Historic poll data highlights gap between Brown and Cameron

Here’s some numbers you may find interesting – historic polling data on Tory/Labour leader popularity (see below for full chart).

A few things leap out at you from these net satisfaction ratings. We used to like our politicians more, way back in the era when voters identified much more strongly with one or other of the two main parties.

The highest rating anyone’s got around election time recently is the +19 that Tony Blair was polling at the time of the 1997 landslide.

Tony Blair’s satisfaction rating then plummets to -26 at the time of the 2005 election, but he is up against a Tory leader, in Michael Howard, who is down at -20 himself.

The gap that has opened up between Gordon Brown’s ratings and David Cameron’s ranks with 1983.

My thanks to the polling analyst Mark Gill for passing this table on. Click here to see a full-size version (pdf).