, 25% though it should be reduced or entirely phased out.
It's worth pointing out again the unusual contrasts between men and women on the issue of nuclear power. On most issues men and women think much the same, nuclear power is an exception. Men overwhelmingly favoured the decision to build a new generation of nuclear plants by 74% to 20%, women were far more cautious, with the balance in favour 44% to 32% against.
The Sunday Times also did a series of questions on "rip off Britain", which had a nuggest of good news for the big supermarkets, who were very much the whipping boy last year. Overwhelming majorities of respondents thought that the public were ripped off by petrol companies, rail companies, dentists, banks and local councils...supermarkets alone broke the trend, with 61% of people thinking the public got a good deal from them.
Finally there were a couple of "are you are heartless unfeeling bastard?" questions. 57% of people claimed they paid great attention to the way food they bought had been produced. 60% said they would pay £1 extra for chickens reared in more humane conditions.
Questions like this where there is an option that is obviously the more socially desirable invariably give worthless results, it's so much easier to say it in a survey than actually fork out the money. Have sales of non-free range chicken collapsed as over 60% of consumers spurn them for more humane alternatives? Of course not, the supermarkets report sales of chicken slightly up, with Tesco saying the proportion of customers buying their Willow Farm bird which have a higher standard of welfare are "slightly up".
My favourite example of this type of question was done by Populus after the Boxing Day tsunami, they asked respondents how much money people in their household had donated to the relief effort...and came up with a figure considerably larger than the actual donations made by the entire country. People will very rarely tell pollsters they are heartless bastards.
