Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Newspoll: ALP 57 - LNP 43 (or, Good Thing They Got Rid of Nelson)

Today's Newspoll came out with the ALP increasing its lead over the coalition from 55-45 to 57-43.

No surprise really.

Turnbull's Satisfaction rating improved a bit from 31% to 33%. His Dis-satisfaction also improved a bit from 55% to 50%. It must be quite pleasing to know that only half the nation thinks you are doing a useless job. Rudd on the other hand is heading back into the stratosphere. His Satisfaction rating went from 61% to 63% and his Dis-satisfaction rating fell from 28% to 26%.

In net terms, Rudd is +37; Turnbull is -17. That's a big difference. (What am I saying, calling that big is like saying the Grand Canyon is a big hole in the ground.)

Where it gets really interesting is on Preferred PM. Rudd now leads 66% to 16%. Turnbull is now at the Preferred-PM level that Nelson was when he was ditched. In fact this Newspoll, as Possum at Crikey points out, is pretty much exactly the same as the last one Nelson endured. The only difference is more people are dis-satisfied with Turnbull than they were with Nelson, and more people now prefer Rudd as PM than they did then.

That, as they say, is not good.

And yet there are no calls for him to go. No rumours of leadership takeovers. Tony Abbott has been doing the rounds as he launches his book; but no one really takes him seriously as a leadership contender. Rudd isn't that lucky. The reaction to this poll only serves to reinforce how lacking the Liberal Party is in the leadership stakes.

So where to from here for Turnbull and the Liberal Party? Well one could say things can only get better, and given that according to Antony Green's election calculator the ALP would win an election based on this poll by 105 seats to 42, we can surely say that things can't get much worse.

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