Several different polls, by multiple pollsters using different methods, have now shown Ed Miliband’s personal ratings improving sharply after the various not-quite-a-debates. You doubt? Here’s Hopi Sen, presumably tweeting through gritted teeth:
Since last poll @Ed_Miliband Lab voters rating went from 60.7 to 63.6, Among Con -50.4 to -42.8; LD -8.9 to +31 (!sample) UKIP -26 to -15
— Hopi Sen (@hopisen) April 4, 2015
As a long term, in-the-tank Edist or Edator Drone, I should be rejoicing in vindication, but I though I’d do something more interesting.
Here’s a post from December 2011. My point back then was that the quality of looking like you might be prime minister wasn’t something inherent in an individual, any more than Laurence Olivier was like Othello. Instead, it was a theatrical or priestly role that the audience projects on whoever appears on the stage. If you want to appear prime ministerial, it helps to be the prime minister.
We can operationalise this apparently waffly and artsy concept with data by looking at what happened to people who became prime minister. David Cameron and Gordon Brown both saw their score increase by about 2.4 standard deviations over the 6 months during which they became prime minister, a highly statistically significant result. Importantly, this doesn’t just track popularity, because there was no election in 2007. When Tony Blair remained prime minister over the 2005 elections, his score actually fell, although by so little it was almost certainly noise. Becoming the PM, then, makes you look like the PM.
This applies here, too. Taking part in the debates shows Ed Miliband, and also Nicola Sturgeon, who got a similar bump, as someone taking part in prime ministerial politics as an equal with the prime minister. In 2010, Gordon Brown already was the prime minister and couldn’t get any more so. The only comparable stage is Prime Minister’s Questions, but this is an institution lots of people find weird, offputting, stupid, and elitist, and which the government benches specialise in manipulating by putting on the North Korean Mass Games every time Miliband gets up. During the campaign, this is no longer an issue.
You can’t blame anyone in Labour for pocketing the improvement in the ratings. But I didn’t believe in their meaningful status in the first place, so I logically can’t take any comfort from its unwinding.
Update: Here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean. Being an MP makes you more ugly, not in some “the face you deserve by 50” sense but in that if you tell representative members of the public that someone is a politician, they score them as being less attractive.