2007 Federal Election Briefing #4

Overview

• The Coalition fight back may or may not have started but the ALP led by Kevin would’ve still won during June.

The Last Month

Has the PM and the Coalition turned the corner and begun the fight back? And has Kevin Rudd's cart begun to wobble with one to many unforced errors from the Union “bruvvas”?

The Liberal Party Federal Council meeting in Sydney during June had a much bigger impact than the Federal Budget. The morale of Liberal MPs and party activists were in particular lifted, admittedly of a low base. By the way the Council meeting had none of the buzz of the earlier ALP National Conference.

As expected the Prime Minister announced that the Coalition would implement a greenhouse gas Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) beginning in 2012, two years after the ALP ETS. The Coalition’s embrace of a market solution (but not the Kyoto Protocol) to climate change has seemingly neutered an ALP point of difference. On the other hand the message from the Council meeting that only the Federal Coalition can be trusted with the economics of implementing as ETS has not caught fire with voters. The extravagant claim that Peter Garrent’s supposed aspirational greenhouse gas reduction target would create the “Garret recession” also has apparently failed to gain traction.

While media and political commentary about climate change has diminished, this is unlikely to continue to the election campaign, if only because former Vice-President Al Gore is visiting Australia again.

Interestingly there would appear to now be another climate change political party, Conservatives for Climate and Environment (www.cfce.org.au) to challenge Patricia Newell’s Climate Change Coalition. Will CFCE become another Liberals for Forests which had such an impact in WA?

Whilst the Unions and in particular Union officials have created problems for Kevin Rudd, not reflected in the recent polls by the way, the PM has declared a national emergency in regard to child sexual abuse in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory also yet to be reflected in the published opinion polls. The “black UN helicopters” types all rushed to proclaim this emergency as this campaigns “Tampa”.

Also this month a poll of Senate voting intentions was released by GetUp (GetUp.org.au is an independent movement to build a progressive Australia modelled on the US Moveon.org).

Senate Voting Intention	Galaxy Survey Jun-07	Election Results 2004	Election Results 2001
ALP	38	35	34
Liberal / National Party	34	45	42
The Greens	13	8	5
The Democrats	1	2	7
Other Parties or Candidates	13	12	12

The results should be taken with a large grain of salt if only because the poll was used to launch a campaign by GetUp to remove the Coalition’s control of the Senate (Media Release available here http://www.getup.org.au/files/media/senatepressrelease.pdf) and voters rarely only think about the Senate so is the response real or a polling construct? As Poll Bludger commented the only really interesting fact is the collapse of the Coalition vote.

Newspoll – is it important?

The regular fortnightly Newspoll (www.newspoll.com.au) of voting intention is a staple of the Australian political and electoral landscape, and always has an impact in Parliament House, Canberra. Why is that?

Firstly, NewsPoll (and the other published polls) are all MPs and most Ministers (and their Shadows) have access to. They don't see internal party polling unless the Party Secretary shows them for some of nefarious purpose (see Leadership challenges). Usually not even the Party Leader sees all the polling. Only the Party Secretary and the Party's pollster know all about the polling. Internal party polling results and reports are distributed on a strict “needs to know basis”. This polling vacuum is filled by Newspoll and all the other public opinion polls.

Of course all the other electoral stakeholders and election junkies also have to rely only on the published polls as well.

Newspoll is important because firstly it’s national, and is commissioned by The Australian, the national newspaper and it appears each fortnight. Secondly, because the poll has the reputation of being reasonably accurate – this is of course contested by other pollsters including the new kid on the block Galaxy Research (www.galaxyresearch.com.au).

So remember, ALP and Coalition backbenchers are no more informed than you are on the polling and its implications.

Secondly, the trends are the important thing to track in any “horse race” poll, not the results. I suggest there is to much focus on the numbers each fortnight this far out from the election. In fact the coverage is a campaign tool being used to generate media coverage to create name recognition with voters. If there was no Newspoll, Denis Shannahan might have to find another story, and besides polling is a cheap regular story to fill in the gaps between the advertisements in The Australian.

