(Political) Life really does begin at 40

Monday's Galaxy poll showing an increase in support for the Government received a lot of coverage with Brisbane's Courier-Mail headline screaming "Fightback".

The poll and the other reports highlighted that Labor's lead on a two-party preferred vote has been cut from 14 percentage points to six in just three weeks. It shows Labor's primary vote has slumped five percentage points to 42 per cent and the Opposition holds a slender two point lead on crucial primary votes.

After preferences the Labor Opposition still maintains a comfortable lead 47% to 53%.

Of course, what was interesting is that this poll received so much coverage when an analysis of other polls have shown a similar increase in the Government's stocks in recent times, but has to a large extend gone unnoticed.

My post here on 22 May highlighted this issue from that week's Newspoll. While many are focusing on the two-party preferred vote, most seem to ignore that it the primary vote that is initially a critical measure to examine. I observed that the Newspoll from that week showed that the Coalition Government's primary vote had increased from 39% to 43% between March and May 2007.

The Galaxy polling is now also showing primary vote support for the Coalition has risen from 37% in April to 42% now.

So the prominent coverage the poll received, to some extent, was over inflated in that the trend it found has been in place for some months.

Labor is certainly in a very comfortable position, but still facing a competitive Government.

Interestingly, a column I wrote in February 2005 for a Springboard Australia Newsletter I declared the old adage "Life begins at 40" was true in politics too when referring to the need for the Labor Party to increase its primary support if it was to be competitive.

This week's Galaxy Poll and recent Newspolls have confirmed their is plenty of life left in the Howard Government.