Capitulation

This, not the campaign, was how Howard won the last two elections. It was the two quarters leading up to the election that gave a large enough boost to the Coalition’s primary vote that allowed them to cruise into victory. Any extra vote they received in the campaign itself was nothing but a cherry on top, such as what occurred in the 2004 election.

In 2007, the same three-card trick has been played, but its effect was completely different.

The reason its different this time is a consequence of what we were talking about earlier - the issues involved that are being advertised (WorkChoices etc) aren’t Howard’s issues, they’re Rudds. When Howard talks about them, they simply reinforce existing voter views that are detrimental to the Coalition’s electoral prospects. That’s been reflected in the polls.

This means that Howard has to win an election, in the campaign itself, with only a very small amount of issues that he can use.

But let’s look at how these issues are playing out today rather than June.

Interest rates are no longer a big Howard issue in terms of being a vote driver - the interest rate rises have demonstrated this clearly. When rates went up, so did the ALP’s vote - as our earlier regression analysis of a few weeks ago suggested they would.

Strong Leadership is getting whittled away by both the Costello leadership speculation and the continued abysmal polling, while Rudd on the other hand is going out of his way to pinch this issue off Howard and shift it into being an ALP strength.

Howard simply cannot win an election when he only has a few issues he can talk about, and where most of those issues in his envelope are competitive and up for grabs. The ALP can try and grab these issues without necessarily reinforcing them for Howard because Rudd has the momentum and the broad issue support to protect him. Howard on the other hand can only work with what he has because to chase most of the ALP issues is to risk pushing them further into the ALP fold, and losing further vote share.

Howard knows this, must know this - I think he clearly knows this.

Which gets us on to the electoral contest that is happening now.