Dave’s decline in popularity is a bigger issue than Ed’s

Tories who hope that Ed Miliband is their secret weapon – and Labour MPs who fear the same - could be missing the point. A new study by an LSE researcher suggests David Cameron may have done more damage to the Tories than Miliband has done to Labour.

The fact that Miliband’s approval ratings are dire – and Cameron’s are better, if not brilliant - is one of the great clichés of this election coverage.

But Jack Blumenau, a PhD student at the LSE, says it’s a mistake to look at the leadership ratings themselves. After examining historical data from 40 years of general elections, he has found that it’s the change in the ratings that’s important – not the actual numbers.

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So, in the case of Miliband, that means comparing his rating with those of his predecessor as Labour leader, Gordon Brown. And in Cameron’s case it means comparing his current ratings with where he was before 2010.

“While Ed Miliband’s current ratings are low in absolute terms, they are not much lower than Gordon Brown’s were during the equivalent period in 2010,” says Blumenau. So he predicts Labour’s vote share will fall by only two percentage points due to the Miliband factor.

By contrast, because David Cameron was “relatively popular” prior to the 2010 election, Blumenau’s model suggests that the Conservatives’ share of the national vote will decline by about five percentage points as a result.

In short, because Labour has had two relatively unpopular leaders in succession, the “unpopularity of Miliband in 2015 is unlikely to lead to (further) large declines in Labour’s vote share in 2015”.

Blumenau went back to the 1970s to assess how swings in voter satisfaction with party leaders affect actual votes on polling day. His first finding is that “collectively, today’s leaders are an unpopular bunch. The average net rating of the main three party leaders is lower now than at any point since 1974.”

Another key - if unsurprising – conclusion is that leaders become more unpopular when they are in government. This applied to Thatcher, Major, Blair – and now to Cameron and Clegg. Blumenau says “leaders in government have approval ratings that are 17 points lower than leaders who are not in Downing Street”.

Blumenau’s general conclusion is that the link between leader ratings and votes is weak. “Overall, just because a party leader has become drastically unpopular, this does not mean that the party will lose a drastic number of votes at the election.”

One other point that is relevant to Miliband’s chances of success is that Nick Clegg’s ratings are even worse than his. Clegg does particularly badly compared to previous Lib Dem leaders because he’s been deputy PM - his rating “since May 2010 is 44 points lower than the party’s long-run average prior to the formation of the coalition”.

This has a huge bearing on how Miliband is faring in the polls and how he will do on 7 May - because it is disillusioned Lib Dem supporters who are switching their allegiance to Labour, while very few Conservatives switch to any party other than Ukip.