Howard behind in polls and issues for 2001 campaign

John Howard has recently been looking very relaxed and comfortable. There is no obvious reason why he should. The political landscape does not favour his re-election. Neither do the entrails of the public opinion polls. And none of the Government’s publicly visible policies look like election winners either. But that doesn’t mean that things won’t change.

First to the opinion polls. The Roy Morgan organisation recently reported that the Liberal Party had recorded its lowest poll rating ever in June 2000. Only 30% of electors were going to vote Liberal. This rose to 33.5% when the National Party vote was added in, and to 40% on a two-party preferred basis. This was not a one-off result. The combined coalition vote has been tracking below 40% from 1998 to the present. The attached graph shows the two-party preferred vote for this year, with the government never pulling ahead of the Opposition.

The Morgan figures since 1960 show only three other periods when Governments have had similar figures for such a prolonged period of time – 1975, 1981-83 and 1992. In 1975 the Whitlam Government was heading towards a record trouncing at the hands of Malcolm Fraser, 1983 was the election that Bob Hawke won in lieu of the "Drover’s Dog" and in 1992 Paul Keating had just succeeded Bob Hawke. Keating’s was the only experience of polling figures like these that subsequently led to a victory, but he was helped by Hewson’s GST-infused tax package – the "longest political suicide note in history".

These Gallup polls measure the past, they don’t predict the future – no polls do – but some are more useful than others. The scatter graph below is based on poll results published in The Australian on October 18. The y axis measures the importance of issues and the x axis measures which political party respondents think is the best to deal with them. Looking at this poll gives some clues as to the future.

The graph dramatically illustrates the challenge facing Howard. His good news is that electors are not particularly interested in some of the issues that obsess the media. Women’s Issues, Industrial Relations, Immigration and Indigenous Affairs won’t determine the outcome of the next election. Just as well. Immigration is the only one of these issues that the Coalition is seen as being best to handle.

The bad news is that the ALP is seen as the best to handle the five most important issues. The only important issues where the Coalition is ranked ahead of Labor are Taxation, Interest Rates and Inflation. These are all economic issues, and while they don’t receive the highest ranking of importance, they are the sorts of issues that concern voters when it comes time to vote. However, in most of these issues the Government is only marginally more favoured than Labor – its highest ground is at a fairly low political altitude.

John Howard needs a paradigm shift in public opinion to win the next Federal election. That appears to be what the party operatives were trying to engineer at the Liberal Party convention. The banner behind the stage read "Doing the things that need to be done." That leverages the issues where Howard is stronger than Beazley. The underlying message: "You mightn’t like me, but you need me." However, the issues covered at the convention and the overall blurb was of a kinder, gentler Howard.

This looks to me like market testing. The Liberals can’t run with both these messages and Howard’s rhetoric and attitudes undermine the softer message. His talk is about economic issues and tax reform. Come the time of the election, the Coalition will be forced back on the tough John Howard. In the meantime, they are giving the knock-about bloke a good run, sending him off to the Olympics and even letting him get in a bit of crowd surfing. Perhaps this will make the tougher Howard more acceptable.

The issues poll also needs to be read in conjunction with age and sex breaks on the general polling.

According to The Australian the only age group where the Coalition is decisively ahead is the over-50s. It lags significantly in the 25–34 and 35–49 age groups. The Coalition is also behind with women, which is unusual. Clearly the Coalition vote has to be bolstered most with women between the ages of 25 and 49 as well as this age group generally.

There are other subgroups that need to be considered and which are impossible to pull out of broad-brush polling like this. One of those groups is those alienated Anglo-Irish lower-income earners in fringe urban and rural seats who lodged a protest at the last election by voting for One Nation. Much commentary treats this group as a bloc that will go entirely to one party or the other. In fact, they offer only marginal advantage to either party, splitting 50/50 in the last Federal election. Those splits are unevenly spread, so their votes become most important in individual seats.

The interaction of these demographics with the issues means that some issues that appear relatively unimportant can be quite important in particular seats. Immigration and Indigenous issues will read differently in marginals like Longman or Hinkler both in strong One Nation territory, and could be decisive. Likewise, while women 25 to 49 rate social issues highly, many also have family budgets to balance. Higher home mortgage rates will quickly alter their perceptions of what is important.

The Liberal Party needs to elevate the economic issues in importance and minimise the social issues. It also needs to strengthen its position on the social issues, and establish a clear perception that social goals are the return from wise economic management. To do this the party cannot afford to rely on its economic record. It will not be rewarded for past performance alone. Policies will have to be invented, and at this stage, there are few hints as to what they will be.

In this respect the party has a problem on the economic issues. While, for example, it is seen as being the best to deal with taxation, most of its tax reform is behind it. And the electorate regards that reform ambivalently. More Australians say they are worse off as a result of the GST according to a Morgan Gallup Poll of 2/3September, 2000. The group most inclined to this view is One Nation voters. The Ralph tax reforms do not offer much leverage either, as they introduce a further level of uncertainty, and are at best controversial.

