Bounce won't stop that sinking feeling

It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, and the winds that brought the rain and devastation to Queensland are no exception. While they left many homeless, they may have done some good for Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.

Her handling of the flood crisis has widely been hailed as inspirational with commentators suggesting it gives her a chance of retaining her grip on parliament house.

But how good a chance is it?

The latest Newspoll has Queensland Labor on a primary vote of 26 per cent and the LNP on 45 per cent, yielding a two-party preferred result of 59 per cent to 41 per cent. Only 24 per cent approve of Bligh as premier.

If it carried over into the next election Labor would go close to equaling its worst-ever result of 1974 when it was reduced to only 11 members: a prospect The Courier Mail calls “Annageddon”.

We did a qualitative poll of 525 opinion-leading Queenslanders earlier this week and it suggests that our punters partly share the views of the pundits. They certainly saw Bligh’s performance during the floods as exemplary.

When we asked our panel specifically in relation to the floods whether they approved of the premier’s performance 79 per cent did and 8 per cent didn’t. That’s a very high mark, but it needs to be put into perspective.

We also asked respondents to rate their local mayor. In this case across the state 83 per cent approved while 6 per cent disapproved. Some mayors did better than others, with Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Campbell Newman scoring 90 per cent approval and only 5 per cent disapproval.

And as a further control we also had them rank Julia Gillard (35 per cent), Tony Abbott (33 per cent) and State Opposition Leader John Paul Langbroek (24%).

Approval of performance of selected politicians during Queensland floods. n=525

So while Bligh did well, she isn’t best of class, but she could also easily have done much worse.

Respondents described her as “Calm, well-briefed, sensitive, measured, not point scoring, showing leadership, efficient, having a good media presence, honest, not defensive…”.

In other words she was being anything but the typical politician, focusing on the electorate and their problems rather than herself and not playing for any political advantage.

Is this Good Anna the “real” one and will this performance banish Bad Anna? Even if it does will it make any difference to voters?

We also asked our panel whether they approved of the performance of the Premier in general and this yielded quite different results. Only 38 per cent approved while 48 per cent disapproved – a net minus 10 percent.

The responses make it quite clear that voters distinguish between a one-off event like the floods, and the general business of running a state. While approval of Bligh’s flood performance was generally good irrespective of voting intention, her general approval ratings tended to run with voting intention.

We analysed the qualitative responses using Leximancer, and it shows that those who support Bligh have quickly grabbed on to her flood performance, possibly because the rest of the weight of evidence has been so heavily against her.

Detractors are most likely to instance the sell-off of state assets as a reason for disapproving (mirroring a Galaxy poll from late last year showing 83 per cent opposed the selling of Queensland Rail). They also mention “water” which relates to both the cost of water and the administrative problems establishing the south east Queensland water grid.

There are also the familiar themes with state Labor of “spin”, and a sense that no matter how good Bligh looks at the moment she cannot escape the blame for the bad decisions voters believe this and earlier Labor administrations have made.

We also asked respondents to tell us what the most important issues that will determine their vote are. Out of those who indicated they were changing their vote, only 18% nominated recovery from the floods as the most important. The rest were spread over issues of asset sales, integrity, competence, or just the feeling that after so long it was time that Labor went.

This is fortunate for the Opposition. One constant factor in Queensland politics for at least the last decade has been that no matter how much voters might have despised the government, they’ve despised the opposition even more.

This continues in this poll with only 27 per cent approving of opposition leader Langbroek, even though they are voting overwhelmingly for the LNP. This suggests that they want to punish the government, not reward the opposition.

Indeed, swinging voters actually think that Labor (35%) is better to manage the recovery than the LNP (18%). This is a very meagre vote of confidence as 47 per cent are either unsure, or think neither is better.

Across the entire sample a significant plurality of respondents (43%) doesn’t think that the state was well-prepared for the floods, which also can’t help Labor. However there are varying views on what should have been done.

91 per cent agreed that there should have been stricter limits on building on floodplains, 67 per cent favour a national disaster insurance scheme, 54 per cent would like the authorities to buy back land from affected landholders, while only 47 per cent believe more dams would be an answer.

Some politicians have suggested that insurers ought to pay out irrespective of whether property owners were properly insured. This proposition was only supported by 23 per cent.

The wash-up of all of this is that Anna Bligh still seems headed for defeat. She has a momentary edge courtesy of her flood performance, but if it hasn’t made more of an impact than this on voters while flood waters still linger it’s unlikely to be a significant issue next year when the election is due.

There has been some talk of an early “flood” election. This would cost Bligh her advantage.

She was marked-up for being non-political, yet voters still want to punish Labor. Imagine how much more they would want to punish if the cynical, manipulative, political Bad Anna returned?

The premier should bask in her high-standing now. Like the flood waters themselves, it won’t last.