There are a lot of parrallels in the last two changes of Government, the opposition eventually won by sheer attrition when voters got bored with long serving Governments, and in both cases probably one election later than they should have due to leaders who didn’t realise that all they needed to do to win was to simply be there looking mildly competent and not say anything stupid (which is largely what both Howard and Rudd did to get elected against unpopular Governments).

Barring the kinds of unusual events that usually occur in politics, I can’t see anything different happening this time. Labour will get at least 2-3 terms and eventually the voters will elect whichever of Abott, Hockey, Pine, Robb or whoever else happens to be occupying the chair at the right time.

Oh, one of the two votes for 2 came from a teenage troll and the other from a devout Christian.

I think Turnbull facing an election will come down to whether:

a) The Libs can find an alternative boost to their financial coffers
b) He starts alienating the Liberal base and placing safe Liberal seats in danger.
c) Some Liberal other than Turnbull starts polling better in the places it matters.

The hopefully accurate history (omitting caretaker PMs) of this statistic going back to the 1930s:

* Coalition under Lyons/Menzies/Fadden had two (Scullin, Curtin)
* Labor under Curtin/Chifley had two (Fadden, Menzies)
* Coalition under Menzies/Holt/Gorton/McMahon had four (Chifley, Evatt, Calwell, Whitlam)
* Labor under Whitlam had two (Snedden, Fraser)
* Coalition under Fraser had three (Whitlam, Hayden, Hawke)
* Labor under Hawke/Keating had four (Peacock twice, Howard twice, Downer, Hewson)
* Coalition under Howard had four (Beazley twice, Crean, Latham, Rudd)
* Rudd has had two already (Nelson, Turnbull)

I wrote this re my own poll question:

Having noted that:

* the record for most opposition leaders for a government is four
* the last few governments have somewhat higher ratios of numbers of opposition leader to duration than earlier
* the present government shows no signs at this very early stage of being much shorter or longer lived than those (although it's hard to tell)
* the Coalition has almost finished chewing through it's second L.Opp. in its first term of Opposition
* the process of devouring of opposition leaders appears to have increased in rate through the attentions of the media (eg Liberals in WA) ...

... I am going to stick my neck out on this one quite a bit and tip the boys to beat the record with a tally of five.

Now, one of those in my list was P. Costello who is (apparently) leaving the building. But even so if the Libs really dump Turnbull before the next election and replace him with a third unelectable who will be fatally wounded by a rather heavy election loss, they’d then have #4 in place during Rudd’s second term.

Of course, Rudd might yet find a way to screw it all up and lose quickly but I’d be interested in others’ views of how many L.Opps the ALP will face.

My poll also includes an option “The Liberals will never win government again” though thus far no-one has voted for it.

...] the public has decided according to the polls that Turnbull is the loser in week long parliamentary contest. I am surprised that they were so [...