More from the YouGov/Sunday Times poll
Full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are now up here. On the regular trackers Ed Miliband has an improvement in his approval rating, up to minus 10 from his minus 19 a week ago, possibly an Oldham East effect. YouGov also asked if people trusted each of the leaders to keep their promises - 36% trusted Cameron a lot or a great deal, 31% trusted Ed Miliband a lot or a great deal and 24% trusted Clegg. 67% said they did not trust Clegg much or at all, included 26% of remaining Liberal Democrat voters (66% of people who voted Lib Dem at the last election do not trust Clegg).
Asked about the influence of the Liberal Democrats 19% of people think they are a positive influence on the government, 58% think they have little or no influence and 11% that they have a bad influence.
Straight after the election YouGov asked people if they thought, in the long term, the coalition would be good or bad for the Conservative party and good or bad for the Liberal Democrats. Back then 45% thought it would end up being a good thing for the Conservative party (33% bad), and 55% thought it would end up being a good thing for the Liberal Democrats (34% bad) - the public expectation was entering government would be positive for the Lib Dems. In hindsight of course it hasn't worked out that way so far, YouGov reasked the same questions in this poll - 33% now think the coalition will be good for the Tories, only 22% think it will be good for the Liberal Democrats.
Moving on, YouGov asked some questions on bankers' bonuses. They showed the sort of overwhelming pattern of public support we've seen in the past - 79% would support a special tax on their bonuses, 85% would support a law forcing disclosure of their bonuses. The one nuance that showed up was between the publicly owned banks and the banks that avoided the bail out - only 13% of people thought that the bosses of the nationalised banks should take their bonses this year, even if they had met their targets. That rose to 36% for the bosses of the banks there were not bailed out.
Finally YouGov asked a series of questions about trade unions and strike action. The broad picture was that most people support public sector workers' right to strike - YouGov asked about rail workers, school employees, local government employees, civil servants and in every case a majority thought they should be able to strike (the highest opposition for school employees, where 37% supported a strike ban). However, while they support the right to strike, the public do tend to think it should be more difficult to do so - 37% though that unions were able to strike too easily and there should be more restrictions (14% thought there were too many restrictions) and 54% supported the idea that strike ballots should require a majority of all eligible members, rather than just those voting.
YouGov also tested to see if people looked differently at trade unions striking over pay, pensions or jobs. On the whole the differences were only small. 57% thought it was justified for public sector trade unions to go on strike over job losses, 53% over the loss of pension rights and 50% over levels of pay.
(On different matters, the Independent's write up of their ComRes poll is as dire as you might have expected from the questions. Apparently the "Poll shows momentum growing for the alternative vote campaign, even among Tory supporters". This is simply false - ComRes have not previously asked the question so one cannot infer any movement or trend. The heading would appear to be based upon a question that found 61% of people said they could be persuaded to vote YES, as discussed yesterday, you can't draw such a conclusion without asking how many people might be persuaded to vote NO. That figure could have been higher or lower than Yes - without asking, we can't tell).
