Quote:

So you disagree with your mentor, longwhine, that Labors win in 2007 wasn't all that big?????
Good on ya ,mel.
OH sorry, andrei made that post, no wonder it made more sense than any post mel/matty has ever made.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Apr 16^th, 2012 at 10:17am:


Andrei, I don't know why you're bothering with too girl. She thrives on attention and specialises in getting pretty much everything. Neither Ketpating nor Howard were ever suffering levels of 43-57, at any point in time.

Pressure is expected to build on John Howard's leadership in Australia in coming days with the latest Sydney Morning Herald/Nielsen poll showing Labor powering ahead of the Coalition and the personal popularity of the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, soaring to a record high.

Senior Coalition sources told the Herald last night a view was forming among some in cabinet to tap Mr Howard on the shoulder in the best interests of the party.

"The next 48 hours will be critical," said one senior figure, who added that today's poll would be viewed as pivotal.

Mr Howard sent a stern message to nervous colleagues yesterday, saying he was going nowhere.

"I do intend to contest [the election], I intend to contest it as leader. That question was settled last year," he said as he wrapped up the successful Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit.

Despite Mr Howard's moment on the world's stage, the poll, taken from Thursday to Saturday, shows Labor leading the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis by 57 per cent to 43 per cent

JULIA Gillard is in a deep dark political hole, partly of her own making, and the Prime Minister has to dig herself out if she is to have a chance of winning the next election.

On the basis of the government's current predicament and standing in the polls it is clear Labor would have no chance of winning an election held any time soon. Of course, the greatest likelihood is that there will no election soon and probably it will be held soon after August 2013.
It is also most likely that Gillard will be the leader who takes Labor to that election.

Therefore, the biggest question facing the government is whether Gillard can win that election.
The short answer to that question is: "Yes, of course she can."For all the despair and the desperation in Labor ranks right now over Gillard's record low personal standing and the challenges ahead it should be remembered all of her predecessors in the past 20 years - except Kevin Rudd - have been in worse positions in the polls.






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What's more, two of them - Paul Keating and John Howard - went on to win a total of three elections between them after being in a worse personal position than Gillard only months before those elections.

Of course it has to be said that Bob Hawke lost his job after hitting a worse position in the polls when his colleagues dumped him and both Keating and Howard lost elections when they were in a similar position to Gillard now.

A low primary vote is far more important in losing an election than the leader's personal standing. It is possible for leaders to recover their personal standing with the public after falling to disastrous levels, as Howard did, and win an election just as it is possible for a leader's popularity to remain low and still win an election, as Keating did.

Every election is different, every leader has different appeal and every opposition leader plays differently against the prime minister of the day.

For Gillard the reassurance in these historical comparisons of Keating winning the unwinnable election and Howard rising Lazarus-like after declaring there would be a GST are qualified by two sobering caveats.

The first, and most important, is that while Keating and Howard lifted their personal standings or won elections when their standings remained low, none of Gillard's predecessors had a primary vote as low as hers is now combined with poor personal ratings.

Even before Keating lost to Howard in 1996, when the then prime minister's net satisfaction rating was minus-29 per cent and Howard was within four points as preferred prime minister, the ALP's primary vote was 39-40 per cent. Gillard's net satisfaction rating last weekend in Newspoll was minus-25 and the primary vote for Labor was 31 per cent.

When the Labor caucus removed Hawke he had a satisfaction rating of minus-31 and the primary vote was 35-37 per cent.

Second, analogies about how the carbon tax is a parallel for Howard's GST campaign and Labor's vote will magically restore once it's bedded down just as Howard's did, and that Tony Abbott, like Kim Beazley, is a bad Opposition Leader doomed to fail, are just false.

Gillard cannot rely on turning around popular ill will towards the carbon tax by simply implementing it with generous compensation for households and assistance for industry.

Gillard's recent warnings to her Labor colleagues that the polls would remain unchanged and bad for "three to four months" are now stretching to the expectation of at least a year to 18 months of bad polling. The reason for such a grim outlook from the Prime Minister is twofold: first she is beseeching her colleagues to maintain discipline for much longer than they previously expected; and, secondly, it's true.

While the simple comparison of Howard's GST implementation and Gillard's carbon tax is faulty it is worthwhile to look at Howard's experience introducing a new tax and how he fared in the polls and subsequent elections.

In mid 1998 the Coalition was travelling poorly and Howard announced his intention to introduce a GST, after the next election, after previously saying there would "never, ever" be a GST. The impact on Howard in the polls was marked and immediate. He fell behind Beazley as preferred prime minister, had a net satisfaction rating of minus-31, Beazley had positive satisfaction rating of six and the Coalition's primary was between 34 and 37 per cent

Skippy - do you think she can turn it around?

I personally don't think she can.

Skippy - do you think she can turn it around?

I personally don't think she can.

No.

Should Gillard be dumped A.S.A.P for a more popular leader?