Last week, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in July and August; today it’s the turn of the coalition government leaders.
As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only two polling companies – YouGov and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the Lib Dem and Tory party leaders. (Harriet Harman’s performance as Labour leader is not being measured). And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. But, still, we don’t indulge in polls that often, so here goes …
Here, in chronological order, are the results of the five polls published in June asking for the public to rate the two governing party leaders:
-
Cameron: 58, 30: net +28
Clegg: 54, 33: net +21
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 1-2 Jul)
Cameron: 59, 28: net +31
Clegg: 54, 32: net +22
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 8-9 Jul)
Cameron: 58, 31: net +27
Clegg: 51, 35: net +16
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 15-16 Jul)
Cameron: 57, 32: net +25
Clegg: 47, 38: net +9
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 22-23 Jul)
Cameron: 55, 32: net +23
Clegg: 47, 34: net +13
(‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way X is doing his job as Y?’ – MORI, 23-25 Jul)
Cameron: 56, 34: net +22
Clegg: 46, 38: net +8
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 29-30 Jul)
July average: Cam +26% (-12%), Clegg +15% (-19%)
Cameron: 55, 35: net +20
Clegg: 48, 40: net +8
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 5-6 Aug)
Cameron: 54, 37: net +17
Clegg: 46, 41: net +5
(‘Do you think X is doing well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 12-13 Aug)
Cameron: 55, 35: net +20
Clegg: 44, 39: net +5
(‘So far do you think X has performed well or badly as…’ – YouGov, 15-16 Aug)
August average (to date): Cam +19% (-7%), Clegg +6% (-9%)
What a difference 100 days makes… in May, Nick Clegg’s average net rating (admittedly a very rough ‘n’ ready reckoner) was in the black at +36%; as the summer draws to a close it is down to +6%. This narrowing is a fairly equal mix of lower numbers of voters saying Nick is performing well, and higher numbers saying he is performing badly.
How far this simply reflects the public’s perception that the Lib Dems are down in the polls compared with our general election result, and how far it reflects serious dissatisfaction with Nick personally is hard to say – after all, the questions ask about Nick’s performance as Lib Dem leader. It would be interesting, for example, to compare the figures of Nick as party leader with the view of the public as to how he is performing in his role as Deputy Prime Minister.
But undoubtedly the last couple of months have been tough ones for Nick, who has received a pretty rough ride in the media. That his personal popularity ratings have taken a hit is perhaps not surprising in the circumstances. It will be interesting to see whether the Lib Dem conference reverses that decline, as most leaders gain from the increased media exposure, even if it’s not all positive.
And Nick can draw some solace from the fact that it is not just his ratings which have tumbled. David Cameron, too, has seen his average net rating fall from May’s +43% to +19% in August: still healthily positive, then, but a sharp decline on 100 days ago.
Of course, for both Messrs Clegg and Cameron, May 2010 was an artificial high: the sealing of the Coalition partnership agreement will likely be the peak popularity point of both of their periods of office. However, both will be concerned if their ratings drift too much further down, as the Government will need both their combined communication skills, and the goodwill of the public, to sell the next couple of years’ austerity measures effectively.
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9 Comments
It’s very difficult to say Nick Clegg is doing well as Deputy PM, because the position has always been an ambiguous one. Was Prescott a good DPM? I’m not sure, because I don’t know what he was supposed to get right and what he got wrong. (apart from croquet).
It’s easy to see, for example, that Michael Gove is performing poorly as Education Secretary. Not just because I don’t like academies, but because of the bungled way in which information was released about funding and building projects and the exaggeration about the number of people interested in free schools.
Similarly George Osborne is performing well considering how inept people thought he would be before the election.
How do we judge how well Clegg is doing? He’s not got a department to run, or any policies to implement, apart from a referendum on a voting system not many people care about, that isnt going to happen until next year.
If I had to rate him, it’d be a poor one – the biggest reforms since before the war….well…..aren’t that big. And his defence of the big society, pretending it’s a lib dem idea too was a bit too much. There’s really not been much opportunity for Clegg to impress, and if I – as a libdem who supports the government – can’t find anything thats particularly impressed me, I doubt many others can.
Agree with much of that, but:
Erm, what about:
Elected House of Lords under proprtional representation
Scrapping the ID card scheme and the national identity register
Libel to be reviewed to protect freedom of speech
Limits on the rights to peaceful protest to be removed
Scrapping the ContactPoint database of 11 million under-18s
The correlation coefficent = 0.93, implying that 86 % of the variation in Clegg’s score is accounted for by the variation in Cameron’s score.
The linear regression line is steep (slope = 1.6) and suggests that Clegg’s nett approval score will fall to 0 % when Cameron’s falls to 18 %. This event can’t be far off now, so remember you read this prediction here first!
