Cross post:ex-Lib Dems and Miliband's low ratings

I just posted this on the Opinium blog which is me asking whether the fact that Ed Miliband generally gets lower ratings among Labour voters than David Cameron does among Conservative voters can be explained by the fact that such a large proportion of current Labour voters are former Lib Dems who decided to vote Labour the minute Nick Clegg and David Cameron stepped out into the garden for their first Number 10 press conference.

David Cameron's ratings are generally pretty high (80-90% of current Conservative voters approve of him) partly because the Conservative vote has shrunk since 2010 and current Conservative voters are likely to be closer to the core party loyalists than more sceptical, floating voters.
Conversely, Labour's share is about 7-8 points higher than 2010 and therefore includes the core vote of about 29% with the rest being people who have moved to Labour since 2010, including the sizeable block of ex-2010 Lib Dems. Hence Ed Miliband's ratings among Labour voters are generally around 50-55% with far more being in the "Neither approve nor disapprove" category than you get for David Cameron.

Unfortunately the theory doesn't work and, if you read the Opinium post, you'll realise that the title is a QTWAIN. Reasons are after the jump:

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Signals and impressions matter

Back in the 2010 election, I lived in a Labour-Tory marginal (Poplar & Limehouse if you're curious). So we were subjected to dozens of 20ft high posters of David Cameron looking concerned and Gordon Brown looking smug and in every election since our house has been pelted with campaign leaflets and letters, mainly from the Conservative party.

Poplar & Limehouse is an interesting mix of inner city / docklands Labour and more affluent professionals who have moved in as part of the unstoppable growth of Canary Wharf and my partner and I fall somewhere in between.
We don't work in Canary Wharf but we are both educated, youngish professionals who work in white collar jobs on moderate incomes. We don't have any children or dependents, rent privately and occasionally indulge in the national pastime of getting mildly outraged by "benefit cheats". We'd like to own our own home in a few years time and so are diligently saving up for that first deposit.

The reason I'm telling you all of this dull and introspective background is because rational voter theory tells me I'm a perfect Tory target voter and yet I struggle to imagine myself voting for the party in 2015. At risk of making the classic pollster's mistake of assuming that everyone shares my views, I thought it might be useful to list some of the reasons why the Conservatives are having such trouble appealing to my exact demographic.

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