Bill Leak in the Oz

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December 13 Rudd's big jump, a Newspoll table

On Monday I reiterated my reckoning that Rudd is more likely to win the next election than not. I still favour the hypothetical Beazley leadership a bit more, but this has to do with Mr Rumsfeld's smorgasbord of things we know about things we know. With Beazo we knew alot: he would light no-one's fire but would not morph into Alexander Downer. 

A Rudd unknown that has become known is Shadow Cabinet - a big tick, better than Beazley's. Lots still remain unknown, for example how happy Ms Gillard will be playing second fiddle and whether Mr Crean starts bragging about being king-maker. Rudd just might have a Lord Downeresque meltdown, but this is highly, highly unlikely.

Anyway, yesterday's Newspoll has totally zero influence on my feelings: if Rudd had gotten no bounce whatsoever I would be just as confident. For all the carry on, particularly in the Oz, about the 'why' (eg Aussies love nerds), the reason Rudd got a jump was because that's what usually happens with a change of opposition leadership. (A large factor is often the sustained barrage of destabilisation that preceded it.)

Opposition leaders' initial Newspoll ratings

Above are Newspoll readings at past opposition changes and how they compared with predecessors' most recent ratings. Eg Rudd's satisfaction level is 13 points higher than Beazley's final one. Some two party preferreds are my calculations (where Newspoll didn't have any.) As we know, only one of Rudd's predecessors was ultimately successful.

Crean and Hewson are compared with final surveys during election campaign. Peacock did so poorly (satisfaction-wise) because (I think) no sooner was he installed than Wilson Tuckey and others were bragging about the coup (Wilson snickering about the lies he'd told) to Marian Wilkinson on 4 Corners.

December 12 Newspoll says 55 to 45

In the Oz. Don't have hardcopy, but presumably a decent drop in Green support.

December 11 My bets

Tallied all my 'undecided' Centrebets recently, and was surprised to see how much I've cumulatively wagered on Federal Labor over the last couple of years. Most recently snapped up $2.75. (Oz Politics has more on bets.)

They added up to more than expected - a dollar number with three digits, but close to having four. The total price works out to $2.60, and I feel quite confident of getting a return, more confident in a way than under Beazley, because while he was always likely to win if still around at the election, you never knew when the next bit of destabilisation would hit and what freak-show it might throw up.

Reshuffle

Reshuffle looks good, although Fitzgibbon in Defence must be the punch-line to a joke they're keeping to themselves. And Kim Carr in Industry ... both remind us of, three years ago, Michael Gordon in The Age innovatively narrating Simon Crean's re-installation in Treasury position:

'Simon Crean was always the obvious choice for the key job of being Mark Latham's shadow treasurer. The only question in Latham's mind was whether he would want it after all the knocks he has taken in the past two years.

When Crean told Latham at the weekend that he was up for the challenge, the new Opposition Leader's reaction was immediate and emphatic. "That's fantastic," he replied.'

But Gillard, with brilliant presentation skills and itching to fight on 'values', is perfect for the populist Industrial Relations portfolio.

Timing perfect

Unlike most, I reckon the timing of Rudd's elevation is close to perfect for him. In six months people will start tiring of him, but by then it will be quasi election campaign, which gives the opposition leader a natural platform. (Regarding timing: if he loses the next election, imagine how he'll look 12 months out from the 2010 election: nerdy, wordy, lost 'cut-through' long ago, Gillard/Shorten/whoever snapping at his heels.)

If you'd like to see a change of government, pray Rudd doesn't get Latham's sky-high approval ratings over the next six months and no-one calls him a 'conviction politician!'. Do look for two party preferred voting intentions as high as Beazley's or higher.

December 10 Sunday (Courier) Mail "poll" Some people in Brisbane - three hundred of them - are asked what they think of Kevin Rudd. Result: lots of them like him - almost as many as like John Howard.

December 9 Lemmings for Beazley!

