Cameron more popular than Blair or Brown

I referred to this Telegraph/ YouGov poll earlier (in my Bromley post) but, for me, this poll's findings are much more important than what happened in B&C...

(1) "After his Bromley bruising overnight there’s some encouragement for David Cameron in the poll. To the “Who would make the best Prime Minister” question he polled 30% to Blair’s 28%. According to the Telegraph Cameron is the first of five successive Tory leaders to achieve a higher rating than Labour on this point. Ming Campbell’s figure of 6% compares with the 18% that Charles Kennedy was recording at the General Election." (PoliticalBetting.com)
(2) "The poll also showed the two parties neck and neck on economic competence, both on 31%. This is mostly due to a sharp fall in the percentage of people who have faith in Labour’s ability to run the economy (down 18 points since the election), rather than any great increase for the Conservatives (up 4 since the election)." (UK Polling Report).

This is real progress on two of the three corners of the so-called iron triangle (one of ConservativeHome's six benchmark tests of David Cameron's progress).  It is certainly true that we need to do better at by-elections (and Iain Dale has written an insightful post about this on his blog) but an opinion poll from a reputable pollster is a much better guide to the General Election result.

The other interesting finding from the YouGov poll is the declining size of those thinking of voting for minor parties.  The share going to 'other parties' has fallen from 15% to 10% since before May's local elections.

Comments

[CCHQ Spy]

Is there significance to the fact that this is the 2nd YouGov poll in one week?

[G-MaN.Wild.]

We all know how dirty the Lib Dems are. They actually do anything to win a by-election, so we should be pleased we held on.

As for the landscape of British politics goes, it is quite clearly going in Camerons direction and I see no reason for any other potential PM to be more popular than he is right now.
His tone and rather bold direction is very British and modern in nature that Blair, Brown and Minger just are not. This will probably deliver a Conservative Majority at the next election.

[Editor]

No significance, CCHQ Spy. Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report tells me that Monday's Telegraph poll was off the back of a special poll on attitudes to Scotland. Today's survey is the regular monthly poll.

[David Banks]

Great poll result, but we should be really breaking Blair on the wheel of backbench revolt, draining his confidence and demonstrating Labour are divided, out of ideas and heading towards an electoral pasting. The ratings for the Tories should be higher particularly as we should be driving home relentlessly how irrelevant the Lib Dems are and effectively splitting the Labout benches into crypto Tory blairites and a recalcitrant unelectable bunch of hard left throw backs. Only then will we be getting the deserved 55% rating.

[Gavin Ayling]

We should take particular heart from the fact that we're gaining at the LibDems and Labour's expense. If we were gaining at the expense of only one we could justifiably be pessimistic as they could start trying again -- that we're beating both parties into a decline suggests that we're on the right side, that we're doing something better and not gaining out of other's failure.

[David Belchamber]

Two pointers that should encourage us greatly from the most recent poll are (i) the drop in support for the minor parties and (ii) the perception with the public that the tories can manage the economy properly.
I do not believe that we will improve much further in these directions until we have solid policies in place and a heavyweight shadow chancellor (and also importantly a heavyweight to take on the problems of the NHS).