Politician approval and recognition ratings

In yesterday's Sun there were a set of approval questions for leading politicians (actually asked in July). William Hague came out top, with a net approval rating of plus 11, the only positive rating received. I expect some of that is still a residual effect from the period after he was Tory leader, appearing on things like Have I Got News For You. Most positive after that was Theresa May (-5), David Cameron (-9), Iain Duncan Smith (-15), George Osborne (-17), Liam Fox (-17), Michael Gove (-20). Down at the bottom were Ken Clarke (-32) and Andrew Lansley (-34).

Amongst the Lib Dem ministers included Danny Alexander has the highest rating on -17, followed by Vince Cable -20 and Chris Huhne -23. Nick Clegg was the lowest rated of any politician asked about, with a net rating of -35.

Turning to the opposition, Harriet Harman was most positively rating on minus 9, followed by Yvette Cooper on minus 12 (though her rating is effectively boosted by a very high don't know value, as is Douglas Alexander's). Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander are both on minus 14. Ed Miliband himself is on minus 19, the lowest of the Labour figures asked about, but note that the fieldwork was done part of the way through the hackgate affair, so before Miliband got the full boost from it.

The survey also gave people photos of the same list of politicians and asked people to identify them (they were given a list of names to pick from, but asked not to guess if they didn't know - most people clearly didn't, as answers tended to be correct or don't know!). The run down of the percentage of people who were able to identify each photo is as follows:

96% David Cameron 86% William Hague

84% Nick Clegg 80% Ken Clarke 80% Ed Miliband 69% Iain Duncan Smith 63% Vince Cable 60% George Osborne 60% Harriet Harman 58% Ed Balls 45% Theresa May 34% Liam Fox 33% Michael Gove 32% Chris Huhne 30% Danny Alexander 21% Yvette Cooper 18% Andrew Lansley 15% Douglas Alexander

Note that the politicians who over half the country recognise tend to be mostly party leaders (or former ones). They are joined by Ken Clarke (unsurprisingly given he's been a senior political figure for decades), George Osborne, Ed Balls, Vince Cable and Harriet Harman. Note quite how few people actually recognise people like Yvette Cooper and Andrew Lansley - this is, incidentally, why the survey questions you get when party leaders are in trouble about whether people are more or less likely to vote for X if Y was leader are largely rubbish: most of the people answering wouldn't be able to identify Y if they bumped into him on the street.