Possum on Turnbull’s dissatisfaction ratings:

Turnbull has lost 25% of his uncommitted voters in a single polling cycle and, on net, they have all moved against him.

So much for all those online “polls” on News Ltd sites, and the wisdom of Messrs Andrew Bolt and Dennis Shanahan.

Incidentally, that viral Facebook group we discussed the other day now has 60,270 members.

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger.

The first Newspoll survey after the end-of-year break shows the Coalition recovering to 54-46 after the shock 59-41 result of December 9. The Australian spruiks this as the Coalition clawing back support, but a more likely explanation is that the previous poll was a rogue. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is down from 66-19 to 60-22.

Get ready, I guess, for more of the same old same old from the ever astute punditariat.

Of much more interest for the fortunes of political war, I’d suggest, are the findings from the Essential Research survey. Not the ones about the enduring love people supposedly have for Howard (and The Poll Bludger has some good points to make on this one too), but the findings about people’s confidence in the resilience of their financial position. I think it’s still moot as to whether we’re going to be in recession this year, but it’s worth remembering that not everyone does badly in a financial downturn. The government, at any rate, will be banking on that, and hoping that the optimism displayed in this survey is warranted.

Update: Possum, who also thinks the volatility in Newspoll compared to the relatively static trend in other polls suggests the last one was an outlier, makes a number of interesting observations. Aside from discussing the number of uncommitted and refused respondents, he trains his eye on Malcolm Turnbull’s numbers:

Looking at Truffle’s Net sAtisfaction ratings, since he gained the leadership the gap between his raw net satisfaction and his net satisfaction with undecideds removed has closed while simultanously having his raw net satisfaction ratings drop. This means that as people have made up their mind about Turnbull, more of them have been dissatisfied with his perfomance than were satisfied, on balance. It’s not a dramatic movement, but it’s there and it’s something he probably needs to keep an eye on – it’s certainly not as bad as Nelson’s ratings where the undecideds were actually holding up his raw net satisfaction ratings.

Update: Just caught up with this post from Possum giving a breakdown on the financial and job security numbers.

Anyway, this might be an opportune time to link to a post from Possum – wherein he has crunched some polling data comparing the first year of Howard’s first term with the first year of Kevin Rudd’s. As is his wont, Possum has provided some nifty graphs. A comparison of their respective performances is worth filing away next time the “one term” stuff pops up in the media.

I’d be surprised if anyone sensible in the LNP could put together a target list of 22 or more seats where they have a realistic chance.

It really does make you wonder about this sort of commentary in The Australian:

LABOR has slowed the momentum of the Liberal National Party’s run to the next election in Queensland but Premier Anna Bligh is struggling to keep pace with her Opposition and satisfy community expectations.

Bligh’s uphill struggle

Here’s an irony of poor analysis and sticking desperately to a “narrative” – to the extent that Anna Bligh can leverage this sort of coverage into a perception that she’s more of an underdog and the contest closer than it actually appears to be at the moment, she’s the effective winner from biased and/or uninformed stories.

So, what’s going on in Queensland? Anna Bligh’s own numbers were down while Labor’s vote surged, to a point above where it was at the last election (which was won very handily indeed). It’s possible that Bligh herself is suffering a little because she doesn’t fit the mould of the “strong leader” which has always stuck to Queensland Premiers, and which Peter Beattie re-invented. Conversely, there may be a bit of a flight to safety effect in the party vote with the economy slowing. However, here we come across one of the conundrums that haunt the analysis of polling. Queensland Labor types have been suggesting that private polling (which I haven’t seen) has Labor’s vote still on the up but not at such quite stellar heights and Anna Bligh’s numbers better than in Newspoll. I suspect they’re telling the truth, but with these things, as I’ve also said before, the interpretation of the public polls shifts political discourse and in particular the strategy and morale of the opposition.

The Borg is presumably on holidays, because former Liberal leader and current LNP deputy Mark McArdle has been trundled out to make the LNP’s excuses:

Acting Opposition Leader Mark McArdle has described 2008 as a tough year.

“We have come from a Coalition into an LNP – that took some time and effort,” he said.

And therein lies the rub. It wasn’t as if the constituent parts of the LNP were policy powerhouses before the amalgamation. Now they’ve got over the hurdle of their new party (which looks very much like the Nats with the Santoro faction tacked on), very little has been heard from them in a positive sense – two more or less unfunded policy announcements which fell apart on close inspection almost immediately. Supposedly Lawrence Springborg is trying to appear statesmanlike to counter his previous image as a nitpicker. But the LNP is looking more like a rather empty personality vehicle (few shadow ministers have any sort of public profile) at a time when the political stars are aligning closer to where Labor would like them to shine.

