YouGov Daily Poll - 39/29/20
Monday's daily figures from YouGov are out. The topline figures with changes from Friday's figures are CON 39%(-1), LAB 29%(+5), LDEM 20%(-1). The poll was conducted yesterday and today.
That's a big jump in Labour support for the first day of the conference. It's probably a combination of normal sample variance, the fading of the Lib Dem publicity bounce and the beginning of publicity from Labour's own conference. That said, the figures from last Sunday had a high Labour score too, so there's a possibility that it could be a timing thing: daily polling is a new development and there's much to learn.
Looking at the other questions, Sky are obviously going to concentrate on the Leaders' Debate question, which showed 60% of people would like to see a debate during the next election campaign. 77% of people also said they wanted it between all three main party leaders, as opposed to just Brown v Cameron.
Turning to other questions, in the discussion here we've occassionally pondered the difference between Brown's image in other countries as having made a huge contribution to organising the global response to the credit crunch and his atrocious approval ratings in this country. An interesting question is whether this was because people in the UK didn't think he had made a positive contribution to the global response, or because it is just outweighted by their opinion on his domestic performance.
Today's YouGov figures suggest that its at least partially the latter. 49% of people agreed that "Gordon Brown has played a significant role in working with other world leaders to tackle the global recession", including 30% of Conservative voters. This doesn't stop 65% of people continuing to think that he's doing a bad job as Prime Minister.
On other questions, on Brown's future 50% of people said he should be replaced as Labour leader, 36% wanted him to stay on (including the vast majority, 70%, of remaining Labour voters). If he was replaced, YouGov asked whether there should be an immediate election. 46% said "yes, even if this means holding the election in November or December", 47% said "No [...] we are nearing the end of the Parliament and the election must be held by next spring anyway". It suggests we are getting close enough to the election that Labour could change their leader without a huge clamouring for an immediate dissolution.
Finally the poll also contained a series of "How would you vote if X were leader" questions. All my caveats I made yesterday about this sort of question apply, but these were at least asked on an even footing when it came to likelihood to vote. The figures were:
Jack Straw - Tory lead of 6 Alan Johnson - Tory lead of 8 David Miliband - Tory lead of 9 Normal unprompted question - Tory lead of 10 Harriet Harman - Tory lead of 13 Ed Miliband - Tory lead of 14
In terms of comparative performance, it's not too different from ComRes's findings. I suspect it is not co-incidence though that Jack Straw is probably the best known of these politicians, and Ed Miliband probably the least known (though it's pretty damning for Harriet Harman, who doesn't have the excuse of being low profile).
