How’s Clegg doing?

When Nick Clegg speaks today, he can – as usual – rely on a good deal of support from those in the hall. According to YouGov, current Lib Dem supporters support him by a 2-to-1 margin. That’s stronger approval than Miliband gets from Labour voters, although nowhere near the popularity David Cameron enjoys with his own party: 93 per cent of Tories say the Prime Minister’s doing a good job.

Among the population as a whole, though, there’s no doubt Clegg is unpopular. But he does at least appear to have stopped the rot – both in his personal ratings and his party’s. As the graph below shows, the majority of the Lib Dems’ poll decline – from the 24 per cent they won in May 2010 to their trough around 10 per cent – occured in the first few months after the election. The huge drop in personal support for Clegg happened largely in the autumn and winter – the time of the tuition fees debacle.