Yesterday’s Australianheadlined its Newspoll result for New South Wales with “Spending buys lead for Labor”. Today it’s Victoria, and it gets “Big-spending Labor stretches lead”. A bit monotonous, but more
accurate than the paper’s front page teaser of “Strong start for
Baillieu”.

In fact, new Liberal leader Ted Baillieu should find
the poll disappointing. The increase in Labor’s lead from 56%-44% to
57%-43% is statistically insignificant, but the fact that the Liberals
have failed to make up any ground is something of a surprise. Baillieu
has enjoyed a honeymoon of media attention, and most observers think he
has performed well. So far, however, it doesn’t seem to be changing
voters’ minds.

There is some comfort for Baillieu in the fact that
his approval ratings are good: he has a higher satisfaction level than
Robert Doyle did despite hugely more undecideds, and he trails Steve
Bracks in the preferred premier or “beauty contest” stakes by only two
to one (49%-24%) instead of Doyle’s four to one. The Liberals may reasonably
hope that, given time, those positive impressions will translate into
actual voting intention. But the election is in November, so they don’t
have a lot of time to play with.

Also out today is a Newspoll for Queensland, but it’s less surprising. Peter Beattie’s government is not out of
the woods yet, but it’s recovered a bit from the neck-and-neck result
of the last few polls and now leads 52%-48%. Beattie’s approval rating
has also jumped sharply. The Australiancomments that Beattie’s gain
will be “not enough to convince him to rush off to an early election”,
but no doubt he will keep his options open.

An obvious explanation for the movement is the
fiasco over the failed Liberal-National merger. Newspoll continues to
show, however, that the Liberals outperform the Nationals two to one in
voting intention (26% to 13%). So while the merger might have been the
wrong way to go about it, some means has to be found to get the
Liberals into the driver’s seat if Queensland’s non-Labor parties are
going to go anywhere.