My polling commentary

Newspoll shows the coalition still stuck in the polls, but at least I take some consolation from the fact that a significant majority agree with the Haneef visa revocation, despite all the heat generated by left-y bloggers and the odd editorial campaign of The Australian against Andrews personally. Howard still leads in the "who would handle security better" question too.

As for the 10 point TPP lead to Labor at this stage: well it will just make the ultimate Coalition election victory all that more lauded!

Some reasons why I am not giving up on the Coalition yet:

* You would need to see polling on a State by State basis to see how many seats are in danger. Western Australian is still mentioned as not good for Labor, and there is fierce opposition to Beattie's out-of-the-blue council amalgamation plan in Queensland. It seems that the actual amalgamation process will be still underway during the Federal election, and it is bound to cause some vote changing in some rural seats at least. Maybe not much, but some. Meanwhile, the hospital decision in Tasmania might have worked for Howard in that one seat. (It's going to take a lot to win the election one seat at a time, though!)

* Is it possible for Rudd to be a smaller target than he has been in the last few weeks? If people like him for being "Howard lite," is there a chance they will actually switch allegiance back to Howard when it comes to a crunch? And I don't expect that people currently siding with Rudd in polls are thinking of Labor as a team at the moment. Wayne Swan does not seem to me to be performing well in interviews this year; I reckon there is danger that Peter Garrett is going to self-implode due to some guilt over having to sell his idealism to be part of the party; and I still think that Julia Gillard is not entirely loveable despite the various make overs and appearances on women's magazines indicate.

* There was some mention somewhere in the last couple of weeks that Tony Abbot's comment that the "darker aspects" of Rudd's political career may come to light was a reference to some journalistic digging that he knows about. It would have to be very dirty indeed, though, not to backfire. Still, if Rudd displays a glass jaw again, it may have an effect.

* John Howard seems certainly to have been right in his prediction earlier this year that he did not expect the polling to change significantly until the election is called. Still, that's little comfort to his supporters when even the betting is starting to go strongly against you.