Newspoll: 57-43

Lateline has reported that tomorrow’s Newspoll will show Labor leading 57-43 on two-party preferred. However, the big news from the survey comes from the preferred prime minister ratings: Rudd 70 per cent, Nelson 9 per cent.

UPDATE: The Australian’s graphic here. Note the question on the stolen generations apology, which puts overall support at 64 per cent. It would be interesting to see a state-by-state breakdown, because Westpoll’s survey of WA voters (published in The West Australian on February 11) showed 44 per cent in favour against 46 per cent opposed. Elsewhere in The Australian, that shameless Labor booster Dennis Shanahan reports that Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister rating has “overtaken the previous highs of Mr Hawke, on 60 per cent, and Mr Howard, on 67 per cent” – but with respect to Hawke, it must be remembered that the peak of his popularity was in 1983 and 1984, and that Newspoll did not commence operations until 1985.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

627 comments on “Newspoll: 57-43”

Comments Page 3 of 13
1 2 3 4 … 13

  1. Keatingesque? I think you miss the point. The public want to know that their political leaders can stand up for themselves. Afterall, if an aspiring leader won’t risk something to rise to the top, if they won’t speak up for themselves at least, how can they be relied on to speak up for the country? Costello proved he was unwilling to risk anything at all. Vanity, all vanity and complaint.

  2. Costello proved he was unwilling to risk anything at all.

    1. He never had the numbers.

    2. Howard said it so succinctly: disunity is death.

  4. Heaven forfend that this be construed as standing up for Costello, but I do tend to think that by the time the way was clear for him to challenge (at APEC) and he knew he had the numbers, the leadership was more trouble than it was worth.

  5. Disunity is death? Well Howard would say that, wouldn’t he. He was the beneficiary of unity. In their unity they perished anyway. What was required was action and what the delivered was excuses. Good riddance to the whole slovenly lot.

  6. No 103

    Death to a much lesser degree. I personally never thought Costello could win. The polling showed it, his parliamentary colleagues opposed him and thus any “courageous” challenge to “knife” Howard would have been futile and an electoral disaster.

    Again, all this noise about courage and conviction to dispose of Howard is simply a cynical ploy by the Left, who ultimately wanted to see the total destruction of the Coalition.

  7. Well GP, we’ll never know if Costello could have won. The certainty was that Howard would lose. Even a blind blogger like me could see it coming. But the Liberals generally and even Costello himself preferred to let Howard carry the can in the end. Talk about a bunch of lemmings.

  8. If Costello had challenged in 2006, before it was too late, the changeover could have been conducted in an orderly fashion, without unseemly, panic-driven haste.
    By the time of APEC, this was no longer a possibility, notwithstanding Costello’s status as invertebrate.
    Too many Libs bought the mythology surrounding Howard, including the little man himself. He was neither a much-loved leader, nor a great statesman, and still less a ‘master politician’. It is to the ALP’s everlasting shame that they were too ineffectual to defeat him earlier.

  9. Generic Person, could not the same thing, mutatis mutandi, be said of the right in respect of Rudd’s “inexperience” and concocted “associations” with Burke? Protesting to much is becoming one of your hallmarks!

  10. But the Liberals generally and even Costello himself preferred to let Howard carry the can in the end.

    It was all a question of timing. If Downer was correct in his assessment, Howard would have resigned on his own volition had the MacLachlan affair not occurred. In the extended Downer interview on the 4 corners website, he argues that what changed Howard’s strides was the overwhelming party support in the aftermath of the MacLachlan revelation that he should continue as leader.

    By September 2007, it would have been seen as an act of desperation on the part of the LNP to switch leaders, and also an act of cowardice on Howard’s part if he resigned. He’d rather have lost than whimped before the fight. And to some extent, you’d have to agree that the pages of history would not be kind on an act of cowardice of that magnitude.

  12. No 109

    I’ve already said thrice that the LNP should move on from Burke given the release of emails indicating no mischief on the part of the PM.

  13. Yes, and I agree with you, but the fact remains that it is still the current chosen weapon of the right, ineffective as it may be, and it is just as cynical a ploy as to brand Costello a coward for failing to challenge Howard when all hope of electoral victory was gone by the time of APEC and he didn’t have the numbers anyway.
    The same could not be said of 1996 however

    I said in an earlier post that you had significant skills in imperceptively changing the line of an argument when it suited, and my admiration of your ability to do so certainly hasn’t been diminished by your most recent efforts.

