More from the YouGov/Sunday Times poll
Full tables for the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times are now up here, mostly covering attitudes towards the coalition.
On the regular leader ratings David Cameron has a net approval rating of minus 29 (up from minus 31 last week), Nick Clegg is on minus 54 (from minus 57 last week). Ed Miliband is on minus 23, this is up from minus 33 last week (conducted mostly before the local election results), suggesting Labour's gains at the local elections have resulted in a big boost to the proportion of people who think that Miliband is doing a good job. If you leave aside his brief honeymoon period after first being elected Labour leader, this is only the second time that the net proportion of people thinking Ed Miliband is doing well has been higher than David Cameron in YouGov's weekly ratings (the previous time was after hackgate broke in July 2011).
(I was going to write a longe piece on polling on leaders today, but time has rather run away with me - hence the rather short and belated summary today!)
Turning to the rest of the poll 25% of people think the coalition is good for the country, 64% bad for the country (which, as you'd expect, closely echoes normal government approval figures). YouGov also asked if the coalition is good or bad for the two parties involved. 38% think it is good for the Conservatives, 50% bad. 22% think it is good for the Lib Dems, 66% bad.
Looking at party supporters themselves. 62% of Conservatives think the coalition is good for the country, but they are pretty evenly split over whether it is good for the Tory party - 49% think it is, 47% think it isn't. Contrast this with the attitude of Liberal Democrat supporters: again, the majority (57%) think it is good for the country but they think is it bad for the Liberal Democrats by 59% to 37%.
Asked about the future of the coalition, the majority (62%) of people now expect it to last either up to the election (34%) or until just before it (28%). Asked how long they would like it to last there is a different pattern. Unsurprisingly most Labour supporters would like it to end immediately, however, there are also substantial minorities of Conservative supporters (26%) and Lib Dem supporters (18%) who would like the coalition to end now.
Asked what they think the result of the next election will be, we find a delightful (albeit, unsurprising) display of cognitive bias. People who would like the Conservatives to win largely think they will; people who would like the Labour party to win overwhelmingly think they will. Even for the Liberal Democrats, a loyal quarter of their supporters think the party will retain or even increase their current number of seats.
