Data on YouGov’s website shows that the Prime Minister’s approval rating has fluctuated drastically between doing ‘badly’ and ‘well’.
Throughout the last year, voting intention and public perceptions of senior figures in the House of Commons have changed often and changed fast.
According to YouGov data, 66% of people polled voted that Boris Johnson was doing ‘well’ in April 2020, during the start of lockdown – the questioned posed to the public was ‘Do you think that Boris Johnson is doing well or badly as Prime Minister?’
Source: Number 10 (Boris Johnson visits Exeter College Construction Centre)
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This is compared to 26% of people who voted that the Prime Minister was doing ‘badly’ and 7% who ‘don’t know’.
April 2020 was the peak of Mr Johnson’s popularity (in terms of highest percentage according to YouGov data) since July 2019, when only 32% voted for the PM doing ‘well’.
24/07/2020. London, United Kingdom. Boris Johnson visits Tollgate Medical Centre. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Tollgate Medical Centre in East London. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
However, Johnson’s popularity has fallen since – between April and July, people voting for the doing ‘well’ category dropped to 57% and by July, it was 43%.
In the most recent data provided, on 23 November to be precise, people voting for the Prime Minister doing ‘badly’ has dramatically increased to 58%, compared to only 34% who voted that he was doing ‘well’.
The PM’s approval rating tracker can be found here.
