Template for victory

...and only one leader appears to have one at the moment. In the rush to praise Caesar's tax cuts (shortly before Newspoll arrived this week to bury him), there was one part of AC Nielsen's polling that the commentariat failed to lend their ears to.

On the tax cuts - only 8% of voters would probably change their vote - evenly split between Liberal and Labor. In other words, on the national level there was a strong suggestion that the tax cuts were a non-issue for the electorate and if Labor offered something different they would get a benefit.

Probably the only chink of light of the Liberals is that 42% are worried about Labor damaging the economy. It suggests that if they had used their brains a bit earlier and tied the future challenge of climate change back to their economic management and demonstrate some future planning, they might just have been back in it. Still 49% are not worried by Labor running the economy - the 9% undecided is not a very big base for the Liberals to work with. 49% looks suspiciously close to Labor's primary vote and Rudd's preferred PM rating. Their vote is unlikely to move much, except maybe between Labor and Green.

The fact that 61% responded positively to Rudd's call of new leadership as opposed to 36% who responded negatively suggests that those who have committed to Rudd are likely to stay there and that a lot of the minor party vote is leaning towards him as opposed to Howard. The talk is of Labor getting an average 69% of preferences which, allied with a high base of primary votes, produces stratospheric poll figures. Given the Liberals got 53% of the two-party preferred vote with the minority of preferences at the last election, it's quite possible Labor could get something close to 55-56% with a similar primary vote.

Given substantially Labor has all the issues on its side, sewing up both the former Liberal marginal seat strongholds (e.g. Lindsay, Makin, Bass, Eden Monaro) and making serious inroads into true liberal territory (e.g. Ryan, North Sydney), it becomes a question of whether the Liberals can salvage votes rather than hang onto enough seats to win.

By putting emphasis on the team, Liberal strategists are committing the cardinal sin: not attacking the leader. Failing to attack a leader is a concession you can't beat them: by withdrawing their 'L' plate attack, tired as it was, and resorting to the 'front bench bogey', Rudd is left unscathed by Liberal advertising which is hardly likely to damage his ratings.

Unless the Libs can come up with something comprehensive to support their tired old agenda of anti-unionism and tax cuts, they are at great risk of suffering a long, dark nuclear winter.