All three main party leaders are in negative ratings territory with Corbyn’s numbers the worst

All three main party leaders are in negative ratings territory with Corbyn’s numbers the worst

Latest YouGov favourability trackers (FW Oct 23/24)

If you had followed the 2017 General Election only through the prism of leader ratings then the actual outcome with the Labour recovery would have been less of a surprise. For these were showing that Theresa May’s numbers getting steadily worse and that Corbyn’s were improving very rapidly in the run up to election. Indeed by election day Corbyn had jumped out of negative territory.

The ratings format I like the most and the one that tends to be be universal in the US is over favorability because there can be no ambiguity. Thus many non-LAB voters could honestly say they approve or are satisfied with Corbyn’s performance as leader but would view him unfavourably.

About 4 years ago YouGov started doing regular favorability ratings as a result of suggestions from me and have continued doing them to this day.

The latest numbers based on fieldwork that took place last week are in the panel above and as can be seen that in net terms Johnson and Swinson are about level. The latter suffers from being much less known and fewer people have an opinion of her.

Corbyn’s unfavourables continue to be very high and should be a serious worry for the party as it prepares to go into the campaign. His party’s hope, of course, is that we’ll see a repetition of the recovery at GE2017

In the next seven weeks there’ll be many voting intention polls coming out but relatively few leader ratings. My emphasis will be on the latter.

Mike Smithson


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