Nicola Sturgeon has the highest net approval rating for a leader of a major political party, a new TNS poll reveals.
The TNS survey of almost 1200 adults in Great Britain looked at the perceptions of the British public towards Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP. In both of the televised leaders’ debates, the feedback from the ‘snapshot’ polls and indeed the wider media commentary was extremely positive – not only within Scotland but throughout the rest of Great Britain. Analysis that TNS has conducted of the coverage on social media confirmed the positive reaction to her performance. Consequently, it is not surprising that when asked how they would rate her performance as leader of the SNP, she received a strong endorsement – 51% gave her a positive rating and 18% a negative rating – a net score of +33. As featured in Table 1, this compares very favourably with the performance of all of the other party leaders – David Cameron and Nigel Farage being the other leaders with positive net scores. Indeed, her high positive rating exceeds anything we have previously recorded in similar questions asked of party leaders.
Interestingly, those aged over 55 years of age were more likely to give Nicola Sturgeon a higher rating than younger people, aged under 25. Not surprisingly, amongst the sample of Scots, her positive rating increased to 70% with 15% giving her a negative rating – a net score +55. In direct contrast, Ed Milliband’s net score amongst Scots was -2 and for David Cameron it was -7.
