tonys momentus pre election declaration., page-34

S of BL as I have posted several times before Labor was soaring until about four months before the election. The reason they fell from grace was due to two major factors,doing nothing about climate change and trying to introduce the original version of the mining tax.
These two issues sunk them to an extent they were set to lose and in desperation dumped Rudd who had been starting to make some poor decisions. I don't know if dumping Rudd helped them and there is evidence that they actually lost more seats in Queensland than they would have if he had remained PM. But be that as it may...we will never know for sure. Another factor working against them was the unpopularity of the state labor governments in Qld and NSW although the state coalition or LNP is unpopular in those states too.

Now the Coalition would not have picked up votes Labor lost through inaction on climate change as they went to the Greens. What they did pick up was voters who changed from Labor to Liberal because of deep concerns about the proposed mining tax, disatisfacion with state labor in Qld and NSW and possibly the dumping of Rudd.

What this boils down to is that Labor almost handed victory to the Coalition in the last few months of their term. The coalition did not gain votes because of policy or performance and Abbott remains an unpopular leader (right wing liberal diehards excepted). The evidence for this is the success of Greens and Independants and the high informal vote which indicates some former Labor voters protested that way instead of switching sides.
In fact looking at the national 2PP very few voters indeed switched directly from Labor to the Coalition though there was considerable variation between seats.

There that is my considered and frank opinion of what happened.
Personally I am happy with the result and I hope this new parliament works out for everyone.

Dave R.