Sounds like a lobby group that could meet in a phone-booth, and it is. Lemmings, of course, were Caucus members who voted for Latham in 2003. There was obviously a large Lemming component to the Rudd push, with public destabilisation by the same people whose names you never hear except when they're bagging Beazley: Sawford! Quick! Fitzwhatsis! Run from the Carr-Crean central office.

Published lists of who voted for each side on Monday are rubbery, and the one I used totalled to 50 for Rudd and 38 for Beazley, obviously not quite right.

Still, from what I can tell, four of the 2003 Lemmings voted for Beazley in 2006. Pictured above, they are Dick Adams, Catherine King, Daryl Melham and Penny Wong. [John Murphy should perhaps be there?]

Much larger in number, of course, were 2003 Beazley-voters who went for Rudd this time.

McMullan and Griffin (and no doubt others I can't recall) were encouraging Rudd to run when Latham went ga-ga in January 2005, so they're not surprises.

I welcome any corrections.

December 8 Shadow Treasurer?

Easily the most important frontbench position announced today will be the Shadow Treasury. Ranking candidates in order of desirability for the position might give, in descending order: Tanner; Swan; McMullan; Emerson; Crean; Gillard.

If Gillard gets it we'll know they've adopted a two election strategy. [Weekend update: we're still waiting. Last night on Lateline Grahame Morris recommended Gillard for the job. He once also said that Mark Latham was the only bloke who could take Howard on; perhaps in both cases he was trying it on.]

A quick recount of the 2004 election

The sums below are for people who assert the ALP "can't" win the next election if its first preference vote is around 40 percent, that it "must" get mid 40s to win and there's "no way" it will prevail if it trails the Coalition by two points in primary votes. 

Let us revisit the last election. In 2004, the ALP got 37.6 primary, the Coalition 46.7 and the rest 15.7. After preferences it was 47.3 to 52.7.  If 2.7 percent had voted first preference for Labor instead of the Coalition (and everyone else had voted the same) primary votes would have been 40.3 to 44 and two party preferred would have been 50 50. One more percent change would have given 41.3 to 43, 2pp 51 to 49. 

If Labor gets 50 50 at the next election, it might win, but probably not. With 51 to 49 it probably would.

It's not just Labor's primary vote that's important, but the gap between it and the Coalition's, plus of course preferences.

Barring Bob Brown falling under a bus, or a big jump in Family First support, Labor is very unlikely to win the primary vote at the next election. If it does, the result (absent, again, those scenarios) will be a landslide. More likely they will, as in 1987 and 1990, win while trailing on primaries.

Future opinion polls

Most new leaders get a bounce in the opinion polls. Latham was unusual in it taking a while, but eventually it came. But it's hard to know what a 'jump' would be from - Nielsen's 56 to 44?

On approval ratings, what usually happens is that the 'neither approve nor disapprove' goes up (quite understandably), disapproval goes down and net approval is in the positive. After that, provided Rudd doesn't have any Downeresque meltdowns, he should get decent approval ratings. (There's no time for destabilisation.) This will make some people say 'we told you so'. 

December 7 Thanks Prousy This is Matt Prous, a senior journalist at The Australian who has the gall to regularly make fun of Kevin Rudd's hair-cut.  Matt has a piece in today's Media Section about the role of Newspoll and the paper in Labor's leadership change, a small bit of which quotes me from an email exchange yesterday. Matt almost got my name right too. Thanks Prousy.

I'm also in the Canberra Times (name spelt correctly), on you know what.

• More on Mr Sawford

Something missing from Monday's Newspoll?

In the Oz, Matt mentions the leadership Newspoll published on Monday, the day Caucus voted, that showed Kevin-Julia much more popular than Kim-Jenny. On the same day, Fairfax papers carried a Nielsen showing Labor on 56 to 44. Both were taken on roughly the same days. The funny thing is that, as far as I can tell, Newspoll always in the past, when taking such leadership readings, has also taken voting intentions. Yet no voting intention numbers were published on Monday.

