This is a slightly expanded version of an article I had in the Crikey email Friday.
How popular is Kevin Rudd? It’s the question on the tips of the lips of political commentators everywhere. The exciting answer is that he’s on the nose, he’s doomed, the honeymoon is over, his popularity is plunging to new lows – add exclamation marks for effect.
But the boring – boring and correct – answer is, “about as popular as he was last time there was an Opposition leadership change”.
If we combine Rudd’s approval and satisfaction ratings from the three pollsters that regularly measure these things – Essential Media Communications via their Essential Report, Newspoll and Nielsen – we can chart the numbers and run a trend through them.
Where Rudd is today, about a 55-35 generic approval-disapproval split, is about the same as his 57-33 split he enjoyed back when Malcolm Turnbull took over the leadership of the Opposition in September 2008.
As you can see, Rudd’s satisfaction dynamics ebb and flow gently over time and so far, at least, wander around a fairly consistent average of about 60-25. The excitement has come from the shorter term changes in the dynamics.
Yet, we need to cautious about applying any sort of juvenile Boltemetric analysis to the data here, where people feel inclined to pick some arbitrary starting point and make grand – and silly – proclamations about what ever it is that has happened in the very short time period since.
As we saw with the Turnbull leadership, these kinds of metrics are a much more nuanced beast – which we can also see by looking at John Howard’s Newspoll satisfaction ratings over his entire term:
Events come and go, leadership metrics ebb and flow and short-term political noise washes out of the system. What’s important isn’t the day-to-day political horse trading, but the longer-term trends.
What we’ve seen so far is that Rudd’s current levels of satisfaction and approval in the Australian community aren’t significantly different to what he has previously experienced this term, and certainly don’t contain the strong rollercoaster movement that Howard had experienced in several of his terms of office.
What’s also interesting is if we look at the way the three pollsters sit together, and the way that each pollster has a slight house effect on their approval/satisfaction results.
Nielsen manage to get more people to give a decided response on their approval ratings than either Newspoll (on their satisfaction ratings) or Essential Report (on their approval ratings). This lower undecided response rate generally flows through to a slightly higher approval rating for Rudd in their polls.
9 Comments
I sort of agree Poss with a one exception.
That August, September, Ocotber 2008 period (when Rudds popularity first declined)was some pretty heated times during the GFC with big bank bailouts rolling across Europe and the US. There were nerves about whether the ALP could handle it.
This time around Australia’s economy is coasting- so I see the current decline in Rudds approvals as something significant and new.
Re the last table (the Undecideds). Nielsen’s respondents are nothing if not decided!
Possum, any ideas on what could generate such a dramatic, and consistent, variation.
I can’t think of any polling bias which could produce such a result – not a single overlap (with the other pollsters) in 16 surveys!
Question wording might be the answer. With the phone polls, maybe people are more likely to say they approve or disapprove of the PM compared to being either satisfied or dissatisfied with the PM. Perhaps people are more likely to say “approve” even if they have some doubts.
Of course, the Essential Report uses approval, so maybe a larger generic positive for the PM is generated when the respondent is under the time constraints posed by a phone poll (Essential uses an online panel, so that particular time constraint of having someone waiting on you for an answer doesnt exist).
Maybe I’m just talking out my arse! I honestly dont know Nipper, but it’s pretty interesting because of its consistency
lol @ Boltemetric analysis
Poss,
Would you say there is a marginal long-term increase in disapproval for Rudd?
I mean it looks like the disapproval peaks get higher (marginally) and the troughs are shallower over time.
Nothing that would worry him though
Probably Squiggle – at least since the the beginning of 2009 anyway. Though so saying that, the same type of thing happened to Rudd when Turnbull gained the leadership as well.
It could be a long term increase in Rudd’s generic disapproval ratings – but it could also be swings and roundabouts.
The next few months will probably tell us.
B_G, I hope that his decline has something to do with that abomination of an internet censorship bill.
I certainly hope that people are becoming more aware of it, not less.
Do those graphs suggest Rudd has sunk to satisfaction ratings about the same as Howard’s best – around 55%!
I hear Rudd has contemplated the unthinkable
THE DAGGY TRACKSUIT
Run for the hills.