Coalition approval falls sharply to -4%


by Sunny Hundal    
September 2, 2010 at 8:50 am

YouGov’s daily tracker of the Coalition’s approval rating yesterday dove sharply to -4% (approve 38%, disapprove 42%).

Voting intentions were at: Con 43%, Lab 37%, LD 12%

It’s the first time that the Coalition’s negative rating has fallen beyond the 3% margin of error.

And yet not a single media outlet or right-winger is asking whether the Coalition has over-reached itself and is turning of independent voters. Bizarre, they seem to do that quickly for their political opposition.

Conservative voters have broadly remained loyal to the government’s ideological agenda.

It’s the Libdems who keep bleeding support. Which begs another question: at what point do they accept something needs to be done to rescue their own electoral position?


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Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


Maybe Labour should remain leaderless if the coalition is going to lose support so easily… And bear in mind we have the “spending” review (Newspeak lives!) coming up in October – the Gov benches should be worried.

Worth noting that voting intention for Conservatives remains significantly high though. It may be that some of those not approving of the coalition are not the central ground floating voters, or Conservative-Labour switchers, but supporters of the coalition parties who do not like the combined policies, but will support their normal party’s ‘undiluted’ platform.

Also worth remembering that come an election, the government’s share of the vote normally increases. So this is not great news for Labour (yet – it is trending in that way, but trends can change).

This is interesting. I think the data set is a little too short to draw any major conclusions (yet), but if the trend continues it could spell trouble for the Tories.

“It’s the Libdems who keep bleeding support. Which begs another question: at what point do they accept something needs to be done to rescue their own electoral position?”

I think there is a very real possibility that the Lib Dems will be almost completely wiped out by the time the next election comes around. A local (well, to me) councillor has already crossed the floor:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-11069322

The Liberals have traditionally been strong in Liverpool, but the impact of ‘austerity’ measures (which will hit people on Merseyside harder than most) could turn thousands of votes away.

And a good thing too (in my opinion).

You have a funny definition of bleeding support, they’ve been at 12% or thereabouts for a month.

I’m guessing that “-4%” makes for a better headline than “38%”?

Lee – unfortunately you’re reading the polls badly.

The polls look at how people who describe themselves as voters, affiliated to a particular party, will vote. So the poll of self-described Libdem voters could become smaller while support for Libdems within that pool remains static. That is what’s happening here – The Libdems are bleeding support but of the people who remain, the support remains static.

Have a look back through Peter Kellner’s commentaries and he expands on this. Broadly though, the line of LD voters is going downwards. Check the other graph on the page linked

Conservatives on 43% though – a rating not Labour has not seen from YouGov since 2002, apart from a brief spell just before Brown’s election that never was.

One can only surmise that it is the Coalition only that is unpopular, rather than the Tories.

“Also worth remembering that come an election, the government’s share of the vote normally increases.”

That has almost always been the case, yes. But only when comparing from mid-term; there’s very little that can be projected (either way) from polling figures this early into a parliament.

Sunny, you’re taking a poll projection, the entirety of it’s being aimed at working out the national mood, and claiming that lib dem support is dropping when clearly isn’t. There’s nothing else to read.


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