Oh and the early election talk? My mail is that Anna is playing with The Borg’s mind.

Update: New post looking at Antony Green’s analysis of the redistribution, and underlining the huge nature of the task that the LNP has to win.

Update: This post has also been published by Crikey today.

However, there’s some interesting reading at both RedBlueRichPoor and FiveThirtyEight. I suspect the absence of the early vote in the sample diminishes the increases in youth and African-American turnout. And it’s just as well to remember that the election was actually reasonably close in the popular vote, and that the electoral vote map has been tweaked rather than transformed. Trends which were operating this year need reinforcing through the upcoming electoral cycles, and much will depend on Obama’s performance in government. You can never claim that there’s a realigning election on the basis of one cycle (06-08), though my bet would be that this will turn out in retrospect to have been one, for a whole host of more qualitative and interpretive factors.

I haven’t seen any comprehensive data as yet on Hispanic and youth votes’ partisan composition, but some evidence presented during the CNN coverage suggested very strong 60+% Obama votes in both populations. It’s worthwhile noting that the demographics of many states which are swinging to the Democrats strongly – or showing signs of such swings (ie in Texas, Arizona and South Carolina) – are fast changing to a much more heterogenous composition. And that generally, the younger cohort is more socially liberal and less hung up on racial barriers and all the baggage of the culture wars – including among younger Evangelicals.

There’s a lot here for Obama and the Democrats to make hay with in terms of partisan and geographic realignment, if they play their cards well.

Update: Some numbers on the youth and Latino votes:

Latino Catholics appear to have been decisive in flipping three states from red to blue: New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Colorado’s nine electoral votes swung into the Obama column with a strong 53% to 46% win and in New Mexico the margin was even larger: 57% for Obama to McCain’s 42%. In Nevada, 55% of the vote went to Obama and McCain took 43%. If Obama delivers comprehensive immigration reform, these three states and their 19 electoral votes will be blue for a generation. They will also likely be joined by Arizona, which might have joined the shift this year had it not been for the home turf advantage McCain enjoyed. Nine points separated the candidates in Arizona, and the state’s ten electoral votes are low-hanging fruit for the Democrats next election.

Latinos are the fastest growing part of the electorate and young voters are just beginning to define their political loyalties. Obama won both groups convincingly: 67% of Latinos nationwide and 66% of voters age 18-29. That bodes well for the future of the Democratic Party.

Update: Simon Jackman points out – in examining “change elections” – that Obama has been elected with the highest percentage of the popular vote of any newly elected Democrat since FDR.

Update: A good post from Crooks & Liars on the Latino vote, and a thoughtful piece at Salon about the demographics and the numbers.

Update: The invaluable Nate Silver has posted a table comparing Obama and Kerry’s numbers on the exit polls among all demographics.

Just think what elections would be like without Possums and Silvers! If all we had to rely on for psephological goodness was the dead tree media…

Of course, the ACT isn’t exactly a population representative of Australia. Nevertheless, there may be, as Bowe suggests, some tea leaves to read for inner city Labor held seats federally and in states where Labor is really on the nose. (I’ve qualified the statement about the trend with “apparently”, largely because I think that far too much can be made of comparable results in distinct jurisdictions and similarly, I don’t accept that all the remaining Labor state administrations are in as much trouble as the NSW government. I suspect there’s a significant degree of error – something like the ecological fallacy – committed by NSW-centric media and political commentators extrapolating far too readily from what’s around them locally to other parts of the country.)

The two explanations for The Greens’ increased success in vote gathering tend to be posited – that they hoover up “disaffected left-wing votes” and that there are largely positive reasons based around issues and the party’s own profile and image which are attracting more voters. The two, of course, aren’t necessarily incompatible, though political journalists tend to present them as if they are. I strongly suspect there are some soft Liberal and swinging votes going to The Greens, and for a range of reasons. Here, it would be very useful to have some good focus group research rather than endless voting intention polls. So while I know we’ve got our share of both Labor and Green partisans around here, I’d be very interested in hearing from people who feel less identified with either the ALP or The Greens about what might sway their voting choices, and also from those who are more directly involved in party politics in anything they’re picking up from campaigning (without the partisan hats on!)…

Update: A post on this topic from Andrew Bartlett.

Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.