This post could also be called “How to explain nearly everything about big P politics in 4 simple charts”.
Australian politics, or rather the dynamics of the relationship between the public and the party in government, has been undergoing a significant transformation over the last 25 odd years. In many respects, that is to be expected – the speed of the news cycle has changed, the quantity of media has increased dramatically and as a result, political parties, particularly those in government, have adapted to their new environment by changing the tactical and strategic approaches to the way they engage with the public.
We now get governments spending 18 hours a day trying to bump, shift and prod the news cycle in ways that lead to politically beneficial results. We have much more presidential style campaigns and nearly everything about government these days is first pushed through a sort of public relations meat grinder before it gets deemed fit for human consumption.
This change in the way that political parties relate to and engage with the public has significantly changed the way the public perceive the party in government – which in turn probably creates a bit of a feedback loop, further changing the way the Prime Minister goes about that part of his business dedicated to staying in government.
To show it’s how all been working, we’ll take three Newspoll metrics; the Primary Vote of the government, the Prime Ministers Satisfaction Rating and the PM’s Preferred Prime Minister rating – and rather than use each Newspoll separately, we’ll take monthly averages of these ratings to knock out some volatility (so each month will be the average of 2 or 3 separate Newspolls).
To start with, if we take a look at the Howard Government from April 1996 (the month after it was elected) through to the Ryan by-election of May 2001 – what we find is that these three metrics all tracked each other very closely over the period, and at roughly the same level.
The dynamics of the government/public relationship was such that the Prime Minister neither lifted nor depressed the party vote very much. Satisfaction levels and Preferred PM levels generally matched the primary vote level of the government over any given arbitrary period. This was – in terms of political behaviour –the first Howard government… Howard Mk I if you will.
It was ultimately unsustainable. Howard was on a hiding to nothing by the time of the Ryan by-election, where Labor grabbed Brisbane’s heartland Liberal Party seat when John Moore retired. In response to what then looked like an impending smashing at the 2001 election, Howard dramatically changed his behaviour – becoming a much more populist style leader and becoming much more aggressive in the way he managed the media.
If we now move on to the Howard Mk 2 era, from June 2001 through to October 2007, we can see the dramatic difference this had on the dynamics of the government/public relationship.
Through this period, the Liberal Party effectively became the John Howard Party. His populist style, perpetual campaigning structurally shifted his Satisfaction Rating and his Preferred PM numbers above that of the primary vote his party enjoyed.
Some of the variation in the numbers here was undoubtedly due to the leadership of the Labor Party at the time, but that mostly played out with Preferred PM numbers – even when Rudd took leadership of the ALP, Howard’s satisfaction rating remained structurally above the Liberal Party primary vote – something that we didn’t see in the Howard Mk 1 era.
Moving on to Rudd, we see the same structural shift maintained, but taken to more extreme levels.
Howard Mk 2 was a canny media manager, but Rudd has taken it to a new level. To really highlight the dramatic transformation, we can run the same chart over the entire period from 1996 through to today:
Heh!
It’s pretty astonishing.
9 Comments
A most elegant and revealing analysis.
So what does that say about the contemporary political style of managing the media cycle, which the media surprisingly choose to criticize so roundly? It looks like Howard Mk II and Rudd were/are onto something – as you say, they were canny media managers.
Very very interesting. I suspect the gap we have seen since 2001 also existed in the 1980s when Hawke was Prime Minister. Perhaps the earlier Howard period is the varaiation from normal rather than the period since 2001 indicating a change. It suggests to me that the events of 2001 allowed Howard to carve out a stronger public image than he had ever previously had.
Just shows that newspapers should concentrate on party vote rather than the beauty contest of the leadership ratings. I’m not sure we’re at the American stage where we should look at the leadership rating before the party vote.
Antony – let us hope we never get to that stage!
I have a little bit of data from the 80’s, December 1985 onwards – but unfortunately no preferred PM measures until 1991
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/files/2009/10/86to96.PNG
There’s hints of it there, Hawke rating ahead of Labor in the 1980s, both Hawke and Keating less than Labor in the 1990s. Voter views of leadership always overlap with their party identification. But that means the weaker a voter’s party identification, the more likely that opinion of the party leadership matters. And the sort of voters who switch party are normally those with weaker core loyalty to one party, which is why party’s trying to win elections always pay attention to party rating. Labor was ahead 2PP through 2006, but from a poor primary vote, so Beazley’s poor leadership ratings always suggested Labor support was soft.
Voting behaviour is so multi-variate, which is why it’s interesting.
What you lack in federal numbers going back in time you might be able to compensate for with state polling. Something similar would likely show up in Victoria where Joan Kirner was miles ahead as PP to Kennett in 91/92 and was belted in the election of that year. You might have a better idea about where Joh sat wrt to his party’s vote in the 80s.
This is an absorbing topic today; concise, elegant and eloquent. Being a total cynic I’m moved to ask if Kevin Rudd hired John Howard’s PR firm?
Is there any correlation between the electorate in individual States and voting at the Federal level? I would have thought not-except in the case of rusted-on voters.
Thank you Possum, I’m enjoying this.
Cheers
V.
I would of thought the take home message was that despite the push to publicise “the leader” it actually no longer has such a strong link to party votes.
An alternate take is that party leaders need a high personal rating so they can convince the rest of the party that their charisma is whats dragging up the party vote. Really its about internal party control and not so strongly related to electoral success.
Or view number three is that Howard/Rudd found the secret to high personal popularity, while not actually having anyone want to vote for your policies.
Moving forward I would like to say that in terms of organic growth and naturally facilitated closure we can only expect that the muscle tissue fragmentation that groups elected to represent the public use to disseminate policy before it is deemed palatable for consumption to inexorably facilitate an increase in terms of both quantity and frequency.
The thing that strikes me the most is that dramatic fall in Howard’s PPM rating in December, 2006.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/files/2009/10/howardmk2.PNG
Of course that correlated with a dramatic rise in Rudd’s PPM rating after he took over from Beasley, but what surprises me the most is that the senior Libs didn’t twig to the fact that Howard wasn’t going to be able to pull them over the line on his approval rating alone.
A leadership change would have at least given them some chance but by sticking with Howard, they left themselves open to being taken apart by a far better media manager in Rudd.
This has been reinforced by the manner in which Rudd has been able to continue to manage his and his Party’s media profile which is causing the Libs such a degree of angst that a number have already pulled up stumps with the certain knowledge that they are history in 2010 and most probably 2013 and beyond unless the proverbial bus comes along quickly.