YouGov/Times - CON 40, LAB 43, LDEM 6
The government have, needless to say, not had a particularly good few weeks. They have lost two cabinet minsters and have several more under clouds who the media have portrayed the Prime Minister as too weak to sack. You'd probably expect the government to be tanking in the opinion polls.
Yet YouGov's latest poll for the Times has topline figures of CON 40%(nc), LAB 43%(+1), LDEM 6%(-2). Fieldwork was on Tuesday and Wednesday, so right in the middle of the Priti Patel row but before her resignation, and changes are from mid-October. Labour are ahead, but it's the same sort of narrow lead that they've held since just after the election. As in other recent polls, Conservative support appears to be holding steady at around 40%.
It is a similar case with Theresa May's own ratings. Her approval ratings are negative, but show no sign of collapse: 31% think she is doing well (unchanged from last month), 55% think she is doing badly (four points down from last month). 29% of people think she is a strong leader (up one point), 49% think she is weak (down three). 42% think she is competent (no change), 38% think she is incompetent (down three).
This raises the question of why support for the government and Theresa May is holding up when, on the face of it, they seem to be in such a mess. One eternal reason is that most people pay far less attention to political news than anyone reading this blog does. Cabinet rows and government weakness will make no difference to the voting intention of people who are wholly unaware of them. As an illustration, the poll also asked people if they thought Theresa May should get rid of Priti Patel (at a time, remember, when the story was all over the news and had been for four days). 17% said she should stay, 30% that she should go, 53% gave a "don't know". Government incompetence won't hurt Tory support among people who are unaware of it.
An alternative possibility is that Tory voters are sticking with the Conservatives, however poor they are, because the alternative is Jeremy Corbyn. To test this YouGov asked people who said they'd vote Tory tomorrow why they were supporting them. Only 7% of Tory voters said it was because they both agreed with the government's aims and thought they were delivering them, 48% said they agreed with the government's aims even if they were struggling to deliver them, 22% said they thought the government were competent, even if they didn't agree with all their aims. 19% of Tory voters, however, said they didn't think the government were governing well and didn't agree with their aims... but they still preferred them to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.
Why is the government's support holding up? As ever, there is never a single simple reason, but part of it is that most people don't pay much attention to the day-to-day soap opera of politics, so individual scandals will not necessarily make a huge difference. Secondly, while even most Tory voters think the government are struggling to deliver their aims, they do mostly agree with what they are trying to do. Thirdly, there are a significant chunk of Tory voters who don't think they are governing well and don't agree with what they are doing... but would still vote for them because they aren't Labour.
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