federal politics
18 Mar 2010
Is Abbott Really Catching Up?
The media has turned from talk of Rudd's honeymoon to Abbott's — and they're wrong. The polls show just how tough it will be for Abbott to win an election, writes Ben Eltham
For weeks now, the big political story spun by much of our national media has been fiction. Which story? I’m talking about the "polls are narrowing, watch out Labor" story, in which a Tony Abbott-led Opposition is supposedly pegging back Labor’s lead in the opinion polls.
Just this week, for instance, the latest Newspoll was released. It showed Labor and the Coalition on 52–48 in two-party preferred terms — roughly where they’ve been for the last three months, in other words. But newspaper commentators and the wire services instead jumped on the fact that Kevin Rudd’s approval rating had dropped below 50 per cent for the first time since he took office.
The Newspoll figures allowed some in the media to argue that Kevin Rudd’s "honeymoon is over", opening the door ever so slightly for leadership speculation about Julia Gillard. Damien Murphy in The Age even suggested that, with the Prime Minister apparently being booed by Queensland rugby league fans at Lang Park on the weekend, "it was the jeer heard, if not around the nation, then at least down the entire east coast."
There’s no doubt that Rudd’s Newspoll approval ratings are on a slow slide, albeit from the stratospheric heights after the 2007 election. Labor’s massive lead since mid-2008 has narrowed too but the reality remains that Kevin Rudd is still a popular Prime Minister, and Labor still leads comfortably in the polls.
Unfortunately, "Labor still leads in polls" is a much less interesting media angle than "Rudd on the nose". Contrast the avalanche in coverage for this week’s Newspoll with the muted response to Monday’s Essential Research poll which found Labor cruising on 56–44.
The Essential survey polled more respondents and had a lower margin of error than Newspoll, making it a more reliable gauge of current voting intentions. But the Essential poll didn’t fit the current media narrative that Kevin Rudd is losing his shine, so most outlets ignored it.
This is all the more curious when you consider some of the additional questions asked by Essential Research.
One of them concerned the competing parental leave policies proposed by the Government and the Coalition. This is what was put to the respondents: "The Opposition leader Tony Abbott has proposed a scheme to give new parents 26 weeks leave at their normal rate of pay to be paid for by a 1.7 per cent levy on large companies. The Rudd Government plans to introduce a scheme to give new parents 18 weeks leave at the minimum wage rate paid for by the Government. Which scheme do you support more?"
Those polled plumped for the government scheme, 40–24, with 27 per cent favouring "neither". Interestingly, only 37 per cent of Coalition voters supported Abbott’s more generous scheme, suggesting that the policy has some opponents within the conservative base.
We now know there is at least one prominent conservative who opposes Abbott’s scheme: Peter Costello. The former treasurer used his regular Fairfax column to mount a stinging attack on both parental leave schemes, saving his most colourful invective for his former colleague. Abbott’s policy was a "Crocodile Dundee approach", he wrote, arguing that by attempting to outflank Labor on the left, Abbott was abandoning the core Liberal philosophy of lower taxes. Labor certainly enjoyed the intervention, making hay in Parliament at Tony Abbott’s expense.
With an election year now in full swing, Labor has taken the gloves off.
One measure of how seriously Labor’s key strategists are taking Abbott’s challenge is that the party is already running TV advertisements attacking Abbott’s record as health minister, claiming he "ripped $1 billion dollars" out of public hospital funding. It’s a claim with some validity: while federal hospitals funding increased in nominal terms during the Howard government, it fell as a percentage of the total pie. But ordinary voters won’t look up the Budget Papers: they’ll simply follow their instincts, and the polls tell us that voters strongly favour Labor on the issue of health.
For their part, Coalition parliamentarians took the opportunity to vent their frustration on their former colleague Costello. "Buzz off, Pete," the always quotable Wilson Tuckey told Michelle Grattan. "When you leave this place, it’s not a bad idea that you keep your trap shut." Barnaby Joyce suggested that Costello was merely enjoying "the cathartic experience of exploding", an experience Joyce himself appears to find irresistible.
Costello’s attack has blunted Abbott’s forward momentum in a week when he needed to exert some traction.
Indeed, as the perceptive Mark Bahnisch has been arguing, Abbott’s general strategy of trying to seize the media spotlight has its own risks. "Despite the fact that Abbott’s been having a dream run in the media (always seemingly ready to be amused and entertained with something or someone that can be represented as providing colour and movement)," Bahnisch wrote recently, "it’s actually much more difficult (and probably more unwise) to run the ‘seize the attention’ opposition strategy than sometimes perceived. It has a pretty short use by date. And it doesn’t necessarily work; just ask Mark Latham."
Indeed, Labor have been attempting to paint Abbott as the new Latham for some time now, without too much success. And therein lies the problem for the new Opposition Leader. His success thus far owes much to the consolidation of the conservative base. But rusted-on Coalition voters are not going to win him the election; to do that, he needs to convince swinging voters in marginal seats. This was probably the thinking behind the ambitious parental leave announcement, but by trying to play on Labor’s home ground, Abbott leaves himself open to attacks from both the left and the right.
It would help if the Coalition had spent the last two years developing viable new policies but they haven’t. So Abbott is almost required to make policy on the run in the run-up to the election. This leaves Labor all sorts of opportunities for counter-attack. It’s going to be crash through or crash — and one suspects Abbott wouldn’t want it any other way.
