The Poll Bludger

Verdicts on the debate in today’s papers divide neatly along organisational lines, with News Limited observers saying it was close and Fairfax giving a clear win to Rudd. The commentator who comes closest to calling it for Howard is Sid Marris: speaking with colleague Dennis Shanahan on a video at The Australian’s website, he judges that “John Howard was stronger, but Kevin Rudd didn’t suffer a loss”. Shanahan decries the “Rudd-centric” worm, and says only that the Opposition Leader “won because he didn’t lose”. Also on the video are Paul Kelly, who says Howard was “very much on top at the start but I think Rudd finished better”, and Sky News man-of-the-hour David Speers who gives the debate to Rudd “on points”. In the newspaper itself, Matthew Franklin gives Kevin Rudd a “narrow victory” in the face of a “well above par” performance by the Prime Minister. Doug Conway of the Courier-Mail calls it a draw, offering the wearily familiar assessment that “neither Mr Howard nor Mr Rudd made a disastrous blunder, nor did they land a lethal body blow on their opponent”. Only Mark Kenny of The Advertiser breaks ranks, saying Rudd “unquestionably had the better of it”, while echoing the customary caution that “the longer term political significance is unlikely to be great”.

By contrast, the headline in The Age tells us of “Rudd’s decisive win”. Michelle Grattan declares Rudd “the clear winner”, “sounding confident and convincing against an opponent whose energy flagged and temper flared”, while Tony Wright rates it “Rudd’s night on most fronts”. Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher reckons Rudd the “clear winner”, and says he has “cemented his claim as frontrunner”. The assessment of the Canberra Times is that Rudd won “because he didn’t debate. He had a plan to sell and he came, he saw and he sold”. In the other non-News Limited paper available to hand, The West Australian, a report by Chris Johnson and Shane Wright talks of Rudd “clearly getting the better of the Prime Minister”. Political editor Andrew Probyn also gives it to Rudd, saying the Prime Minister was “on the back foot … over WorkChoices, climate change, leadership and interest rates”.

The prolific in-house pollsters at the Adelaide Advertiser have turned in another poll from a South Australian marginal seat. This time it’s the outer southern suburbs seat of Kingston, won for the Liberals in 2004 by 114 votes and reckoned by even the most optimistic of party faithful to be gone for all money this time. The poll bears this out, showing Labor’s Amanda Rishworth leading Liberal incumbent Kym Richardson 45 per cent to 34 per cent on the primary vote and 56-44 on two-party preferred. The poll was conducted on Wednesday night from an impressive sample of 724. The Advertiser also brings us the interesting news that former state Liberal front-bencher Robert Brokenshire will run in Kingston as the Family First candidate. Brokenshire was reckoned to have been one of the less deserving Liberal casualties of the March 2006 election, losing his seat of Mawson to Labor’s Leon Bignell.

A thread for you all to discuss the debate as it happens. If you don’t like the company round here, there’s a live chatroom at Larvatus Prodeo.

Prior to the leaders debate at the 2004 election, I went to the trouble of unearthing poll results on the previous debates going back to 1984. The Hawke versus Peacock debate of that year was the first, as it was previously a well established item of conventional wisdom that debates had little to offer an incumbent. However, Bob Hawke could hardly refuse in 1984 as Labor had run television ads during the 1983 campaign mocking Malcolm Fraser for his refusal to play ball. The record since makes clear that Fraser’s reticence had been well founded, as incumbents have only managed two wins from nine starts. In fewer than half of the nine cases did the winner of a debate go on to win the election.

1984, November 26: Peacock 50, Hawke 37 (Spectrum poll).

1987: Once bitten, Bob Hawke chickens out, leaving John Howard’s supposed debating shortcomings unexposed for another decade.

1990, February 25: Hawke 46, Peacock 36 (Newspoll).

1993, February 14: Hewson 45, Keating 31 (Newspoll).

1993, March 7: Keating 44, Hewson 38 (Newspoll).

1996, February 11: Howard 50, Keating 36 (Newspoll).

1996, February 25: Howard 54, Keating 36 (Newspoll).

1998, September 13: No poll located, but reports of the worm suggest Beazley narrowly defeated Howard.

2001, October 14: Beazley 55, Howard 35 (Newspoll).

2004, September 13: Two-thirds of Nine’s studio audience gave it to Latham over Howard.

