MORI - Is Ming in trouble?

The full results of MORI's monthly poll are now up on their website. An interesting finding that was not reported in the Sun's coverage was that there has been a sharp drop in Menzies Campbell's approval ratings.

Ming has had a rough time of it over the last month - the Lib Dems had lacklustre local election results, there have been murmurings about his position from Simon Hughes and (unintentionally) Nick Clegg, and the commentariat have been scathing about his performances at Prime Ministers Question time. The question was whether this was all just chatter amongst political anoraks, or whether disappointment with Ming's leadership had spread outside Westminister to "real" people. MORI suggests it has.

Disapproval with Campbell rose from 20% last month to 31% this month, giving Campbell a net approval rating of

minus 9. In contrast Charles Kennedy never received a negative net approval rating in MORI's trackers, and Paddy Ashdown had constantly positive figures between 1990 and 1999. People just tend to like the third party leader, and they simply haven't warmed to Campbell.

Of course, it's still very early in his leadership. This poll was also taken over a week ago, since then Campbell has finally pulled off a successful PMQs and the Lib Dems have got good coverage of their new tax policies. While the proportion of people saying they "don't know" what they think about Campbell's leadership is falling, it is still 47%, so almost half the population haven't made their minds up yet about Ming. While people's impressions of a leader are set very early in their tenure, there's still time for Ming to turn it round.