Alister Drysdale
The secret in the final polls
The Howard Government's crushing defeat was a foregone conclusion, according to the polls and the pundits – or was it?
Business Spectator has learned that this assessment is wrong. In the last week of the campaign, according to highly placed Labor figures, the Party’s nightly tracking polls narrowed measurably.
What all along looked like a comfortable win, started to get uncomfortably close.
The central issue was the economy: the Government's tsunami message was starting to bite in key mortgage-belt seats.
Voters were starting to worry about their mortgages and the state of the economy. After all, the Howard-Costello team had delivered economic growth and good times. They may have disagreed on many other issues but there was no denying their success with the economy.
These tracking polls started to be reflected in late polls conducted by the Newspoll organisation and Galaxy.
This information about Labor polling has been confirmed late yesterday by Liberal sources.
Where did it go wrong then? The answer is simple: the Jackie Kelly 'Chaser-style prank' stopped the momentum in its tracks.
That shameful episode – and Kelly’s handling of it through the media – dominated the last two days of the campaign.
And it resonated with voters. They linked it straight back to the Liberal Party’s – and the Prime Minister's – “mean and tricky” personae. They felt they now had a perfectly legitimate reason to throw the Government out, the economy notwithstanding.
The episode was reminiscent of the fake Ralph Willis letter released on the last Wednesday of the 1996 campaign. Until that day, and not understood by the pundits, the election race between Howard and Keating was line ball according to the Liberal pollster, Quantum Research.
As Harold Wilson, former British Prime Minister once memorable said when asked what it took to unseat governments: “Events, dear boy, events.”
The Liberals meet to pick over the entrails and pick a new leader at a Party meeting in Canberra this Thursday led by Peter Costello.
An interesting sideline: will John Howard show up? After all, at the time of writing he had still not conceded Bennelong, had not resigned as leader of the Liberal Party and was still caretaker Prime Minister under the law.
At this stage, the leadership contenders are Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Brendan Nelson – all from the Party’s NSW right faction.
With Costello now resigned to the back-bench and a career out of politics in the future, the power – and the games – will be on in earnest in New South Wales. And the days when Victoria had power are probably gone forever.
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