It should be noted that Channel Nine clearly botched the job of assembling an audience of undecided voters at the 2004 debate, as the behaviour of the worm made clear. Particular notice was taken of a green-haired young gentleman in the audience who looked like nobody’s idea of a person who was considering a vote for Howard. Nonetheless, the overwhelming weight of published opinion, including my own, was that Latham had indeed put in the more confident performance.

A very encouraging result for the government from Westpoll in today’s West Australian, which has the Liberals holding firm in their Perth marginals of Stirling and Hasluck and set to win Cowan from Labor with a 5 per cent swing. The poll was conducted between Monday and Thursday with samples of a little over 400 for each seat. This is the second electorate-level poll Westpoll has conducted, and both have shown the Liberals travelling much better in these three seats than Westpoll’s regular statewide polling would suggest. If the overall 3 per cent swing indicated in today’s poll was replicated statewide, the two-party split in Western Australia would be at least 58-42 in favour of the Liberals. The last two statewide surveys showed Labor leads of 51.6-48.4 early last month and 53-47 early this month.

• Galaxy has released further findings from yesterday’s poll, which can be viewed through this nifty graphic.

• Writing in The Age, Rod Cameron notes a particular concentration of the part-time working mothers targeted by the Coalition’s tax policy in the important Victorian seats of Deakin, La Trobe, Corangamite, McEwen and McMillan. Cameron also includes Solomon on his list of marginal Coalition seats which Labor can’t take for granted, which I had only previously heard suggested by Matthew Franklin and Brad Norington of The Australian.

• Greg Roberts of The Australian reports that both parties’ polling has Nationals incumbent Paul Neville holding a 55-45 lead over Labor candidate Garry Parr in the Bundaberg-based seat of Hinkler. Roberts’ article paints an unflattering picture of Parr’s campaign efforts which recalls the media-shy performance of Ed Husic, Labor’s disastrously unsuccessful candidate for Greenway at the 2004 election. Anecdotal evidence is also presented of strong local feeling over the council amalgamations issue.

• Shortly after dumped Labor member Gavan O’Connor announced he would attempt to hold his seat of Corio as an independent, Labor has promised to add $45 million to its existing funding plans for the Geelong Ring Road.

• Joe Hildebrand of the Daily Telegraph notes that the need to respond to the Coalition tax package caused Kevin Rudd to scrap “early rough plans” for “a sweep across the country from Brisbane to Sydney to Adelaide and Perth”. The only Liberal marginal seat he has found time to visit so far has been the Adelaide electorate of Kingston, reckoned by most to be a certain Labor gain.

• The Sky News Election 07: Agenda program last night broadcast a debate between Joe Hockey and Mike Bailey, the Liberal and Labor candidates for North Sydney, which you can hear as a podcast.

• George Megalogenis of The Australian notes that the behaviour of the major parties indicates they believe “working women are fibbing when they tell opinion pollsters they prefer increased public spending over another round of tax cuts” (can’t find the article online but I’m sure it’s there somewhere).

• After some invaluable advice from readers last month on reducing bandwidth costs, this vehicle is running a good deal more efficiently than it used to. Nonetheless, the announcement of the election has brought a further surge in traffic, so I am again having to shell out extra for the privilege of staying online until the end of the month. Please click on the PayPal button on the sidebar if you would like to make a contribution (I should acknowledge that whenever I make this plea, the resulting influx is enough to cover my costs with a fair bit to spare). To clear up a common point of confusion: you do not need a PayPal account to donate, you simply have to click “continue” where it says “Don’t have a PayPal account?” at the bottom left.

Morgan has released two polls at once: its normal weekly face-to-face poll, conducted last weekend (largely or entirely before the election announcement), and a phone poll conducted over the past two nights. The former had Labor’s lead at 57-43, down from 57.5-42.5 the previous week, while the latter has it at 55.5-44.5. The respective samples were 850 and 598. The more recent poll shows a 4.5 per cent increase in the combined minor party vote, which was down in both Galaxy and ACNielsen.

As foreshadowed earlier this evening by a cunning stuntman in comments, ACNielsen shows Labor’s two-party lead narrowing to 54-46 from 56-44 earlier in the month. Primary vote figures suggest rounding accounts for part of the 2 per cent shift – the Coalition is up from 40 per cent to 42 per cent, but Labor also is up from 47 per cent to a formidable 48 per cent. Here’s a table of ACNielsen’s recent results. In typing the results over the template from my earlier Galaxy table, I was struck by how similar the two series have been.