Peter Tucker tries to make sense of the latest EMRS poll which shows support for the Labor government way below that of the March 2006 election. Also worrying for the government is the low personal popularity ratings for Paul Lennon, while the Liberals Will Hodgman enjoys 52% satisfaction.
THE latest EMRS poll is out for February (see www.emrs.com.au) and it continues the trend of bad news for Labor and cautious good news for the Liberals.
The primary result is: Labor 30, Liberal 28, Greens 17, Others 3, Undecided 22.
Like most EMRS polls, this has a high undecided response which makes analysis difficult. Undecided can mean “don’t care” or “sod off”, so trying to gauge what this large portion of the sample would actually do at the ballot box is very much a guess.
One approach is to simply fold the undecideds back into the sample and assume their vote will be distributed in the same way as the rest of the respondents. Doing this results in the table below, which includes the March 2006 election and other subsequent polls (all undecided removed).
The general consensus amongst analysts is that undecideds will skew to the incumbent at an election in a greater proportion than an opinion poll indicates. My guess is that the “real” EMRS result would be closer to the most recent Morgan poll.
Nevertheless, this is still not a good result for Labor. One trend that it tentatively supports is that the gap between Labor and Liberal has narrowed and is becoming stubbornly stuck in single figures. It is still too early to say there is a definite trend that voters have not only come off Labor but have attached to the Liberals, but I am growing more confident with each poll that that is the case.
The EMRS poll also includes “beauty contest” results for how satisfied or unsatisfied voters are with how Lennon, Hodgman and Putt in their respective roles as leader. The results are:
Again, caution must be used in drawing assumptions from personal popularity polls. What do they actually mean? Voters don’t get asked these questions at the ballot box (note to Kevin Rudd). No one got elected for winning a popularity contest — it is primary votes that elect governments.
But most of us are probably not surprised to see that the premier is not enjoying the peak of popularity, given the succession of bad news stories for Labor lately, but it is interesting to see that Will Hodgman seems to be striking a chord with the electorate. His popularity is much higher than Rene Hidding ever achieved. This will be worrying for Labor because it strengthens the thesis that voters are willing to form an attachment with the opposition and to the leader as an alternative premier. Up until now, under the premierships of both Jim Bacon and Paul Lennon, it did not matter too much to Labor if they had a slump in the polls because the voters were not prepared to embrace the Liberal alternative. This win for Will Hodgman in the “beauty contest” over Lennon might just indicate that the Liberals are being taken seriously by the electorate.
As always, I will wait for trends to emerge from several more polls before I hang my hat on a prediction. I am prepared to say, however, that I think one or other of Lennon or Hodgman will not survive as leader by about mid 2008. The one with the consistently bad polls between now and then will come under immense pressure from their respective party colleagues. At the moment that is Paul Lennon, but he has recovered from bad polling in the past.
Peter Tucker has worked in Tasmania as an advisor for the Liberals in opposition and in ministerial offices for both Labor and Liberal governments. He is currently a freelance political commentator and PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania’s School of Government. http://www.utas.edu.au/government/postgrad/PhD/PT.html
Earlier, Peter Tucker on Online Opinion:
Winning five elections may be an ask too far
