Capitulation

Meanwhile the influence of the issues that the Coalition retained ownership of reduced dramatically while simultaneously the strength of their ownership on those issues nearly halved.

The few remaining issues that both favoured the Coalition and which were considered significant vote drivers are what Howard has been talking about ever since, with the addition of the economy (which was only marginally significant in its influence to drive the vote).

But mind you, Howard isn’t talking about these things because it’s some grand strategic plan - far far from it. He’s talking about them simply because that is all he has left to talk about that has a hope in hell of resonating.

If Howard started to speak about issues that are on the ALP side of the graph, because Howard has basically lost the public, all he would be doing is promoting strengths of the ALP, and as a result those issues would be more likely than not to move further into the ALP camp and increase the ALP vote.

This is what happened with the 2007 Budget. The government talked about education and infrastructure and up went the ALP vote, the ALP ownership of education and infrastructure became stronger (and its influence increased) as did the ALP ownership and significance of important issues. Meanwhile preferred PM shot up to a coefficient of 0.45 in importance and remained on the ALP side. (There’s another of these graphs about the budget in the document which shows this movement).Likewise at the Federal Council meeting of the Liberal Party, the talk about the environment only had the effect of increasing the ALPs ownership of environmental issues and their significance, as well as the ALP vote.

The problem Howard had, and I argue has to an even larger extent today, is that he cannot reclaim issues the ALP now holds as any mention of them simply reinforces into peoples minds that the ALP are better than the government on those issues. The public has made up their mind.

So we have a small group of issues Howard has left to talk about as his only means to campaign on in the election:

• interest rates;
• defence and security;
• lower taxes;
• strong leadership; and
• strong team.

This is Howard’s only campaign issue envelope.

Now keep that in your thought orbit, because we’re going off on a tangent before we come back to it.

The last two elections were noticeable in terms of voter movement by a large, prolonged, taxpayer funded advertising blitz starting six months before the election itself, combined with government initiatives on these advertising issues that had the effect of clawing back government support.