Newspoll two party preferred August 03 - August 04

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Another quickie graph - of Newspoll's two party preferred support from August last year to August this year.

Latham won leadership ballot on December 2. The survey before that was taken between Crean calling the ballot and it taking place, when Labor was effectively leaderless. 

It took a while, but Latham eventually got a large lead; since then has been running out of puff. After that 'rogue' (fifth most recent) poll - apparently something called a 'delayed budget bounce' - he took the lead again, but has been ebbing downwards. If we ignore the 'rogue' the line is quite straight and heading in the government's favour.  Last Newspoll was 50-50.

We should note that in January this year Newspoll started asking for second preferences to calculate two party preferred. Until then they published a 'notional' set of numbers based on preference flows at the last election. The new (more correct, but still a bit shoddy) methodology seems to favour Labor (or rather, the old one favoured the Coalition), so in this respect - as in most - Crean was a little unlucky.

Can Marky Mark stem the tide? Is he anything other than a lumbering klutz? You know my position!