Just a thought, but did Newspoll take voting intention but the newspaper didn't like the result (because it showed something like Nielsen's)? [Update: I emailed Oz Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell, and he points out that it wasn't a regular Newspoll - and, no, they didn't take voting intentions.] 

December 6 Shock horror: journalist confused about elections and opinion polls

Many of Kim Beazley's problems were his own doing, but two things he couldn't help were: (1) many political journalists not understanding our voting system and opinion polls and (2) their compensating by falling back on trade 'truisms'. This matters, of course, because lots of Caucus members believe what they read.

Belatedly on my part, here's Jason Koutsoukis in last Saturday's Age.

Jason reckons this, and you've no doubt read it before: 

"To have any hope of winning next year's election, Labor would need a primary vote around the mid-40s" 

If that were true, they may as well pack up now. Labor has in the past lost with a 50 percent primary vote and has won with 40. What's important is (a) the difference between the Labor and Coalition primary votes, and (b) the flow of preferences. If the primary gap is 9 percent in the Coalition's favour, as in 2004, then Labor won't win. If it's only about two or less, and there's a high Green vote, they probably will. (You could say the opposition leader's job is to drive down the government support and increase their own. Mark Latham's biggest problem was that he drove so many voters into the safe arms of Howard - a warning to Ms Gillard.)

There's this purported evidence that Labor can't win with a primary vote of 40:

"In 1998 under Beazley, Labor won 40.10 per cent of the primary vote and 51 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, but still lost the election"

Earth to Jason: if that 51 had been off a primary vote of, say, 50, Labor would still have lost. That result was all about the spread (or lack thereof) of the two party preferred vote around marginal seats, and nothing to do with the the 40.1 per se (which was, incidentally, higher than the Coalition's primary vote).

And finally:

"Labor's poll numbers [have been] trending downwards over the past 12 months". 

That sentence is perfectly true if you replace 'downwards' with 'upwards'. In all opinion polls, whether you look at primary or two party preferred, Labor's vote was rising over the last twelve months.

Mark Latham benefited (until the election) from the opposite - commentators contorting to interpret numbers in his favour. Kevin Rudd should get that too ... for a while.

[Yes, I'm still cranky at Monday's vote.]

December 5 Swanee fought the numbers and ... A friend was at Canberra Airport early yesterday morning, before the leadership ballot, where he spied Wayne Swan animatedly speaking into his mobile phone. When he got closer, he heard Wayne shout: 'We're fucked!!' Apocryphal-sounding, but a true incident, apparently.

Deputy problems

The spoilt brats responsible for the Gillard part of the ticket don't think she should be deputy leader, they want her to be leader. They like Rudd no more than they liked Beazley, Gillard on Lateline last night told everyone to prepare for a different kind of deputy, Crean yesterday was already gnawing away. Maybe a sign of Rudd's authority will be how many of these characters float up to the front bench. 

Kevin's chances at the next election will be inversely related to both the amount of Julia's involvement in tactics and her word count. Let us cross fingers.

Excuses, excuses

When Latham came a cropper at the October 2004 election, the excuses from his team included: 

- we never really expected to win, it was always a two term strategy
- ten months was not long enough to establish ourselves
- at least the swing wasn't as big as the 2001 one
- the economy is too strong
- the government told lies
- too much dead-wood
- it's all everyone else's fault
- it's all Beazley's fault

Will we get the same late next year?

But something positive

Federation reform is a good idea politically, making virtue out of necessity - wall to wall Labor governments at state level. Wonder whose it was. 

December 4 On lying down with dogs, quite frankly

Kevin's been in the saddle for a couple of hours and already Team Julia gnaws at his authority:

'Simon Crean, former leader and a long-time ally of Ms Gillard, today said Labor had in the past placed too much emphasis on who led the party.

"I think it is very interesting, if people look from time to time at the polls, the way in which people, it would seem, have been able to relate already to the combination of Julia and Kevin," Mr Crean told ABC Radio.

"I think interestingly enough this is the first time people have been asked to make a decision on a team ... quite frankly I think that's probably a healthy development."'

