Beware the Underdog

It is becoming almost the conventional wisdom of the political pundits that John Howard is running out of time to make the improvement needed to secure another victory. It is now only two months, the argument goes, before the last practical election date of 8 December. Currently with only a 44% share of the two party preferred vote, a big change is needed and quickly.

A look back at the last five federal elections suggests that the task is not as unique as might appear.
For a start the Howard team does not need to reach a 50% share of the vote. The Mackerras pendulum suggests that 48.7% will be enough to retain office – a gain of 4.7 percentage points.

In three of the last five federal elections there has been a difference of 4.8 percentage points or more in a party’s vote as recorded by Newspoll with a month to go and the actual vote on polling day. This year the Coalition Government needs to improve by less than that and has two months in which to do so if Mr Howard decides to wait as long as possible.

Perhaps the main ingredient the Government campaign needs is a continuation of the public expectation that Labor is set for a victory. The Prime Minister and his colleagues must keep acting as if they are the ones facing the difficult task.

In my experience it is difficult to persuade politicians to convincingly play this underdog role. Their natural personality type of those who run for office is to be seen as a winner and to have to say in public that they are behind and being beaten comes hard even when it is in their best interest to say so.

Bob Hawke was definitely in that category and there were tense times, I recall, during the 1987 campaign when then party pollster Rod Cameron and I were quite truthfully briefing journalists that the result would be much closer than the published opinion polls were showing at the time. Bob was what I would describe as a bandwagon believer – everyone wanting to get behind a winner – and went so far as to threaten dismissal of we dreaded underdog proponents if we did not desist.

My recollection of what happened is now a little hazy but I think we were spared choosing between what we were ordered to do and what we believed was best by a downturn in the published polls which got across the “this will be close” message anyway.