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Seems there is some road kill in the government, “Cowboy Conroy” my way or the highway to the senate over the NBN, Julia’s BER rorts coming home to roost (Ray Hadley 2GB - Today show) and the never ending saga of Burnin Bats in the Belfry, cant wait for the budget lol.
At least Pennys rain dance in the Murray Darling might have stopped her being hit by a truck. How many houses has Jenny not built?
More crashes than a NASCAR 500.
At last, someone who can see the wood for the trees. As an ‘ordinary voter’ I would never vote a coalition party into government. We have had more done by the labor party in two and a half years than Howard did in twelve. After all, he gave millions to rich people with horses and nothing to starving old age pensioners.Tony Abbott is not popular, and the media shoving him down our throats will not make him any more palatable. Roll on the election and let’s vote out the obstructionists in the senate.
Perhaps this demonstrates the rather low standard of political journalism in Oz,I expect better from the non-Murdoch media.
Betty - I’m one who wishes that Wilson Tuckey would ‘buzz off’. There should be an age limit for anyone standing for election and I’m one who is hoping Tuckey does not get nominated for office again. It is many years overdue for him to retire. Those of us in his electorate are practically disenfranchised!
@Bernie Mac, love your work champ.
Here I sit broken hearted, spent a Penny and only farted.
Rocky, not sure what you mean. Perhaps you could clarify so I could respond.
“The Essential survey polled more respondents and had a lower margin of error than Newspoll, making it a more reliable gauge of current voting intentions.”
Nonsense. One does not obtain a “more reliable gauge of current voting intentions” merely by surveying more people. A margin of error calculation assumes the sample is random, which it isn’t. Essential Research’s samples are drawn from a panel of volunteers, and are thus skewed towards the kind of person who signs on to such a thing. Equally, Newspoll’s samples are skewed towards the kind of person who owns a fixed telephone line and agrees to volunteer responses to questions about politics. Both must weight their data before publishing a result, at which Newspoll has immensely more experience and a track record that has shown it to be reasonably accurate over dozens of state and federal elections. Given that Essential’s results have been consistently more favourable to Labor, the media is entirely within its rights to be skeptical about them. It began publishing voting intentions figures in 2008 and has never been tested by an election result.
Policies? Why does the Liberal Party need them? After all they have the Divine Right of Rule (DRR) even when in Opposition. Give us back our Government. Now!
Can New Matilda answer the question, or at least speculate on, whether Rupert Murdoch has told his editors, “go easy on Abbott, and stick the boot into Labor”?
I am certainly no longer the unquestioning Labor supporter I was nearly thirty years ago, when Bob Hawke ruffled my hair playfully as I queued for his autograph after a campaign speech (I was in primary school), but Murdoch has been known to choose sides, and mostly plumps for the more conservative one.
In case you didn’t know.
William, I am not arguing that Essential Research’s methodology is better, merely that it polls more respondents and has a lower margin of error. No polls have a completely random sample, but the more respondents you poll, the less likely that sample is to be skewed.
Couldn’t agree more Ben. The closer to the election we get - the more Abbot will bring up memories of Mark Latham.
Rudd’s lessening popularity is just a sign that voters are begining to wake up to his flaws - flaws that I personally have always seen in the man. I find his overly rhetorical style and ‘nerd-on-a-power-trip’ angst tiresome. On the policy front, it’s been being a mixed bag - but what did people expect? Politics to stop being politics all of a sudden. I don’t think so.
The polls are a collective acknowledgement that the business of Australian politics is business as usual. Rudd is no groundbreaker.
I have to wonder about the ‘preferred PM’ question. It’s really quite hard to believe that when people answer this question they are actually saying they want the other guy. It seems to me they’re just saying ‘this dude is giving me the shits’.
Ben Eltham,
I realize now that my comment is ambiguous,I wasn’t referring to the quality of your article but to the general standard of political journalism in Oz. A senior’s moment. I agree with your observations, in my opinion many journalists are either too lazy or ignorant to check the source documentation or get an expert’s interpretation- there are many traps in statistics.
The Murdoch media will usually attempt a pro-Coaltion spin,sometimes verging into self satire, I expect a better standard from the non-Murdoch media,particularly the ABC,however I’m often disappointed.
Betty, I want Wilson Tuckey to open his mouth freely and often. I want people to know what an Abbott government would really be like. I’m sorry you have to live in his electorate but I live in the same city as Tony Abbott. We all have our crosses to bear.
PMB. I agree with David Skidmore. The more the likes of Wilson, Barnaby and The Mad Mysogynist Monk mouth off the more often they will stick their foot in it. In fact, I’d like to see more free ranging comments from the likes of Minchin and Bronwyn Bishop on issues such as climate change, industrial relations etc. Lets really find out what they all think. Throw in a little John Howard and we have a cocktail of ultra conservative flat earthers. On the other hand we don’t hear so much from Joe Hockey these days.
Frankly, I will never again buy The Australian Newspaper because of its glaring bias. The popular media has given Abbott a dream run and because of Abbott’s background as a journalist (on The Australian) he knows how to manipulate the media and grab those headlines. I wonder about the media advice Rudd is receiving and hope that he sharpens up once we get right into the election campaign.
Well written and balanced, but it does not help me to cast my vote, when it comes to Canberra, which end of the turd is cleanest?
Sorry to be pedantic: “which end of the turd is cleaner”?