gillard surges over abbott as preferred pm, page-70

Eagle and others getting all excited would do well to read the 2 articles I post here, it puts things in perspetive, though not the perspective that the Labor voters want....

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/better_pm_over_25_years/

Better PM: it’s … interestingReturn to Mumble Blog
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August 2012| 68 Comments

One of the mysteries of Australian politics, and there are quite a few to choose from, is the emphasis political players put on “better prime minister” (or “preferred prime minister") as an indicator of electoral success.
The party players, particularly the Labor ones, seem to actually believe it is more important than voting intentions—and so, therefore, do the journalists.
(In today’s Newspoll Tony Abbott is ahead of Julia Gillard 38 to 36 and the Coalition leads 54 46 two-party-preferred. Tables here.)

It is an article of faith, but really it’s just a question the published pollsters decided to throw in a few decades ago.
Better PM was a large reason Kim Beazley lost the Labor leadership in late 2006 despite his usually leading the two-party-preferred vote.
“Mate, we can’t win with these numbers” people with names like “Joel” told their colleagues and the press gallery.
During the 2010 federal election I had a go at debunking the idea that it meant much.
The incumbent Gillard led comfortably on the measure throughout that campaign; in the end the vote result was a tie (and under optional preferential voting the Coalition would have formed government).
Abbott first hit the lead as better PM in June 2011 and since then has led more often than not (18 out of 26 occasions). Whenever Gillard nudges ahead, her fans take it as a sign she is still in the game.
In Victoria, opposition leader Ted Baillieu was never within cooee of premier John Brumby as “better premier” (nor of Steve Bracks before him) but he won in 2010. Bracks never approached Jeff Kennett before defeating him in 1999.
If it were a pointer to electoral success, it might go the other way: an opposition leader who boasts high better PM/Premier (and satisfaction ratings) tends to also have artificially inflated voting intentions that are destined to decline as election day approaches.
Kevin Rudd in 2007 is a good example, with record satisfaction and better PM ratings (for an opposition leader) routinely leading by 15 to 20 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote throughout the year, but on election day winning by a more modest 5.4 per cent.
And of course Abbott in 2010 trailed by a large margin as better PM but performed better on the day than polls had suggested.
Having said all that, it is an interesting measure. The fact that some people, sometimes many people, indicate they intend voting for one side (usually the opposition) but actually prefer the other leader (the incumbent) as PM is, well, worth noting. It says something about attitudes to authority and, perhaps, an inability to imagine the opposition leader actually in office.
It being a touch over 25 years since Newspoll first asked respondents this question, here is a graph of “better PM” over that time. You will probably need to click for larger popup.
Brown is prime minister and blue opposition leader (regardless of party).


In the early days it wasn’t regularly measured—only in campaigns in 1987 and 1990.
To assist following the graph, this table has prime minister and opposition leader combinations since 1987.



Rudd’s prime ministership holds the record, but we of course don’t have Bob Hawke’s early years, nor Malcolm Fraser’s, Gough Whitlam’s .... (I imagine Fraser would have scored highly against Whitlam over 1976 and 1977.)
Howard’s trajectory was unusual. He started high and had a good first year—gun laws, “tough” first budget and unionists running amok at parliament house come to mind as highlights—but then started sinking and in late 1997 his invitation to the country to join him on his “tax adventure”, ie the GST, went down like a lead balloon.
In 2001, September 11 and Tampa etc, and his reaction to them, turned him into the unblinking “Man of Steel” and he remained that right until the end. (Rudd regularly beat him on better PM but Howard’s satisfaction ratings stayed high.)
And note Howard as opposition leader was generally a bit above Paul Keating, but not during the 1996 change-of-government campaign.
Better PM is no predictor of electoral success. The best quantitative indicator we currently have at our disposal is, not surprisingly, voting intentions.

And this;

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/its_voting_intentions/

Voting intentions the only predictorReturn to Mumble Blog
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Mumble Blog | 22

July 2010| 33 Comments

Here are a couple of questions, the correct answers to which are the opposite of what you might expect.
During the 1996 election campaign, which leader out of prime minister Paul Keating and opposition leader John Howard led on Newspoll’s “Better Prime Minister” rating?
And back in 1993, who was preferred between Keating and opposition leader John Hewson?


That’s right, Hewson generally led in 1993 (by a bit) and Keating in 1996 (a bit also). But you’ll recall Labor under Keating won in 1993 but lost (big time) in 1996.
The tables below show these and the primary vote support from January to March in both years. Newspoll didn’t publish two party preferred votes then. Asterisk (*) means during the election campaign.


Keating, Howard and Hewson
Many commentators talk about the “crucial” better (or preferred) prime minister ratings. Some even say it is more important than voting intentions.
Others reel off approval ratings, who voters believe “deserves to win” or who they “expect to win”.
I reckon all of these things are interesting, but are not very useful when trying to anticipate an election result. Only voting intentions are - along with your own judgement.
It’s the job of the leader and their party to get votes at the ballot box, whether they do it by impressing people, repelling them, dragging their opponent down, making voters laugh or cry.
Phoning people to ask who they will vote for is an imprecise activity, but at least the question is directly relevant.
Until the late 1960s, the rare published Australian opinion polls usually only showed (primary) voting intentions. But if you’ve got that person on the line you may as well throw in other stuff, so some questions were imported, mainly from the United States where voting intentions makes no sense between campaigns.
Others were thought up by pollsters because they thought they’d be worth knowing. Which they are, but a logic developed that because they’re there they must be predictors.
I’ve never seen convincing evidence that any of them are better predictors than voting intentions.
Yet some reports of polls lead with better prime minister ratings.
In theory, if we could measure everything voters are thinking we could predict all sorts of stuff. But that’s not really possible yet.
From late February 2007 until the election in November that year, Kevin Rudd led John Howard as better prime minister, usually comfortably, and was way ahead in voting intentions. In the final days of the campaign the vote margin narrowed and the result was more modest than ten months of surveys had suggested.
Yet at the previous change of government, Howard’s more modest opinion poll vote lead was approximately realised on polling day.
So maybe being “better PM” ends up being a drag on the vote. Or put another way, it artificially inflates voting intentions. But that’s just a maybe.
Between now and August 21, don’t be distracted by the embroidery. It’s voting intentions that matter.