Best not to follow the leader polls

Recently, Phil Senior noted in The Courier-Mail that for Labor to win the next federal election Kim Beazley needed to be ahead in the preferred prime minister stakes. This misses the point entirely.

Opposition leaders find it nearly impossible to lead in the preferred leader polls. It is the party vote that counts.

Preferred prime minister or premier polls historically have been a poor form guide for Australian elections. Published party polls regularly have shown the federal Opposition neck-and-neck with the Government, despite leadership destabilisation following Mark Latham's implosion after the last election.

The latest Newspoll puts the Government ahead by only 51 to 49 per cent on two party preferred. This comes after a Budget windfall. AC Neilson gave the Opposition the edge. These polls have a reasonable track record of predicting election outcomes. The next federal election will be close, even if Prime Minister John Howard (or Peter Costello for that matter) outpolls Beazley in the preferred prime minister stakes.

Recent state political histories support such a hypothesis. Victorious state Labor leaders Bob Carr (18 per cent) in NSW, Steve Bracks (19 per cent) in Victoria, Mike Rann (14 per cent) in South Australia and WA's Geoff Gallop (19 per cent) all lagged badly behind their opponents, each registering preferred premier ratings in the teens. Yet in each instance, as Opposition leader, they ultimately won the election. Rann aside, the remaining three have all gone on to win two or more elections.

Conversely, in replacing Kerry Chikarovski with the callow John Brogden as leader just 12 months out from the March 2003 NSW state election, the Liberal Party made a serious mistake. The Coalition was drawing closer to Labor in the party polls, even though Chikarovski's preferred premier rating languished in the teens.

In Victoria, the Liberals made the same mistake replacing Denis Napthine with Robert Doyle just before their embarrassing showing in 2002. In both cases the decision to install new leaders was essentially a waste of four years, as Brogden and Doyle struggle to build a public profile with the added burden of being election losers.

Even then Opposition leader Colin Barnett in Western Australia was on his way to winning the recent state election despite terrible preferred premier ratings. If he hadn't introduced an unfunded over-the-top canal proposal most commentators believe he would have won the election.

By not panicking about preferred leadership polls when in opposition, Labor is now in power in every state and territory.

But maybe things are different federally?

Not at all. On a rare occasion where the federal opposition leader led the prime minister for a sustained period, when John Hewson was preferred leader to Paul Keating before the 1993 election, results again showed the irrelevance of the preferred leader poll, with Hewson going on to lose the "unlosable election".

Leadership is about achieving goals and this is difficult from opposition when the only goal that matters is winning the next election. That is why the two-party preferred poll is the one that counts.

The natural order of affairs is for incumbents to outrate their opponents in polls, even when the government is unpopular. Just look at Keating versus Howard in 1996, when Keating ran on strong leadership, led Howard in the preferred prime minister stakes, yet was thrashed at the election.

Beazley wouldn't want to make this mistake from Opposition, only focusing on being remembered for his newly found "ticker". We already have seen a snapshot of how he gets portrayed in the media - as a man not with ticker, but wanting ticker, or at least the appearance of ticker.

The Federal Government has its share of problems. It houses a deputy desperate to elevate to the leadership, with a likely ugly showdown just around the corner. It has reneged on the election promise of a low threshold Medicare safety net, and it has a tax cut package that delivers 80 per cent of Australians a worse deal than Labor's model. Throw in a cooling housing market and a drought threatening the Budget bottom line, and the Coalition may not be the political Goliath it so often is portrayed to be.

These weaknesses can be exploited by a party in the hunt come the next election. It is the party vote that will tell us if they are, not the preferred prime minister poll.

Beazley wants to be seen as having ticker. The best way to do that is by winning the next election. Just ask Rann, Bracks, Carr and Gallop, all of whom were seen as unpopular opposition leaders lacking strength. Ask Howard, who before becoming prime minister was seen only as an unpopular opposition leader lacking stature. Things change from the government benches.