Charts of the Day and some interesting links.

It’s a bit of a slow day round these parts, so a few charts and links will have to suffice. First up is a graphic on which party is considered best at handling the economy compared to the proportion of the population that consider the economy a “very important” issue using Newspoll data.

The data for the “very important” response on the economy doesn’t go any further back than shown. It’s interesting that as the economy has become more important, the ALP rating has improved in virtual lockstep. The power of incumbency?

Next up we’ll compare the economic expectations of consumers and business vs the economic reality of GDP. We’ll use a slightly modified version of the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Survey of Consumer Sentiment (to give it a base of zero) for the consumer sentiment side and use the NAB Business Confidence Index for the business expectations side. The larger the positive number the better the expectations, the lower the number the worse the outlook. We’ll then chart that against changes in per capita GDP over time.

This chart gives a rough idea of how expectations are being a little dismal compared to the reality of the economic figures we’ve actually seen so far. That’s not to say that the economy wont follow sentiment, but just that we’ve currently got a gap between the expectations and the reality that is pretty large.

And what is the Liberal party thinking when it wants Turnbull to throw $10 or $20 million of his own money into the next campaign. That will not go down well with voters.

On more interesting things than the dysfunction of the Coalition:

Andrew Norton takes an interesting longer term look at the politics of deficits following our short term look the other day with the latest Essential Report.

Pollster.com takes a look at the purpose of political polling in the US, and how strategic and tactical driven political responses from polling data can be either a good or a bad thing depending on the larger agenda.

Andrew Leigh and Mark McLeish ask the question “Are State Elections Affected by the National Economy?”   It’s a spiffy little paper (pdf) and if you want the answer you’ll have to read it