Advantage but no honeymoon

Can Julia Gillard rescue Labor's fortunes in time for the next election, despite the fact she was one of four key decision-makers in everything the federal government has done since 2007?

Just posing this question exposes the fundamental weakness in her position.

It is the question that many electors are asking, but it assumes that this palace coup is just a brand-repositioning exercise.

Labor is damaged as a brand, and if voters think Gillard is just a front for keeping the heavies in beer money, then her brand will be damaged, too.

She can rescue Labor only if she convinces electors to ignore this question entirely, instead providing an answer to the question: "Who is Julia Gillard and what can she do for Australia"?

On Thursday we conducted a detailed online qualitative poll of 2099 opinion-leading Australians.

It is difficult to make quantitative predictions from such a sample, but so far, there has been no honeymoon for the new leader.

In fact, support for the Liberals as well as Labor has declined since we last polled in May.

The only ones to improve are the Greens, whose vote is at an all-time high.

Other statistics are more promising for Labor. Gillard has a significantly higher net approval rating than Rudd or Abbott.

That suggests the change was worth making, although she only marginally improves on Rudd's preferred prime minister lead.

These sample-wide statistics can be misleading. Rudd was ahead in the national polls when he was rolled.

What was fatal to his career were the wrinkles in the normal distribution of voting intentions in marginal electorates where elections are generally won.

Parties can win high levels of support in already safe seats while swinging voters are moving away in marginal ones.

There are two directions of defection from Labor at the moment: one of the middle-class to the Greens and the other of blue-collar conservatives to independents or the Liberals.

The blue-collar conservatives have determined elections for at least the past 14 years, and they will do so again this year.

Much of the movement to the Greens will come back to Labor through preferences, because these voters will never vote for the Coalition.

Many working-class conservatives have no such qualms.

The story for Gillard with swingers is quite different from the total sample.

Here both she and Abbott enjoy similar levels of support, with neither getting more than 50 per cent in any category.

For Gillard, 37 per cent approve and 39 per cent disapprove.

For Abbott it is 41 per cent and 40 per cent.

And 38 per cent want Gillard as prime minister, 40 per cent Abbott, and 22 per cent aren't sure.

One of the reasons for these results is that many swinging voters aren't sure who Gillard is. They prefer her to Rudd, but only because she isn't him.

One comments: "Rudd had absolutely no credibility left. His dumb-arse decision to try and introduce the RSPT [resource tax] was the last straw. I'm not saying I'm a big fan of Gillard, but anything would be better than Rudd."

Or they think she is a perfumed strategy to keep Labor's backroom boys in power.

For example: "Julia Gillard makes federal Labor the same as NSW Labor. A pretty face overseeing a rotten party."

Some are incensed that Labor has changed leaders without going to an election, and they question Gillard's loyalty to Rudd, particularly wondering how she can disown the decisions that brought down Rudd while being a key decision-maker herself.

Another example: "They are both responsible for where we are today. She cannot escape the odium of decisions made in the kitchen cabinet."

There is surprisingly little reference to her portfolio areas, given that education and industrial relations are spheres where the government has been very active.

When they are discussed, it is largely in negative terms, with references to the Building the Education Revolution infrastructure program, NAPLAN and the MySchool website as examples of incompetence and failure to be consultative.

Given all this negativity, does Gillard improve Labor's standing with this group at all?

In fact she does, because Abbott's position is quite brittle and is mostly leveraged off two attributes, both in areas where Gillard is also strong.

Abbott is admired for being honest and uncompromising. These characteristics served him well against Rudd, who was perceived as the opposite, but won't serve as well against Gillard, who is seen as a "straight talker, good communicator, spunky, clever, sticks to her guns".

Abbott has also been quite spare with his policy pronouncements, with a few exceptions such as paid parental leave, and is in danger of being recognised by voters only for his Christianity and being a "Life. Be in it" Lycra-clad role model.

On December 1, 2009, when Abbott became Liberal leader, he changed the terms of the national conversation. Rudd never learned the new language, was marginalised and then failed.

This happened because the momentum was with Abbott as the new leader.

As of Wednesday, the national conversation has changed again and momentum has shifted to Gillard.

She has quickly introduced compromise into her repertoire, playing a conciliatory card on the resource super-profits tax, and she will no doubt start to fill in the personal story and the policy vacuum.

Now Abbott is on the edges of debate, supporting a position the miners may well abandon, and risks sounding shrill rather than strong.

At the same time Gillard reminds voters of WorkChoices, a divisive issue with blue-collar conservative swingers.

So she matches Abbott on forthrightness and determination, and adds an element of consultation, while pushing him into an area where he is seen as being too aggressive, all the time colouring in her portrait, so voters get a more rounded view of who she is and what she can do for them.

With only four months at most to the next election, the odds would have to favour the Gillard experiment to succeed.

The Liberals thought they were going to fall over the line, but now they've found another few laps to run, and Labor has fresh legs in the race.