Newspoll: 55 to 45 in Labor’s favour
The Australian published Newspoll’s first poll with Rudd as Opposition leader. The national two-party preferred vote prediction was 55 per cent for Labor and 45 per cent for the Opposition. If an election was held last weekend, it would have been a landslide win for Labor.
The primary vote predictions were 46 per cent for Labor and 39 per cent for the Coalition.
The Australian reported,
Mr Rudd has increased Labor’s primary vote by more than any leader in the past 10 years and has delivered a bigger hit to John Howard’s rating as prime minister than that suffered by Paul Keating 12 years ago.
A week after winning the Labor leadership, Newspoll finds Mr Rudd has outstripped the initial vote-winning impact of Mark Latham’s caucus victory in December 2003.
The jump in Labor’s primary vote and Opposition leader satisfaction rating delivered by Mr Rudd rivals the surge in support that greeted the Liberals’ newly elected John Hewson in April 1990 and Alexander Downer in May 1994 - when the electorate wanted to punish the Hawke and Keating administrations.
The bounce can be seen in the following two graphs. The bounce this time is much bigger than the early 2005 bounce for Beazley.
The usual opinion poll graphs are here. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs (including the above graphs).