This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald predicted that the forthcoming federal election will be a landslide for the ALP’s Kevin Rudd. But this graph — showing the pattern of Labor’s two-party preferred poll results leading up to the last elections — suggests that it might be too early to claim that.
According to the oz politics blog, the source of this graph:
Headlines proclaiming that Howard’s spoiling strategy had failed are a little premature. Howard is playing a medium term game. It is the standard two pronged game: pander to the punters and slam the opposition at every possible turn. The effectiveness of Howard’s medium term strategy cannot be judged after a few short weeks. If previous election years are any guide, It was not until the middle of the year that a recovery trend (from Howard’s perspective) was evident. Howard only achieved positive polling territory from the middle to late in the third quarter of the year.
Only time will tell…
Coincidently, I almost replied to the screwing-a-dead-dog post.
Rudd has done an expert job of leveraging anti-Howard negativity. Let’s hope Australia has enough time to question why the Workplace laws were created to begin with given they would be so unpopular for the Howard government. Or look beyond the mistake of going into Iraq and actually consider the ramifications of leaving.
But, I expect Rudd will fully focus on the negatives, as every good politician does.
Jason, maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree about a couple of things there.
Personally, I think the WorkLackOfChoices laws are idiotic. I’m an employer, but I’d never treat staff so poorly. The laws seem designed to appeal to the “less thoughtful†employer who treats staff as the enemy instead of a valuable resource — nay, the people who actually do the work which generates the profit. The kind of employer who looks to blame anything other than his or her own bad business decisions for their lack of success.
As for Iraq… We seem to agree it was a mistake going there. Why is continuing that presence any less of a mistake?
Actually, I want to know about the dead dog now…
Guess my cloudy point was that political debate in this country (and probably every other country) is fairly puerile and sledgy. If we lived in an ideal astroboy-like world (actually, how cool would that be!) then maybe our votes could count towards a constructive outlook rather than a negative reactionary one. And giant robots would be kept at bay.
Maybe Workplace Choice seems a bit unnecessary at the moment. A lot of us are literally rolling in money. Australia is on the make, but certainly not collectively. Workplace Choices seems to just enable selfish business practices.
Thing is, some people think the western world is at the start of a pretty nasty decline. Have posted a few links below. I’m pretty clueless at economy, and prone to believing everything I read, but certainly don’t discount such opinions.
Howard isn’t the most agreeable cobber sometimes, and he’s sort of short and bald. But I do have enormous faith in his patriotism (how old fashioned!) and concern for Australia’s long term welfare (something Rudd has so far failed to convince me of, with his automatic objectionism). I really, really, really, hope that Howard is thinking of tougher days ahead when he cuts red tape for business that previously protected workers rights.
What better time to give workers bad news than when the going is good. But yeah, if only all Australians were going that good.
Anyhow, some linkage:
http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070313/29355_id.html
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/2006/12/19/watching-the-us-economy-crumble/