Only Osborne of potential Cameron alternatives polls worse than Michael Gove – yet he’s is 8/1 2nd betting favourite twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 5, 2013

He’s simply too unpopular with Tory voters

The above is taken from the latest Sunday Times YouGov survey and was one of a number of findings in the poll that raises question marks over whether Michael Gove could be a serious contender to replace Dave.

Although the question format is not one I’m over-happy with the broad trend is there. Only William Hague, as is usual with polling of this nature, came out with positive numbers (net +4) to the question of whether with him as leader people would be more likely to vote CON.

Theresa May, of whom there is a lot of talk at the moment, had better numbers ((net -15))but still negative. Osborne, as ever these days, came out worst(net -26) but only a few of negative notches behind Michael Gove.

What was particularly striking was the proportion of CON voters, 37%, who said they’d be less likely to vote for a Gove-led Tory party. Osborne was at 38%.

In other Gove findings YouGov had 47% saying he was doing badly in his job to 22% saying “Well”. Even his flagship Free Schools programme was supported by few than one in three of those asked.

One contender who didn’t feature is the polling was Phillip Hammond who has moved to 10/1 third favourite with several bookies. As ever, Boris is favourite though he’s not an MP.

Although Cameron is having a bad time of it at the moment I’m far from convinced that we’ll see an early leadership contest. There is no really viable alternative. On May 8th 2015, the day after the general election, the world could look very different.

Mike Smithson

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