The Australian's take on Kevin Rudd's current (post-budget) popularity with voters. Not knowing too many older, wealthier conservative voters & "the elite" :wink: , I can't vouch for it's accuracy ... But interesting.:
Voters begin to shift on PM
George Megalogenis
July 07, 2008
KEVIN Rudd has suffered double-digit falls in his popularity among higher-income earners, full-time workers and people aged 35-49 years as the superstar ratings of earlier in the year returned to more mortal levels in recent weeks.
A special analysis of Newspoll shows that the Prime Minister has lost support among all demographic groups - male and female, rich and poor, and households with and without children - since the May budget.
But he still has almost 85 per cent of Labor voters satisfied with the job he is doing as prime minister.
The hard numbers reinforce focus group polling detailed last week to The Australian that shows the electorate is increasingly disappointed with Mr Rudd - although not yet disillusioned.
Both Newspoll and the research from the Ipsos Mackay group pinpoint the May budget as the moment Mr Rudd's job satisfaction rating began to sour.
Interestingly, Mr Rudd didn't do as badly among households with children - they trimmed his rating by 7.7 percentage points to 60.9 per cent, while those without children cut it by 10.7 points to 56.8 per cent.
The most worrying part of the Newspoll research for Mr Rudd is it suggests a window may have already closed on his leadership because he no longer commands the respect of older, wealthier conservative voters.
Mr Rudd's satisfaction rating among Coalition supporters generally averaged 40.9 per cent between March and early May. But in the four Newspolls taken since the May 13 budget, it slumped by 12.4 points to 28.5per cent.
Coalition voters appear to be behind the double-digit falls in Mr Rudd's standing among those households on more than $70,000 (down 12.2 points to 59.9 per cent), full-time workers (down 11.6 points to 58.8 per cent) and people aged 35-49 years (down 12.1 per cent to 57.2per cent).
Labor strategists may not be fussed by the shift in sentiment among the elite, but will be more concerned about the wobble among the middle-aged.
It will be harder from here on for Mr Rudd to appeal to the Coalition for bipartisanship in the same way that he had earlier in the year.
The danger for Brendan Nelson is if he reads the drop in Mr Rudd's standing among Coalition voters as a wider trend, when it may be nothing more than a return to partisan politics as normal.
Mr Rudd enjoyed an unprecedented honeymoon in his first year-and-a-half as Labor leader - beginning with his rise to the Opposition leader's job in December 2006, and accelerating since winning the November election last year.
He already holds the top five satisfaction ratings as prime minister in the 23-year history of Newspoll. Tellingly, these benchmarks were set before the May 13 budget, which was geared towards so-called "working families", who received tax cuts and rebates for education and childcare, while higher-income earners lost family benefits.
Mr Rudd's popularity peaked at a record 71 per cent in mid-April. He still had 68 per cent of voters satisfied with the job he was doing on budget eve - a figure John Howard never reached in 11 1/2 years in office.
Since the budget, however, Mr Rudd's fortnightly rating has zig-zagged south - to 63 per cent, then 56 per cent, then 59 per cent and, at the end of last month, a relatively modest 54 per cent.
When the proportion of people who are satisfied with Mr Rudd's performance is subtracted from those who are not, the mood shift becomes more dramatic - his so-called net satisfaction tumbled from 56 per cent in mid-April to 22 per cent at the end of last month. Yet none of this backlash has transferred across to the Opposition Leader's column. Dr Nelson's net satisfaction rating has gone into reverse over the same period, from plus 2 per cent to minus 6 per cent, even though he ran a populist campaign against rising petrol prices.
The special Newspoll compared the four surveys before the May 13 budget with the four surveys since, and focused on Mr Rudd's satisfaction rating. There were statistically significant falls in Mr Rudd's popularity across all groups.
Before the budget, Mr Rudd had a satisfaction rating above 60per cent among every demographic except Coalition voters. Now most groups are below this figure. Apart from Labor voters, the only areas Mr Rudd retained popularity better than 60 per cent were among people aged 18-34 years (down 7.9 points to 64 per cent) and part-time workers (down 7.7 points to 63.8 per cent).
Like most Australians, Liberal voter Jon Warner was prepared to give the fresh-faced Mr Rudd a fair go when he replaced Mr Howard as prime minister.
The advertising director from Sydney's northern beaches was impressed by Mr Rudd's early move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - a "nice bit of PR" - and the apology to the Stolen Generations. "His heart's in the right place," the 44-year-old Mr Warner said.
But over the past few months, he has grown increasingly sceptical of Mr Rudd's frenetic leadership style. "There's all the bells and whistles but not a lot of content - he's the master of the 30-second grab." His mate Luke Cook, 27, who also works in advertising, said the word on the street is: "Kevin 07, Mistake 08."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23979407-601,00.html
) & defecting to Labour, then Meg (
) & her deal with the devil over the GST. All really unfortunate, as the party never recovered from both those episodes.
