 Doggedness
puts the PM on top With John Howard leading the Liberal pack, Labor is left chasing its own tail, writes Peter Hartcher. JEFF Kennett once famously disparaged Peter Costello as having "all the attributes of a dog - except loyalty". But what if all politicians were dogs? A researcher, Tim Grau of the public affairs consultancy Springboard Australia, asked focus groups of voters to think of politicians that way. "If you had to describe John Howard as a breed of dog, what breed would that be?" he asked. The most common answers were fox terrier, bulldog and Jack Russell terrier, though one Labor voter was unkind enough to liken the Prime Minister to a mongrel. What does this mean? "Our research has consistently found that strong and successful political leaders are characterised by voters as 'worker' dogs," Grau says, "the type you would have for protection or to do work around the home or property." They are small, agile and aggressive. Voters in Grau's focus groups put Howard, Bob Carr and Peter Beattie into this category. Asked the same question about Costello, voters most commonly replied labrador and cocker spaniel, with another uncharitable Labor voter chipping in that the Treasurer was closest to being a lap dog. These, says Grau, founder and director of Springboard, are the sort of breeds you might like to play with in the backyard, but not the sort of dog you would trust to protect your house and family. When it came to the Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, by far the most common reaction was Saint Bernard, followed by Great Dane. Once more, a Labor voter with a mean streak - perhaps it was the same respondent in all three cases - compared him to an overweight German shepherd. The good news for Beazley is that the Saint Bernard and the Great Dane are considered to be likeable and loyal; the bad news is that these dogs are seen as being big, cuddly, slow and dopey - not the type you'd trust with the protection of the family home, according to Grau. Although Grau once worked for the Labor Party, the implication of his findings is far more favourable for Howard than for Beazley - that voters see Howard as the ideal type for leadership while Beazley may be likeable as a man but not appealing as a leader, even if they are all a pack of dogs. But how useful is this research, conducted online among focus groups of 20 to 30 people? It may be entertaining but does it have any application in political analysis? The approach, called projective technique, is commonly used in market research to try to capture the popular conceptions of a product so that its image can be tested and, if necessary, changed. It has started to intrude into politics. During last year's presidential election campaign in the United States, researchers asked 1200 voters to think of the two main candidates as consumer products. John Kerry was a BMW, for instance, while George Bush was a Ford. The value of the technique, says the designer of the US survey, Allen Adamson, is that "people often have difficulty articulating what they feel about people or candidates. If you give them the ability to sort brands it allows you to get a little deeper into what they are feeling." This week, the more traditional opinion polling also looked ominous for Beazley. The Herald Poll, having put Labor ahead of the Coalition for the previous four months, found the parties' fortunes reversed. The Coalition nosed ahead of Labor in the two-party vote to be at 51 per cent to Labor's 49 per cent in the poll conducted by ACNielsen last weekend. More strikingly, Howard's approval rating moved up by six percentage points to 59 per cent, while Beazley's fell by three to 46 per cent. The main reason seems to be the popularity of the federal budget and its obverse, the unpopularity of the Labor decision to oppose the tax cuts the budget promised. But the Herald pollster, John Stirton, points out that this is only the latest movement in a trend that has been running since April: "This means that it's not just about the budget. It's very clear that Kim Beazley is on the way down and John Howard is on the way up." This has instantly revived the Labor Party's favourite pastime: rampant fratricide. It is subterranean at the moment, but Labor is always anxious for any opportunity to indulge ancient grudges. But the real story here is not any weakness in the Opposition Leader's performance. The phenomenon in Australian politics today is the extraordinary durability of Howard's standing. Leaders trace a standard trajectory. They take office with a reservoir of goodwill or political capital, and they run it down over time. Howard is unique because he actually builds capital in office. It is remarkable that, after a decade in office, he should have an approval rating of 59 per cent. His is the most durable approval rating since the pollsters started asking the question 30 years ago. And, as Professor Ian McAllister of the Australian National University has shown, the popularity of a prime minister is almost three times more powerful than that of an opposition leader in deciding elections. McAllister's work shows that each extra percentage point that a prime minister gains in his approval rating produces an improvement of 0.47 per cent in the government's popularity compared to that of the opposition. But an extra percentage point in an opposition leader's approval rating produces an advantage against the government of only 0.18 per cent. In sum, a prime minister can easily lose an election, but it is much harder for an opposition leader to win. Howard is top dog, and the Labor Party, unless it can change its ways, resembles nothing so much as Bluey, a dog that Clive James once knew: "A known psychopath, Bluey would attack himself if nothing else was available. He used to chase himself in circles trying to bite his own balls off." Watch and see. |