It's all about One Nation

_{25, October 2001}

Most elections since World War II have seemed to be a race for the middle with most effort being put into wooing the average Australian. This analysis was overly simplistic and only made sense because the National (Country) Party and the DLP securely delivered a blue-collar conservative vote to the Liberal Party, allowing it to work the centre.

The end of the Cold War, the decline in influence of the National Party and the rise of One Nation have shattered that analysis – parties can now cobble together support from a variety of areas. This is evident in this election from online focus group research undertaken by me, Professor John Wanna of Griffith University and Mike Kaiser.

Howard’s performance during The Great Debate was puzzling. On the basis of our research on swinging voters and the “worm” he was “off message” most of the time. Consequently Beazley was judged by the studio audience to have won. On last Wednesday night for the first time we spoke to One Nation voters. To me it became clear that Howard wasn’t off message at all in the debate, he was talking past Beazley and the cameras to an audience that wasn’t present in the room.

So far in this election the Liberal strategy appears to be to grab such a huge slice of the voters most inclined to vote for One Nation that the middle ground doesn’t really matter. In trying to neutralise this pitch Beazley has alienated his strongest supporters, but hasn’t yet managed to come up with the policy strength to grab centre voters. Last election One Nation inclined voters split fairly evenly between Government and Opposition. If they break almost completely in the government’s favour this time it is hard to see how Beazley can win.

Nothing illustrates the differences between groups than their varied attitudes to leadership. The campaigns and the newspaper coverage to date have cast the election in terms of a leadership contest based on approaches to refugees and terrorism. While our left and centre voters were looking for leadership they are pessimistic and “…no longer look to politicians for evidence of…leadership.” They also have a much more post-modern view of what leadership is. It is not “charisma”, it is “the ability to listen”, “vision and long term policies”, and being prepared to admit mistakes.

These voters see international events as irrelevant to leadership, and in fact felt that Australia’s politicians had missed an opportunity to “break through the usual political rhetoric” to build a sense of community by using the events of September 11 as a circuit breaker. Apart from that September 11 is an irrelevance for the election – leadership is related to domestic issues.

The refugee issue appears to have had some effect on leadership perceptions, but more as a negative for Beazley. Howard’s reactions on asylum seekers are viewed as in character, whilst Beazley’s aren’t. Soft left voters in particular see him as lacking sincerity on the issue and they see him as weak.

Running the campaigns around leadership has been a huge turn-off for centre and left voters. As a result they are both tending to stick very much with what they did last election. If Beazley were to cut through on domestic issues, their perceptions might change, but so far, he hasn’t.

One Nation voters in contrast are almost entirely aligned with the government’s campaign on leadership. They are optimistic and believe that politicians can show leadership because they have found one who they believe does – Pauline Hanson. Howard scores leadership marks because they see him as implementing her policies. He is a better leader than Beazley for two major reasons – they believe that he is delivering a One Nation policy on refugees, and national security is the number one issue for them.

However, this support comes with a caveat – while they believe they are closer to the Liberal Party than the Labor Party, they are prepared to vote Labor to punish any transgressions. This is not surprising because many of them were originally left of centre voters – this is what has redefined the political map.

Can Beazley win from here? He has opportunities. Howard has grabbed on to one vote, part of which was ultimately Labor’s last election, but his grip on the others is looser than it was. This appears to be a calculated gamble. However, if Beazley can remove himself from the contest over “leadership”, then he has a chance by talking about the issues to actually take votes from the centre right, who were Howard’s last time. The question is, are there enough left in the middle anymore to win.

Published in First published in the Australian Financial Review