If someone asked you that question, the first person that might spring to mind is Nathan Rees – and while that would be close, it’s no cigar.
If we look at those political leaders that have, according to Newspoll, negative net satisfaction ratings (where more people are dissatisfied with their leadership performance than are satisfied), we narrow the field down 3 leaders.
The Premier of NSW, Nathan Rees.
The leader of the federal Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull
The leader of the Victorian Opposition, Ted Baillieu
We could add two more to that list – the Qld Premier Anna Bligh and her Opposition counterpart John-Paul Langbroek, except we haven’t actually had a Newspoll out of Qld since the election. What we have seen is a Galaxy poll showing Bligh with a net satisfaction rating of minus 31, with her counterpart Langbroek sitting on minus 2, suggesting that perhaps Bligh could well be the most unpopular leader – but we really need to see a Newspoll to confirm that, since we are using Newspoll data for the rest of the leaders here.
Tracking the negative net satisfaction ratings of the three leaders we do have Newspoll data on, just who is the most unpopular? The chart tells the story.(click to expand)
It adds another dimension of complexity to the NSW situation for the Rudd government at the next Federal election. There’s a question hanging over the NSW State government in terms of whether its poor performance might impact negatively on the Labor vote in NSW at the 2010 federal election – especially if Turnbull plays the anti Rees Government card throughout the campaign on the ground in NSW.
Yet, how much impact would that be expected to have when the person attacking Rees is actually more unpopular than Rees himself with the same voters? Is the taint of Rees on Rudd more powerful than the credibility gap involved with Turnbull pursuing it?
20 Comments
Turnbull wouldn’t dare, assuming the polls are similar when the time comes….it would come back to bite him, and he’s too clever for that. If we can presume the next federal election could be 18 monthe away, that is a long time in politics, and anything could have happened in NSW by then…who knows, even Della Bosca might be on the up by then?
It is very interesting that there appears to be a strong positive correlation between the net satisfaction figures of the Coalition Federal Opposition Leader and the Labour NSW Government Leader.
What the devil is behind that?
caf
Starting date:
Rees: 5 September 2008
MT: 16 September 2008
Just following the same story…
Mr Green answered this to my satisfaction – http://tinyurl.com/nquzn3
“who knows, even Della Bosca might be on the up by then?”
A Minister(probably Health) in three months, guaranteed
The chances of Rees even being Premier at the next Federal election is so unlikely that I doubt that the comparison will even matter come 2010.
It would be a tremendously, mind-bogglingly, stupefyingly idiotic thing for Mal to do to point to popularity figures of the Rees government and try to tar Rudd with the same brush. All too easy for his figures to be thrown back at him. Best he could do is not mention the polls at all. He will have to take on Rudd on the Federal battleground on his own merits and armed with credible policies and a credible team.
I believe the most unpopular politician in oz is still the Victorian Premier Mr Bracks. Could not beat “bloody Jeff” Kennett twice and got the job through agreement and has repaid his benefactors handsomly. Jam through dredging, desalination, water pipeline, ignoring connex failures, wasting money on ticketing systems and rebuilding North Melbourne station for the docklands wheel,oh and I almost forgot the docklands ferris wheel statue.Next year he will quit before the election or lose (like Kirner before him)
Why not Kevin Rudd? The most conservative PM since John Winston Howard! Not everyone is EQUAL in Kevie’s world are they? What a sad and nasty little Anglican!
HEATHDON McGREGOR: Ummn, I don’t want to be rude, but Steve Bracks is no longer the Premier of Victoria. He resigned and passed the job to John Brumby who was the Deus ex machina for Steve Bracks anyway. Jeff Kennett was thrashed by the then Premier Steve Bracks at the odds of about 200-1 against.
Starting *Jam through…ferris wheel* I’m with you all the way. But it’s John Brumby who stuffed it up, big time, and you’ve only mentioned a fraction of the man’s idiocies.
