2012 – the year Ed Miliband finally won over the Labour Party

A year ago we published our 2011 survey of the year results. It was something of a nadir for the Labour leader, with 51% of our readers believing that he had been poor or very poor in 2011. The survey was covered in numerous national papers and was discussed on the Today programme. Many believed that Ed Miliband’s time as Labour leader was up.

But today, we reveal the first set of results from our 2012 survey – which show the extent to which Ed Miliband turned things around in 2012, and won over Labour supporters and members. The results are almost a mirror image of last year’s horrorshow. Whereas last year only 20% of our readers thought Miliband had been Excellent or Good, that number is now 74%. And this year only 8% of our readers consider his performance last year to have been Poor or Very Poor. Here’s a table comparing the results from 2011 with those from 2012:

How do you think Ed Miliband has performed as leader this year?

Elsewhere in the survey, the two political events that were chosen as most important for Labour in 2012 begin to explain Miliband’s surge in popularity over the past year. The budget was seen as the defining political moment of the year by LabourList readers, but Ed Miliband’s “One Nation” conference speech was a close second – with the Leveson Inquiry, Local Elections and the Bradford West by-election being considered relatively insignificant by comparison. Miliband’s response to the budget, and his conference speech, were the two points upon which his fortunes decisively turned in 2012, although they also represent two strands of opinion in the party – those who believe that Tory gaffes (the budget) are responsible for the Miliband renaissance and those who believe Miliband “finding his voice” (his conference speech) is more important.

Keep checking back this week, as we’ll have all of the rest of the results from the LabourList survey of 2012 – including the Shadow Cabinet rankings, your MP of the Year – and how confident Labour activists are about the party’s chances of winning in 2015…

878 of you voted in our end of year survey. Thanks to everyone who took part