  14. Costello had his only chance. He did not take it. It would not have happened in the earlier Howard years of electoral success.

    Costello’s chance was Tampa etc. He did not move. To the backbench. Showed no backbone, no principle. He had every opportunity to denounce or show that he did not back the Howard agenda. He had every chance, if he had the guts to move away from the Howard necklace, to back the Apology, to decry the Pacific Solution, to forward his own view over Iraq ….must I go on?

    Costello did not take the chance. Did not move to the backbench, make a stand, ask that others stand for him. Show that he could lead.

    Not that his judgment was wrong. What is not admitted is that he did not have the conviction. Who, then, would follow?

    I wonder to this day what Howard had, apart from ruthlessness. Not principle.The Liberals in any event did not seek principled behaviour. Winning is what they sought.

    Maybe a new leader could have turned their attitude. It was never Costello.

    He never tried.

  15. No 114

    There you go again, back to your old courage and conviction argument.

    The fact of the matter is that showing conviction does not mean spitting the dummy and heading to the back bench and thus destabilising the party. Doing that doesn’t show leadership, it demonstrates disloyalty, disunity and obnoxiousness so perfectly exuded by Paul Keating. The ALP supporters seemingly have no concept of loyalty and its vast importance, especially in this context.

  16. Yes, and I agree with you, but the fact remains that it is still the current chosen weapon of the right, ineffective as it may be,

    I think part of the issue is that the Government has been in for scarcely three months and aside from the squabbles over the abolition of WorkChoices, the Opposition is starved for tact in terms of deriving credible criticisms of the PM and the Government.

    Rudd has essentially suffocated the Opposition with seemingly endless bipartisan causes that Burke was practically the only thing left to pursue. Naturally, I disagree with that position because there is frankly nothing mischievous about the PM’s dealings with Burke. But, I can understand why Nelson has chosen to keep attacking Rudd about it with as much hyperbole as possible.

  17. Also, on the subject of the latest Newspoll, my original thoughts about Nelson’s viability have been confirmed. I am a supporter of Turnbull and see him as the very likely successor to Nelson within the next 18 months.

  19. Crikey Whitey, do not mistake Peter Costello for anyone with social scruples, or for anything other than a political paranha awaiting its next feed. See his brother Tim if you are looking for compassion and respect for human dignity.

    Costello may have made errors of judgment over the last 11 years but they were just that, coupled with bad timing. Costello was every bit as ruthless as Howard and did not lack the courage and acceptance of consequences that goes with ruthless ambition. But he was a pragmatist on self preservation issues.

    It would have been pointless, and in my view an act of self immolation, for him to challenge openly for the Liberal leadership after Howard won Government. He had no numbers and no hope and he knew it. Second position was always going to be better than the back bench.

  21. I do not mistake Peter Costello, Fulvio.

    I say again, no principles. No qualities of leadership. No truths one could follow, particularly because none were demonstrated.

    Costello’s only hope was ever to demonstrate beliefs and principles, along the lines of his admirable brother.

    For Peter,clearly impossible.

    Interesting, really. Happens in my own family. Why? Don’t know.

  23. I say again, no principles. No qualities of leadership. No truths one could follow, particularly because none were demonstrated.

    I think that’s an unfair assessment. It’s difficult to contemplate or judge a person’s leadership qualities when they aren’t in a position of leadership, especially in an environment in which there was the overwhelming authority and domineering presence of John Howard.

  24. i think Peter really deigned himself above having to fight for the leadership.

    i think he really thought that the Liberal Party were lucky to have the Great Man in their Party and it was up to them to come to their senses and GIVE him the job.

    Ego is a wonderfully destructive thing…and between Howard and Costello it was in ample enough supply to leave the Liberal Party and the country in a distant second place.

  25. The Costello problem is either he believed and backed JWH policies or he didn’t. If he did then, as the 2nd in charge, he deserves to shoulder some of the responsibility for the electoral defeat. He was taken around on a lead by John as the nations next PM for the duration of the campaign.

