What I think people need to remember with this analysis is that you can’t escape from the fact that the analysis is predicated on the responses of actual voters sampled and is not just opinion. I think part of the difficulty this year has been that the reputation of political research has been assailed from two directions - the crazed spin from the Government Gazette undermining credibility and the boosters of “betting markets”. But it’s still worthwhile remembering that actual data on voters’ intentions and views is highly valuable.

The National Forum research does seek to elicit how committed voters are to their current voting intention, which goes to the issue of how soft the Labor vote is.

So it's quite wrong to write as if this were all Graham's opinion. It's something fundamentally distinct from punditry and speculation.

The ALP does not want an election quite yet - they have not yet spent the money they have grabbed from the taxpayers to fund their election campaign and they don't want to be found out.
Here in South Australia they have made a $3million donation to the union movement - ostensibly it is to run health and safety courses in workplaces. The difficulty is (1) that the unions have given money to the ALP to run the election campaign, (2) the courses should be paid for out of union funds if unions want to run them, (3) employers were willing to run them - and know what their staff need to know...it was a neat means of obtaining a massive injection of funding into the ALP campaign...no doubt similar shenanigans elsewhere...no wonder the anti-government rhetoric is working so well...there is plenty of it around - and most of it is inaccurate.

People talk about the change in the mood of a nation. I doubt whether the hundreds of thousands that attend footy matches each weekend really care whether it is Labour or Liberal. In fact if their footy team wins they will vote Liberal and if they lose they will vote Labour. Though most know I much prefer the Liberals because I perceive (perhaps wrongly) that they are a little more interested in preventing the murder of the unborn and allowing the small vocal homosexual lobby to have its way, at the end of the day there is very little difference between the 2 parties policies.

There’s no mystery at all. I believe, in events at the moment in Australia.
It’s the train wreck that happens for the conservative side when the Left wing journalists of this country ( and that’s almost all ), abandon all decency…all belief in democracy…and pull out all stops to get their chosen party ( Labor of course ), into power.
What makes this work like a dream for the Left is the culmination of years of the ‘dumbing down’ education system, devised by the Left wing academics and implemented by the Left wing education union members…..along with the conditioning of the population by Labor’s media, managing the news to its own Left wing agenda….. inclusion of facts and interviewees that fit the required outcome…and exclusion of those that might actually inform the Australian people of the truth.
So…… many Australians have been made ripe for the propaganda…ready to do the Left’s bidding unknowingly.
Most think they’re saving the planet…caring for others….looking after others’ rights in the workplace etc …instead they’re allowing the Left/Labor juggernaut to use them as pawns in their power game.
With unprecedented prosperity…with almost full employment…with real wages up by about 20%, compared with about 1% over Labor’s 13 years…still the cabal have been able to con the voters into thinking people are ‘hurting’, struggling…in pain etc… a propaganda and confidence trick of massive proportions.
Faced with proof of their deceit, they switch mantras to the social side.
The Howard government has been infinitely better than Labor on that count too, but the media can always be relied upon to create the myth that it’s otherwise.
As well, the media ensures that the facts about Rudd’s past remain hidden.
They don’t want Australians to know that Rudd was the right hand man to premier Goss in the QLD government that unprecedentedly destroyed evidence ( having assured multiple barristers it would be preserved for forthcoming court cases) to avoid scrutiny of the sexual abuse of indigenous children in state care.....and they and Beattie and their media have covered up the lawbreaking ever since.
See ‘Shreddergate’, ‘Dilkera O’Neill’, ‘Heiner’.

As a retired wheatgrower now forced to get on the pension with bread up nearly 3 hundred per cent since the end of WW2, and our prices up only 60 percent, and with milk cockies out from Mandurah here selling out cheap to Howard's corpo' capitalists just for hobby farms, do wonder what is really going on?

Of course, we've still got the quarry economy with China creating a buyers paradise here in return for our pitstocks, till she fiendishly changes her mind.

Rudd has not even mentioned such problems, so maybe it has become our political fashioning, to not worry much whether backwards or forwards, so it won't be much different whether to vote for one or the t'other

Graham's analysis is pretty right. Mark B is exactly right. Graham's analysis seeks to find out how committed voters are.

All those comments about past issues will be well and truely buried under the voters concerns for national security. One thing the recent furore over Haneef has shown is that people are terribly interested in national security...as they always have been. It's an Aussie tradition. Remember the invasion from boat people Ala Tampa, thev 'Domino theory' that committed us to Vietnam, the 'reds under the bed' that ensured Menzies reign, right back to the fear of a Russian invasion and Asians undermining our working conditions that originally led to election of politicians who implemented the White Australia policy in 1901.

Watch the Haneef issue blow up in Rudd's fence sitting face.

Up until today Rudd ran the conservative race. ie Supporting the Government's policy...today however he's drifted to the traditional leftie labor, soft on security, stance. 'Let's have an enquiry' ... an enquiry that can only mean an enquiry into our actions and let's condemn the Government Policy that led to the expulsion of a suspected terrorist?

If you want to see how this issue 'rubs' with the average and swinging voter ...well ask the following question among your friends:

If Haneef was a pilot would you fly in a plane he was piloting?

Overwhelming the response I've seen is this: An initial hesitation, followed by an embarrassed laugh and then a smiling NO.

And the voters are still smart enough to work out in terrorist issues the obvious course in defending Australia, regardless of age, demographic or income. The Labor Party will dictate to Rudd on this issue and he won't be able to disguise that. And that's the issue that will decide the election outcome.

Security. Who can guarantee that?