Live by Big Brother, die by Big Brother

If you have polling that says you are well ahead of the other candidate, crowd sourcing a ground swell of support to create more momentum by using so-called "people power" might be a good tactic.

Or it might just expose how fundamentally flimsy your position is.

In the last few days there have been three separate polls that have all said that Kevin Rudd is preferred Labor leader to Julia Gillard and it is the basis of his pitch to caucus – "I am popular, Julia Gillard is not. I can beat Tony Abbott, she can't."

But the problem in these times of excitement is that polls often capture the volatility of public opinion, not its underlying strength.

What someone tells a pollster at 6:30 in the evening having watched the 6:00 p.m. news and whilst preparing dinner is not necessarily a firm conviction.

When Kevin Rudd issued his call for supporters to ring their local member and lobby for him we decided to host an online poll to make this "Celebrity Big Brother" more transparent and informative.

We gave respondents the option of nominating "Rudd", "Gillard", "neither" or "unsure" and of telling us why. We also asked about voting intentions and demographics so that we had an idea where respondents were coming from.

The survey was promoted to our usual online panel as well as via Twitter and Facebook.

The result is that we had 2,883 responses, far in excess of our usual response rate, and more likely to be from Greens and Labor voters than normal.

And of those respondents 38% wanted Gillard, 36% Rudd and 24% neither.

So Rudd's tactic fails if it is reflected in the calls going to Labor members' offices, which informal media surveys suggest it is.

It only works if Rudd is not just ahead, but by a significant margin. To be close or behind is a disaster, displaying the underlying weakness of your position.

There is a clear gender theme in the results. Men go for Rudd, women for Gillard. Geography counts too, with Queensland the only state supporting Rudd.

Rudd's support is strongest amongst younger, males, living in Queensland which goes some way to explaining the flash mob that materialised around Rudd yesterday in Brisbane's Queen Street mall.

This wasn't how things lined-up in 2010 when Rudd was deposed.

At that stage he was behind Abbott with men and his strength was the female vote.

It's likely that if he were reinstated as leader that dynamic would return, and that would be bad for Labor's electoral prospects.

In the Big Brother house it is generally not the superstar who survives, but the knockabout person who can get on with everyone and causes least offence.

Elections in Australia are about winning the blue collar conservative vote, and Rudd turns that group off, particularly the men. They had to put up with guys like him at school, so they're not keen to vote them in as PM. They know that a man who refers to the Prime Minister as a "bogan" will even more easily look down on them.

Elections also tend to be about winning big in Queensland with Labor in 1983 and Liberals in 1996 being good illustrations of the principle.

Again, while these results look good for Rudd from a Queensland point of view, back in 2010 his home state and New South Wales were the two states that were turning against him. Why would it be different this time?

The fact that only two of his Queensland state colleagues are likely to vote for him today says it wouldn't.

There is one opportunity for Rudd in all of this. He has an extraordinarily clear lead over Gillard amongst those voters who are undecided. Seven percent of our sample was in this category and of this almost half (46%) voted Labor at the last election.

As the last election was a draw, these erstwhile Labor voters might determine the outcome of the next.

Analysis of the verbatim responses says that voters are unenthusiastic about the choice – that is one reason the "neither" category is so high

So to some degree the choice is about style because they don't see any substance in either candidate.

The discussion is also all about Kevin with supporters of Gillard more against Rudd rather than for her. She is seen as a team player, solid and reliable, while Rudd is the celebrity, offering leadership and charisma, but probably not stability.

When the discussion is not about Kevin it is often about Abbott who Labor supporters see as a bigger risk than either Gillard or Rudd, and one that must be beaten at all costs. At the same time they are often fatalistic that Abbott will prevail.

One shouldn't assume either that support for Rudd means support for his record as prime minister.

Bruce Hawker's claim that the large number of Liberals backing Rudd means that he can convert voters, is misplaced.

Many of these Liberals support Rudd because they dislike Labor and see the way he was removed as being symbolic of Labor party manipulation.

There is a populist version of representative democracy where some respondents believe that voters vote for the Prime Minister through their local representative.

Given the presidential style of modern political campaigns this is an understandable view, even if it's not how the Westminster system works.

The theory holds that a Prime Minister, having been elected on this transferred authority through the ballot box should not be removed except by a similar exercise of authority by voters at another election.

These voters want Rudd back as PM because they feel Labor broke this implicit compact with the electorate and that Rudd deserves to complete his term so that they, not the Labor party and its factions, can terminate him at the next election.

As one respondent says "We elected Kevin Rudd at the last election. We never got rid of him, only the Labour party did."

This is not a vote of confidence, but a vote for justice, for Rudd and voters, and revenge.

Sometimes in Big Brother it is the contestants who decide who to expel, and sometimes the audience. In this case they both seem to be channelling the same message, despite what the polls say.