Annihilation?

When John Howard told his parliamentary colleagues that the Coalition faced annihilation at the election, he wasn’t kidding. Howard was aware of the truths behind the polling, and while most commentators were taking the Labor Party’s popularity with a grain of salt, Howard couldn’t afford to.

Two opinion polls came out this week, one from Newspoll and the other from Morgan. Newspoll put Labor at its lowest two party preferred poll since February, 55 to 45, when the Rudd and Gillard team were still new and were yet to really get their message out. The Morgan poll showed Labor in an improved position from last time, 60 to 40.

While Labor may be viewing the Newspoll result as being bad news (the awaited budget bounce perhaps?), so will the Coalition. An election with a TPP of 55 to the Opposition would be the biggest swing since Malcolm Fraser’s victory in 1975. If the swing was uniform across the country, it would see Howard lose his seat, as well as frontbenchers Peter McGauran, Fran Bailey, Malcolm Turnbull, Mal Brough and Jim Lloyd. Presumed Opposition Leader Peter Costello would be retaining his seat with a buffer of 1.1%.

Going off Morgan’s results, the situation would near wipe the Coalition off the face of the planet. The Labor Party could pick up an additional 61 seats, and presuming the swing is uniform (though it never really is), would take out Costello, Abbott, Ruddock, and Hockey, as well as the aforementioned frontbenchers. The Liberals would be left with Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop and Alexander Downer, as well as scarcely two dozen seats. The good news is that the vacancies give a chance for Wilson Tuckey to re-enter the cabinet at long last.