I think it’s a very difficult position in which to impress the electorate. He has to simultaneously support and defend the government, while projecting a Lib Dem image to voters and members. Progress with his own area of political reform will happen over months or years, so again, difficult to impress so far. Plus the media on both sides has been only too willing to tear into him at the slightest opportunity. Even if they don’t have a line to misquote, they make it up literally as fiction or interview someone from Labour. It’s been pretty relentless.
100 days is really too short a period – there has been a lot of media hot air, analysis and hysteria, but not much has actually happened apart from working out the new structure of government (itself an achievement). Everyone is only just getting used to the coalition – probably even the Lib Dems in government are only just getting used to it. This is a long-term project and better to pass judgement in 1, 2, or 4 years, not 100 days. By then we may have had more chance to project the policy influences we’re having, which are real and need to be communicated better.
Nick Clegg made a big deal during the election campaign of his opposition to replacing Trident nuclear weapons, and Lib Dem proposals to scale down and delay Trident replacement.
So far the Coalitiongovernment seems to be travelling full steam ahead to replace Trident, even though it will cost billions of pounds at a time when local services are being cut and is deeply unpopular with a big majority of the public.
Until Nick Clegg is seen to deliver on this and similar pledges, many of those who voted for him willbe sceptical about how ell he is performing.
@Steve Taylor
He did but he didn’t win, and listening to Cameron during the same debate who is our Prime Minister, would give you a good indication of how much a stumbling block Trident would be in our coalition agreement.
I wouldn’t say that the government is travelling “full steam ahead to replace Trident”, if anything the transfer of responsibility for funding it from the Treasury to the MoD is going to have very severe finacial repercussions for renewing it like-for-like which may see, through simple costing implications, Trident being scrapped.
People will of course be sceptical, but considering the Lib Dems came third and with no chance of being in government at all had it not been for the ramifications of our electoral system, they have the system to blame (which they’ll get the opportunity to change as much as the Tories or Labour will allow them) and the Conservatives if they don’t like their policies. As I said to many during the election, the stronger our performance the more sway we’ll have in a coalition government, yet loads of people still went and voted Labour or Tory, so on a percentage scale of how much ‘Tory’ this government should be after casting their vote for them or Labour this is what you get.
Personally, I think it’s a good thing we’ll be forced out of the ‘vote us to keep x out’ thing. We’ll need to if we want to be respected as a serious political party in a three party field.
Stephen Tall
If the five listed above are Clegg’s achievments then no wonder he is in trouble.
Elected HoL under PR will be an achievement (and a notable one) if it happens. At the moment we don’t even have a white paper let alone a bill.
Scrapping ID cards – would have happened whatever the election result. ID cards were dead once Alan Johnson watered them down last year and noone could have afforded them even if they’d wanted them.
Libel laws to be revised to protect freedom of speech – when? The spate of super-injunctions over the past three weeks has considerably further restricted freedom of speech and virtually created a privacy law. I haven’t heard Nick Clegg say a single word against them.
Limits on the rights of peaceful progress to be removed – when? The sight of protestors being dragged away from parliament square hardly gives great hope – and the policing of the EDL/BNP rally was hardly conducive to unrestricted peaceful demonstration.
I don’t know enough about ContactPoint to comment.
Nigel
>Libel laws to be revised to protect freedom of speech – when?
The Freedom Bill is to be put before Parliament in the autumn.
All these things – however urgently we want them – have to be properly thought-out, and debated. Or one bad system will simply be replaced with another.
As any look at rushed legislation of the past (eg Dangerous Dogs Act) will tell you.
Plus there is the small matter that Parliament’s been on holiday lately.
Stephen Tall
Erm, what about:
Elected House of Lords under proprtional representation
Scrapping the ID card scheme and the national identity register
Libel to be reviewed to protect freedom of speech
Limits on the rights to peaceful protest to be removed
Scrapping the ContactPoint database of 11 million under-18s
Erm, yes, but when I go canvassing I don’t tend to find people talk about these sorts of things. They’re specialist interest stuff, yes they are important, and the well-informed can see why, but the proportion of the population which regards these things as the most important things in politics is low.
So, even if you think Clegg is doing a reasonable job in government, what he’s managing to get through which are our policies are minority interest stuff, whereas the stuff which is to do with what grabs the attention of more normal people than us Liberal Democrat activist types is what the Tories are getting through. The Tories are ok with us having a few liberal things, so long as its the liberal things that don’t cost any extra money.
I rememember when I was young, I was really enthusiastic about proportional representation, and thought it was so obviously both right and beneficial that we could go on about it and it would be a vote winner. Sadly, that wasn’t the case – I still very much support PR by STV, but I accept most people don’t agree with the priority I would put on it. The same with these things here – we may think it a wonderful achievement to get them through, but we should be cautious about supposing many other people agree with us. The danger is that we go on about things we have achieved which we think are really important, while much of the electorate think of them as minor technical issue. The consequence is that the more we go on about our achievements, the worse it will look, because most ordinary people would see it as us selling out in return for something that had no importance (at least as they wouild see the world).