Summary and extracts
1. Polling figures released by two pollsters on Monday show Tony Abbott with the worst personal ratings of his career and among the worst of any federal Opposition Leader in Australian polling history.
2. Mainstream media have thus far failed to describe the Abbott leadership as “embattled”, a word considered to have great power in describing a struggling political leadership.
3. Abbott is an “embattled” leader by definition, irrespective of his party holding a slender and apparently fast-diminishing lead over Labor and irrespective of whether or not he faces an imminent challenge.
4. The term “embattled” has been quite liberally used for most other leaders who have been in difficulty by comparison.
[…]
Much worse was to come for Abbott in the evening’s Newspoll, news of which broke just after 10 pm with Abbott on an approval rating of 27 and a disapproval rating of 63, for a netsat of -36 (down eight points in two weeks.)
This represents:
* Abbott’s worst Newspoll approval rating ever.
* Abbott’s worst Newspoll disapproval rating ever.
* Abbott’s worst Newspoll netsat ever – and not by a small margin either (five points).
* The worst netsat for an Opposition Leader since the -39 recorded by Simon Crean in May 2003 (Crean was removed within six months).
* The worst Newspoll disapproval rating for an Opposition Leader since the 69 and 65 recorded by the soon-replaced Alexander Downer in December 1994, and the equal-seventh worst of all time.
[..]
It is thought that party leaderships are often terminal once the mainstream media start using the magic term “embattled” (“beleagured” works well too) to describe them. It doesn’t actually always hold, but frequent use of the term is a common part of a leadership feeding frenzy, and most leaders who receive it heavily do not survive. The term need not imply that a leadership is necessarily circling the drain. It just means there are multiple and serious problems affecting it.
Curiously, although Tony Abbott has been unpopular and gaffe-prone for ages, with his leadership now seemingly powerless to halt a polling trend back to the ALP, and with polling showing his own party’s supporters prefer Malcolm Turnbull, the press gallery have given him a completely free pass on the use of the E-word in the last year and a half. It is almost as if they are afraid to declare that he is struggling, in case Labor re-inserts foot in mouth and he wins the next election after all.
But if a net satisfaction level of -36, and the worst disapproval rating since the most embarrassing Opposition Leadership of all time (Downer’s) are not enough to bring out the E-word, then what is?
Read more http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/embattled-abbott-thirty-six-below-wave.html
Earlier “The Abbott Factor: Opposition Leader Ratings and Party Standing” http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/the-abbott-factor-opposition-leader.html
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