Abbott credibility gap?
Tony Abbott has shored up the Liberal Party’s base and closed the gap on Labor. However, The Weekend Australian’s George Megalogenis has analysed NewsPoll data on the relationship between election success and the prime minister preferred by opposition voters in past elections and found that Abbott’s “credibility gap” remains, at present, too large for victory.
For example, about 20 per cent of Coalition voters say they prefer Rudd over Abbott as prime minister. While that leakage is much lower than it was under Turnbull or Nelson, Tony Abbott and the Coalition parties still have a lot of work to do. In 2007, only about 8 per cent of Labor voters preferred John Howard as prime minister. Megalogenis says that the Coalition will have to try to reduce the drift to something like that figure if it is to win the next election.
Read George Megalogenis’ analysis.