    If he didn’t and he believed that the party was placing itself in a losing position, then surely he owed it to the party and himself to present an alternative vision of where Australia would head under his stewardship He failed to do that, probably because he lacked courage or couldn’t be bothered with the hard work this entailed. Which is basically lacking leadership when it was really required of him.

  26. Everything I ever needed to know about Peter Costello, I learned tonight when I saw his smug sleight-of-hand over the Maclachlan note. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he’d given Ian the green light to drop Howie in the poo. Even now, he wants people to think that he was a million miles away, that his fingerprints won’t be found at the scene, that it’s all someone else’s doing – that he behaved properly and that he can’t be held responsible if other people feel outrage at his ill-treatment – and act accordingly.

    What a schmuck.

  28. “1. He [Costello] never had the numbers.”

    Costello wasn’t foreman PM material. If he was he would have worked to get the numbers, which is something he apparently never did. Cossie was more a prince waiting for the king to topple off the throne, only when it finally happened he discovered that the people much preferred a ‘republic’ run by a new PM.

    I’d give Cossie credit for recognising his limitations if they weren’t driven by a combination of laziness and ‘born to rule’ arrogance. Not that he was the odd one out in the sloth department. Howard’s mob were far and away the most indolent govrnment we’ve ever had.

  29. VoterBoy of Over the Water @ 126 – It wasn’t just that he gave McLachlan to okay to blab to Milne. Milne was/is Costello’s tame journo so he almost certainly got Milne to badger McLachlan for the story in the first place.

  30. Howard – like Kennett before him – made sure that he got rid of or disempowered anyone who wasn’t a sycophant or was a threat.
    He never saw Costello as a real threat, which is why he tolerated his existence.
    He knew that Abbott, Nelson, Downer, et al were NOT leadership material, which is why he rewarded them so lavishly.
    I think he saw Turnbull as all talk, no substance – so accelerated him up the ladder to expose this. (Turnbull, sitting on the backbench and making grave statements he didn’t have to substantiate would be a bigger threat than Turnbull crashing and burning).
    When he was first elected as PM, my spouse and I were watching one of the first Question Time. Spouse pointed to the green leather blotter sitting on the table in front of JWH and said, “That’s all Howard wants. He just wants to be PM. He doesn’t actually want to do anything.”
    In the end, that was all Howard was still about – he just wanted to be PM.

  31. Nelson is your classic Liberal Leader. The better people get to know him the lower the numbers fall. The trouble is that once the nine percent level is reached how much better do we really want to know him?

  33. I thought that the most wierd thing about the four corners program was Hockey’s claim that his collegues, even after introducing workchoices did not realise that workers could be worse off. What were these clowns doing while the legislation was being debated?

  34. Nelson’s 9% is too low from Labor’s point of view. Perhaps Labor needs to let him score some points against them to give him a bit of a boost. The last thing they want is for Nelson to lose his job.

    On 4C, I agree with Costello that Howard would have stayed on regardless of the “McLachlan Affair”. Howard strung Costello along year after year, giving him just enough hope that he wouldn’t have to wait too much longer to become PM, but then stretch it out a bit longer. I don’t think Howard would ever have stepped aside while he thought he could win.

  35. most telling point of 4 corners
    Costello
    “we had 50 opinion polls straight where we did not win one,not one!”

    back in mar 07 was when this all started boiling and i said on ozpolitics something was afoot
    Nb i never said it was sweety -just locho’ getting (he thought) payback
    and they say labor warriors have long memories 😉

    re costellofalots suitability:

    Generic Person Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
    No 560

    Yes, but the party failed to mount a candidate to challenge him. There were murmurs about a “smooth transition” to Costello, but neither Costello or anyone else were effective in accruing party support.

