I can’t help wondering what position Labor would be in now if Rudd had called a double dissolution election on the back of the CPRS a couple of years ago. But you can’t undo history.

Still, it’s two years until the next election. Assuming there no by-election in a Labor or crossbench seat, the CEF bills will pass the parliament. The scheme will be enacted. The sky will not fall in. And, even if they still lose, history suggests it’s unlikely to be anything like the wipeout predicted by these polls. But that relies on Labor holding its nerve, for once. And, on past history, let’s not bet on that, either.

Pollbludger at Crikey has more details.

Fairfax Pundits:

Michelle Grattan

Peter Hartcher

Phillip Coorey

Can’t find anything online from the Murdoch pundits yet.

Update: [by Kim] Essential Research has the two major parties tied at 50-50 on the 2PP.

The Liberals have gained 3% on the primary vote and 3% on the 2PP since the August Nielsen poll.

I observed the other day that Possum had calculated opposition leader change bounce averages. It’s for Newspoll, but here it is for purposes of comparison:

…the average Coalition bounce from a leadership change was 5.7% on the primary and 6% on the TPP.

Speaking of Newspoll, The Poll Bludger reports rumours of an early release for the one that normally appears first on Lateline tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, as otherwise the OO will be reduced to writing their new narrative on the basis of a story in The Age. So get in quickly for Possum’s guess the Newspoll bounce competition.

Update: That was quick. Dennis gets to write his story on the basis of the poll he owns. Newspoll has the primaries favouring Labor 42-38 (down 2 and up 1 respectively, and within the MOE as Shanahan notes). The 2PP is 55-45 in Labor’s favour. It was 56-44 last time. Without mentioning the ACNielsen poll, Shanahan has actually written a story that would fit its findings better than Newspoll’s, having to construct his narrative out of the frippery of the PPM where Rudd leads Turnbull 54-24. As The Poll Bludger observes, this matches the Galaxy Poll in the News Limited tabloids on the weekend.

So if we do the comparison with Possum’s calculations, the Turnbull bounce is almost non-existent. Heh.

In reality, we should wait before passing judgement, but it’s fair to say that the previous trend is still very much apparent. Rudd’s losing some of his shine, but Labor’s vote is holding up well.

More [by Mark]: Peter Hartcher at the SMH puts the “Liberal vote depressed by Nelson” thesis in its strong form (ignoring Newspoll). But actually a more plausible way of looking at all this, if you go back and look at how leadership intersected with issues in the 2007 federal election, is that Rudd allowed Labor to be electable by being a plausible alternative PM – and by unifying the party. But there are a lot of good reasons why Labor’s positioning on the issues and its appeal generally trumped those of the Liberals. My reading of all this would suggest that Rudd’s “popularity” is not all that important, and conversely Turnbull – by looking plausible – may be restoring the Liberal vote to something like what the party itself should be garnering (though there’s more evidence for that from the ACNielsen poll than from Newspoll). Remember that throughout last year all the “significant indicators” were basically irrelevant – leadership might be an intervening variable, as it were, but it’s not the independent variable.

Elsewhere: Possum, OzPolitics, Blogocracy.