How do you treat a Lemming infestation?

11:00am: Kevin Rudd is now ALP leader

Repaying the favours: might his 'Dream Team' look like this?

Shadow Treasurer: Julia Gillard        Foreign Affairs: Kim Carr        Finance: Joel Fitzgibbon       Immigration: Simon Crean         Education: Laurie Ferguson         Defence: Rod Sawford!      Health: Harry Quick

Revenge of the Lemmings, and a victory for the psephologically befuddled everywhere.

Nielsen says 56 to 44

Give 'em what they want?

In 1994, a Newspoll asked respondents who should lead the Liberal Party. Easily topping the list was Bronwyn Bishop on 39 percent. John Howard got 13. A year later he was leader.

Needless to say, Kevin Rudd is no Bronwyn Bishop. And, thankfully, no Mark Latham; Rudd obviously has a good idea about what it takes to win elections. 

Less fortunately, his running partner does have a large touch of the Lathams. The Fabian Society speech, about the necessity to 'fight on values' and 'the culture wars' comes, like Latham's famous 'muscle up' speech, from the commentators' handbook.  It buys into the Howard story and so boosts it. It's scary. (Goes down well in the party branches, but.)

December 3 Two frontbenchers One of these blokes is a quintessential Lemming who believes Mark Latham should still be leader. Failing that, he reckons Julia Gillard should be leader - but deputy will do for now. The Latham Diaries portrayed him as a funster who, along with our hero, left rude messages on Bob McMullan's voicemail. In today's ALP this man is a king-maker.

The other guy, on the other hand, seems to be a person of substance, interested in policy. He possesses economic gravitas and should, instead of Julia, be running for deputy leader.

December 2 On this day in 2003 ...

Three years ago to the day, Lemmings elected to the leadership one of the few Caucus members who would guarantee the Howard government another term. Who can forget the sight of the successful Latham emerging from Caucus ballot, surrounded by smirking Lemmings, all feeling very clever for sticking it to ... somebody or other? The kiddies had taken over the asylum. 

Several days before the 2003 Caucus ballot I posted these odds of Labor winning the 2004 election under the various leadership possibilities:

1. Simon Crean: Labor 2 to 1 to win
2. Bob Carr: even money (1 to 1)
3. Kim Beazley: Labor 1 to 2 to win
4. Mark Latham: Labor 10 to 1 to win
5. Kevin Rudd: 2 to 3 to win.

Rudd was the second most likely to succeed three years ago, and I reckon the same today. On top of his obvious attributes, his coming from Queensland is a bonus because that's where lots of seats need to be won. (Although as a reader once pointed out, at the 1980 election, when the Queenslander Hayden was leading, the vote didn't particularly swing in that state relative to others.)

All other things being equal, Beazley is still the best chance next year, but that's assuming a united team, which seems unlikely. Under Rudd-Gillard over the next 12 months, most journalists will remain, as today, psephologically challenged, simply taking and internalising whatever slant Dennis Shanahan puts on the latest Newspoll. Caucus members will still believe what they read. But, as Latham was, Rudd will be guaranteed unity until the election. As well, for people who think approval ratings mean something, the 30% or so of the electorate who are Labor true believers will probably give the new team a thumbs up, which will translate into high approval, if not necessarily higher voting intentions.

A Lemming problem

The main problem with Rudd is that he's the Lemming candidate. If he is to win, non-Lemmings will have to vote for him, but his prime public backers are same folk who spruiked Latham three years ago. Their script is the same; they have retribution on their minds; they are clueless - or don't care - about what decides elections.

Another problem is the running partner. We know that if Lemmings really had their way the ticket order would be reversed, but they'll settle for this for now. Gillard's an unreconstructed Lathamite, dead-set keen to fight the history and culture wars, to go in hard on 'values'. Brrr, scary. How about another deputy? 

Small mercies

But thank God for two mercies: Latham is no longer in parliament; and the one-man PR outfit Bill Shorten hasn't arrived yet.