The latest Newspoll has the government recovering by 4%. This could be a result of sampling error. Since July this year Newspoll has given a series of results that have clustered around a two-party preferred vote of 56 Labor, 44 Government. This most recent result of 55 to 44 is therefore well within the sampling error of plus or minus 3%.
Which doesn’t mean that it is a product of sampling error. My hunch is that the government’s position has improved for two reasons – APEC and leadership speculation.
APEC changed the conversation to a subject which favours the government – foreign affairs. Foreign affairs is one of the few areas where the government maintains a lead over the opposition in the public mind. So, while they have generally this year been arguing about issues like health, education, training, climate change and infrastructure which favour Labor, for a change they got the agenda right.
Who knows, Kevin Rudd’s polished Mandarin tutorial may have even lost the ALP ground. I suspect most voters understand that there is more to foreign affairs than currying favour with just one, albeit large, country. Howard’s battlers were never comfortable with Keating’s pitch of Australia as an Asian country, and his toadying to objectionable Asian regimes like Suharto’s and Mahathir’s.
While leadership speculation showed the government in a poor light, it also confirmed in most people’s minds, mine included, that we’d better start getting used to the idea of a Rudd government. Which means that the Rudd government now becomes an issue. As every state campaign in the last two years has confirmed, it’s easiest for a government to win if the opposition is the issue, this would also have had an effect too.
The challenge now for the government is to take the swing beyond the margin of error. Peter Costello made a good start at that this morning when he quipped that Kevin Rudd had already had his campaign launch (although the election has yet to be called) and that the way he was going he’d be having his victory party next weekend. Perhaps the Treasurer has been playing Achilles, and now that the PM has definitely said he’ll hand over the mantle of power, he’s decided to stop sulking. A few one-liners like that, repeated ad nauseum, could really make a difference in the polls. Even then, I suspect they’ll still need a “mean nasty and tricky” Trojan horse strategy if they want to make the citadel of government again.
One thing they need to do is to change the media interpretation of these polls. This poll does not show a significant recovery in the government’s vote any way you look at it, and if people think that it does, then attention will start shifting back to the government, which is the last thing Howard wants or needs. Some journalists may think they’re doing Howard a favour by boosting his election chances. Labor and Rudd will hope that they continue to think so.