Malcolm Turnbull is certainly worth the title of most hated leader. But I’m stuck for a reason when it comes to Ted Baillieu. He seems amiable, no genius, but he doesn’t pretend to be. PLUS he must have THE worst job in history. The Victorian Coalition is un-governable. It is so ridden by factionalism, rent by internecine divisions and so thoroughly f-cked that the unfortunate TB must have been comatose when he accepted the poisoned chalice.
Peter Costello, Michael Krüger, Jeff Kennett, old uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all pull in so many ways that the thing has become a sick joke. Michael Krüger has so much power, yet lacks the guts to take on the job. I won’t go on. However, if it is disaffected members of the coalition who are busy putting the skids under Baillieu, they are merely displaying their own bitterness at their own rotten machinations.
I am not a Liberal voter.
Brumby stood against Kennett once, achieving one of the highest swings against a first term government then recorded.
His government is riding high in the polls and his personal satisfaction ratings are also very high.
As for the various ’stuff ups’ you mention, they’re matters of opinion. Connex has lost its contract; the dredging of the Bay was necessary and apparently without major environmental impacts; supplying Melbourne with water is also necessary. All of the issues you mention fall well and truly in the period covered by the last few polls, which (if you glance to the column on the right of these posts) shows the government’s popularity basically unchanged since the last election.
I’d be voting with zoomster, on the whole. The Melbourne metro public transport mash is an issue (beat up by the ABC daily, I might add). Everyone keeps trying to bash the government on health, however, we’re doing really very well on just about any measure you want to use, i.e., we don’t kill many people, when we do, there is about “the” most rigorous series of detailed examinations of what happened. The budget seems to be O.K.. Water is an issue because I suspect there was insufficient recognition of just how radically this had shifted for the State government i.e., they didn’t realise it was climate change they were dealing with, when they came up with the North-South pipeline, as a solution.
David Richards @7
“[Turnbull] will have to take on Rudd on the Federal battleground on his own merits and armed with credible policies and a credible team.”
Mission Impossible. Malco has no merit, no credible policies & a non-credible team.
Jude @ 1
“Turnbull wouldn’t dare, assuming the polls are similar when the time comes….it would come back to bite him, and he’s too clever for that.”
Malco is a political dumb f*ck. He is so desparate he’d try anything, even use a faked email.
OH Possum you allow such nasty words on here! Golly, I am so shocked by vote1maxine!
Poss, you have such a quiet ol’ site! The Possums elsewhere have been thundering across those ol’ rooves! They sure have!!!!!
Possum
Apologies before I start, is there anywhere were discussion is held around the polls info. There are some inconsistencies, ie the Greens breakdowns don’t add up etc.
Sorry I know its not a relevant post.
Barking,
Drop the comments in anywhere.
Some of the info on the sidebar is a few tenths of a point out (sometimes as much as half a point) because of the way the polling data from the phone pollsters is aggregated, where I take the sub-samples (say male and female), weight them by sample size, then recombine them. I’m considering rounding them to the nearest half point to knock that issue out.
Possum, some appear to be greater than that.
1) the gender breakdown is 8-5 at the last election, that doesn’t work for 7.8 at that poll. This is important as there has been a striking rise in the Male Green vote. I don’t have to tell you that the Greens have tended to lag with the male vote, the increase is huge, and if statistically true really important.
Secondly the age breakdown again doesn’t work, less interest as the rise goes across the ages anyway and to be expected.
The thing that got me interested was the gender thing.
Barking – it really is just artifacts of the poll weighting and the fact that the breakdowns at the last election came from polls (and are thus subject to sampling error)
The last poll of the campaign used as the benchmark was Newspoll – so if Newspoll was out a point or so, that’s where the discrepency comes in with any subsequent swing estimates.
When I update that part of the sidebar at the end of this month, I’ll rejig it to knock most of those rounding and sampling error issues out.