Bounce won't stop that sinking feeling

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.