Peter Costello seemed to be signalling interest rates as a part of the strategy when he said in New York that surpluses would be saved, not spent. Tight fiscal policy equals lower interest rates. If voters can be convinced that a big-spending Labor Government would increase their mortgage repayments, that gives the government an advantage.

It is traditional for the Liberal Party to pitch its election campaigns at tax cuts. Undoubtedly it will do this again, despite John Howard’s reported comments of the 1st November that there would be no large tax cuts. But any surplus it has available to it is also available to the Labor Party, so this will not necessarily get it very far.

The government was relying on the sale of the balance of Telstra to pay back the deficits and nullify the Labor Party's ability to match it on tax cuts. This is now unlikely to happen. Just as well. With the price of Telstra 2 installment receipts well below their issue price, there is not a big market for T3.

New economic policies are problematic. The only economic reforms still to be achieved are not popular with the electorate. However, some social issues provide some possibilities. David Kemp has staked out interesting territory with the funding of private schools. His changes are designed to encourage the establishment of new private schools and should be a boon to the Catholic parish school sector – identified first by the Karmel report in the ‘70s as the most underprivileged of all. If the issue can be dragged away from the examples of rich schools getting richer, this provides some traction in the area. The government should also be looking at something to do with national standards. It can’t compete in the public mind with the ALP when it comes to spending on education, but it has always had a good reputation in regard to the three Rs.

Private health insurance provides a lever for Health. Labor is in the difficult position of opposing the Government’s rebate for private health premiums. We have all been educated, courtesy of very effective health fund campaigns, to believe that public hospitals equal long queues and inferior treatment. As a result health insurance is regarded by large sections of the electorate as very close to a necessity. Any threat to make it more expensive will again play badly to mothers with children, and seniors, and the health funds would be delinquent in their duty to their shareholders if they didn't run advertisements in the election period pointing this out.

Welfare and social issues also provide the Liberals with opportunities. Electors like the concept of work for the dole. They also like the concept of mutuality embodied in documents like the McClure Report.

The rise in petrol prices has given the Government an opportunity to recast the environmental debate into "brown" rather than "green" issues, which should reinforce its initiatives on dry land salinity. While it will never win the green fight, it can substantially nullify it as an issue and force the debate down paths less malign to it.

Indigenous affairs also deserves some analysis. Many activists have come to the conclusion that reconciliation in particular is an issue with which to berate the government. This is a mistake. John Howard is not a racist, yet some of the misconceptions being pushed about Howard actually help his vote with potential One Nation voters. The ALP has long had a position on indigenous affairs that collects them votes in Sydney and Melbourne and loses them votes almost everywhere else. Liberal strategists must be praying that Sir Ronald Wilson will get his Reconciliation Party up.

Rural and Regional Issues have also been identified by some commentators as an area where Howard needs to spend some time. While there may be a big propensity in the bush for a swing, most of the marginal seats are not bush seats, so the swing would need to be huge. The Government can’t ignore the bush but its largest problem there is probably from Independents like Peter Andren (depending on pre-selection outcomes) or Tony Windsor, not the ALP or One Nation. The Liberal Party now boasts more country seats than the National Party. That is a mistake. One of the reasons for a high One Nation vote in rural areas is that the economic conservatives have no-one to vote for. The Coalition needs more Bob Katters and De-Anne Kellys if it wants to have a firm grip on rural Australia. That cannot be accommodated within the Liberal Party, but requires the National Party to distance itself.

To win the 2001 election the Liberal Party needs to establish a strong distinction between it and the Opposition on the issues. Otherwise it is in confirmed trouble. In an election where the political parties are viewed as being Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, almost everything will be reduced to entertainment values. If voters believe they are going to be screwed, they’ll vote for the party, and the leader, that will be gentler about it. Howard is not every elector’s romantic lead. Where he scores points is in doggedness and sheer determination, not flair or even likeability. These are not necessarily the characteristics that voters are comfortable with. Which takes us back to the Liberal Party convention. A strategy that relies on a kinder, gentler Howard will fail.

In summary, the entrails of the polls say Howard will lose. He has some opportunities with particular issues, but will need to exercise considerable skill to turn them to an agenda that favours him. In doing this he needs to most urgently target people in the 25-to-49-year age bracket, particularly women, living in marginal seats, which are almost entirely in urban areas. He also needs to get a majority of the potential One Nation vote, and may be helped here by vocal Aboriginal activism during the election period. At the same time he needs the National Party to become more parochial and so minimise the chances of independents in the bush.

If Howard wins this election he should go down as one of the greatest campaigners in Australian history, better even than Menzies himself.