A poll to compound Miliband’s woes

A YouGov poll for this morning’s Sunday Times provides proof of mounting disgruntlement with the Labour leader. And not just among the public as a whole, but also among Labour supporters.

Asked whether Ed Miliband is doing well or badly as leader, just 30 per cent say “well” (including a tiny 3 per cent who say “very well”), while 53 per cent say “badly” (including 21 percent “very badly”). The bad news for Ed is that the “well” figure has barely moved since just after he was elected, when almost half said they didn’t know how well he was doing. Now an extra 31 per cent have formed an opinion of him, but without any net increase in the number thinking he’s doing any good.

By way of comparison, at a similar point roughly eight months into his leadership, 35 per cent said David Cameron was “proving a good leader,” while 33 per cent said he was not — similar positives but much smaller negatives than Ed.

Naturally, Labour supporters have a more favourable view of Ed, although not as much as you might expect: in total, 61 per cent say he’s doing well, but only 8 per cent say “very well”, while 29 percent say he’s doing badly.

And the bad news for Miliband doesn’t stop there. A majority of the population think Labour made the wrong decision in electing him leader, including a plurality of Labour supporters:

YouGov go a step further and test a few potential replacements against MiliE, asking whether each would do a better or worse job. Here are the results:

And among Labour supporters:

So the public clearly think David Miliband would make a better leader than his brother, and there’s a similarly strong sentiment amongst the party’s supporters. And while he’s less popular with the public as a whole, these numbers suggest the Labour party might not be particularly opposed to Ed Balls mounting a leadership challenge of his own (Project Skoda perhaps?). Harman and Cooper receive less support against the current leader, but it’s worth noting that Cooper is much less well-known than the others.

All in all, these numbers paint a bleak picture for Ed Miliband. His approval numbers are declining, both the public and his own party think he was the wrong choice for leader, and just 6 per cent think he’s doing better than his brother would. This will only fuel the speculation as to how long it can be until he faces a serious challenge to his leadership. The question remains, as Fraser and Pete have pointed out, whether anyone in Labour has the killer instinct to oust their unpopular leader.