    Costello himself has revealed even prior to tonight’s documentary that he didn’t have the numbers for a challenge.

    gusface Says:
    February 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
    560
    it only takes two functioning ones

  37. to zedder on the last post

    I am very clear on the political compass mate (or woman),..Ron Paul is far libertarian..of course there are many positions that you can take before you get to that…..GP is such a person, needs to be extreme and mutually exclusive to one side…that is like a socialist/communist. Given that the mainstream left have come into social democracy there are not many people who are now one dimensional to the left…….the dominant ideology is right wing fundamentalism – their socialism if you like. You never see this critique from the right……..now its there turn to come right in and learn to take from a broad ideological base…

    You seemed to have missed my point, or maybe I did not express it correctly

    see http://www.politicalcompass.org

  38. John Quiggin has a good explanation of the game Hockey was playing on 4 corners

    “In terms of policy, the most startling revelation was Joe Hockey’s claim that members of the Cabinet voted for WorkChoices, including the abolition of the “no disadvantage” test, and were then shocked (or pretended to be) that people were disadvantaged. This news ought surely to sink resistance to Labor’s reforms, and may indeed have been intended to achieve this purpose.”

    http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/02/18/howard-haters/

  40. Crikey Whitey, way back on the other page you licked your chops at a Julia versus Julie match up. Well she sure gave her a slap in the parliament the other day about explaining some complex math to someone who couldn’t add up! LOL

    I’m pretty sure Ms Gillard is foreman (ie PM) material, and the way she handles even the most experienced journos is a revelation. Never gets flustered, never loses her poise, stays on message, answers the question, kneecaps the opposition, and all with a smile.

    She’s a class act compared with Ms Bishop, who is only in the job of Nelson’s fluffer until the Admiral sinks into single digits. Oh, yeah, that’s right, he’s arrived there already! LOL

    Abandon ship! Abandon Brendon!

  41. 138
    steve

    I think Hockey does not want to be the Opposition spokesdrone for keeping WorkChoices on life-support.

    He is so over it, having been the loyal front row forward who got thumped over and over, he just wants the whole WC thing to disappear down a drain and never be mentioned again.

    You can’t help but feel sorry for him, eh?

  42. 141 [You can’t help but feel sorry for him, eh?]

    Eh? It’s like watching an implosion that we had to have. Great entertainment but sorry, no I think more like eager anticipation of a much needed change. It was all so wilfully self inflicted insanity this workchoices debacle.

  43. What was most interesting about the 4 corners show was the level of arrogance and denial still consuming the libs. They cant bring themselves to consider issues of integrity (AWB. WMD, children overboard, Haneef, interest rate promises etc etc) as part of the reason for the defeat, as well as the obvious one- Kevin Rudd.

  44. On the newspoll results, it’s interesting to compare responses about the apology to the Stolen Generations with the Galaxy poll of 10 Feb (prior to the apology), which showed that 55% of Australians then agreed with the decision to say sorry, as against 69% who ‘somewhat support’ (25%) or ‘strongly support’ (44%) the apology now that it’s taken place (Newspoll).

    This shows the power of decisive and principled action — also, I guess, the capacity of the media to show people what the apology meant to those Indigenous people seated in the chamber and weeping as Rudd spoke — and the influence of public opinion as people watched in their workplaces and talked about the Stolen Generations and their families. So much for JWH’s mantra (always selectively used) that ‘the Australian people’ didn’t want (an apology, a republic, etc etc). He made us out to be so much worse than we are.

  45. Perhaps, in the next question time, Mr Swan could give Mr Turnbull some references to where economic definitions can be found. Alternatively, he could point out that Mr Turnbull, having studied only law and arts (like his predecessor), could get himself an economics degree. Not that he himself has one.

  46. The Westpoll figures were before the apology and would also reflect the enlightened views of people like our local Liberal member, Kalgoorlie MHR Barry Haase. The Broome Advertiser vox pop “street talk” had 5 out of 6 in favour. Perhaps not a representative sample but encouraging anyway.

  48. 145
    ViggoP

    Or perhaps Mr Swan could ask Mr Turnbull how doling out millions of public dollars to his mate for making rain with scientifically spurrious ‘technology’ is prudent fiscal policy?

    That should get a laugh or two.

  49. 147 [Maybe they sit in a back room plotting things]

    More likely they get the talking points sent from the Liberal Party at the same time.

  50. I think Swannie’s best response would be along these lines:
    “No ordinary Australian cares whether I understand economic terminology. All they care is that I work to keep interest rates, inflation and unemployment rates low. You guys can get yourselves in a knot about terminology; I’m going to concentrate on delivering.”

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 3 of 13
1 2 3 4 … 13