The debate on the release of early polling is not unique to Australia; see the following story from the New York Times “The Limits of Early Polling” by Rrobin Tonner (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/us/politics/20web-toner.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print )

Thirdly, the Newspoll methodolgy can be criticised for at least one methodolical choice and that is to exclude voters who are “uncommitted” or “refused” from the survey. In other words the June 15-17^th poll is not of all voters but of 94% of voters (4% “uncommitted” and 2% “refused” were excluded). The support for the Coalition, ALP, Greens and Others are overstated by adding up to 100%. In the US, it would be expected that the majority of the “uncommitted” and “refused” would support the challenger, not the incumbent Government (it’s known as the Incumbent Rule). The exclusion is noted in the fine print by Newspoll but is another reason care should always be taken with individual polls, let alone the issue of margin of error. These differences in polling methodology and reporting (which include question design and degree of push) are known as “House Effects” and also add a margin of error and difference between polls.

Fourthly, another criticism not just of Newspoll but all published Australian opinion polls is the absence of a Right Track/Wrong Track question. In the US all major polls ask questions similar to "Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" (This example is from the Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. June 18-19, 2007. N=1,001 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4. http://www.pollingreport.com/right.htm ). As rule of thumb in the US incumbents are at risk once Wrong Track is higher than Right Track. In Australia there is only the Leaders performance question which is also tracked in the US. President George W. Bush has just crashed through 30% approval.

I'd suggest that if we had Right Track/Wrong Track results over time to add to the “horse race” and leaders’ performance results, the election picture would probably currently be a lot clearer.

Federal Division of Makin (SA) - Profile

SA Divisions	Margin %	Liberal Party Candidate	ALP Candidate
Kingston	0.1	Kym Richardson, MP	Amanda Rushworth
Wakefield	0.7	David Fawcett, MP	Nick Champion
Makin	1.0	Bob Day	Tony Zappia

There are three key Coalition marginal Divisions (all less than one per cent) in South Australia which the ALP must pick up. Makin is in the north eastern outer suburbs of Adelaide that abuts the foothills of the Adelaide Hills. It includes the suburbs of Tea Tree Gully, Modbury, Salisbury Heights and Para Hills.

Thanks to The Australian and the ABS, Census 2006 profiles for all the Federal electoral Divisions is now available.

Electorate by Numbers	Division of Makin	Ranking (Out of 150)
Household income weekly median	$911	64
Paying off home	42.2%	19
Renters	18.6%	134
McMansions	23.6%	94
Couples with dependent children	46.1%	62
Single parents	15.8%	83
Never known recession	31.0%	66
Grey voters	33.3%	79
Ethnicity	46.5%	57

It is known as a mortgage belt seat (ranked 19 out of 150), with a large proportion of the population in the area paying off home loans. It was won by Draper at the 1996 election when the Howard Liberal government was elected with a two party preferred margin of 4.8 percent, which was reduced to 4.6 percent at the 1998 election, then 3.8 percent at the 2001 election, then to only one percent at the 2004 election.

The Division of Makin will be an open seat with the retirement of the sitting Liberal member Trish Draper. Makin was created in 1984 and was held for the ALP by Peter Duncan until he was defeated by Trish Draper in 1996.

Interesting both major party candidates for the 2007 Election can claim to be successful businessmen.

The Liberal Party candidate is Bob Day, a businessman and a long term resident of the area. He is one of Australia’s leading home builders and business leaders having recently completed a term as National President of the Housing Industry Association.

Tony Zappia was the ALP candidate for Makin in the 2004 election when he reduced the margin to 1%. He is a former Australian national power lifting champion and has been Mayor of the City of Salisbury since 1997. Like all ALP candidates he spent 5 years as a political adviser before owning and operating his own gym. He lives in the region with his family.

The Greens candidate will be Graham Smith, who stood for the State seat of Newland within the Division at the 2006 SA election. In addition Family First who polled 4.9% in 2004, out polling the Greens, can be expected to stand especially as it is the heartland of the party in SA. Preferences from both are highly likely to be critical to which major party candidate is successful.

Opinion Polls

Thanks to Newspoll

The appearance of a swing back to the Government in mid-June exited the commentariat, but the ALP remains in a landslide winning position.

Thanks to Newspoll

Thanks to Newspoll

Given the increasing presidential nature of Federal Election campaigns, the PM’s satisfaction and trustworthiness ratings as reported by Newspoll should be of concern. Kevin Rudd is more trusted and his satisfaction rating remains in the sixties while the PM’s rating remains flat in the mid-forties. Also more Australians (but less than 50%) continue to think Kevin Rudd would make a better PM than John Howard.

Betting Markets

The following chart shows the combined betting markets probability of a Coalition win as at 1 July 2007. Punters are either in agreement with the opinion polls or reflecting the impact of the polls showing a narrowing of the margin of the loss by the Coalition.

Thanks to ozpolitics blog.