Poll

Labor's poll timing is a time for prayer all round

Mark Kenny dinkus

Mark Kenny Julia Gillard was wise to avoid a clash with those great secular festivals, the AFL and NRL grand finals, when setting the election for September 14.

Poll bias can be educational

Photo illustration by Michael McGurk of men in suits climbing over and pulling at a human brain.

For SMH Spectrum

BRAIN:RANDWICK:990819:Photograph by Andrew Taylor:SMH:News:Report by Julie Robotham:Prince of Wales Research Unit neds your brain......Dr Glenda Halliday the director of the unit (holding this human brain) is in need of brains for research after the owner has finished with them of course.....

John Warhurst Efforts should always be made to take these preconceptions into account if a balanced outcome is to be achieved.

Comments 66

Making a poll win a breeze

Cover illustration / digital image for Green Guide. Weathervane tv antenna with silhouette of a flying duck at the top. Network ten, channel 7, abc, channel 9 and SBS logos.

Weather vane

John Warhurst Pressure groups and organised interests are the weathervanes of political shifts.

Comments 139

Penchant for picking a winner is poll waffle

John-Watson-opinion

John Watson Here's an odd thing: the ''doomed'' Gillard government's standing in the polls is about par for the course six months before voting day.

Demoralised Labor hangs on every poll

Peter Hartcher dinkus

Peter Hartcher The life of the Gillard government has become so precarious its survival prospects are recalibrated by some of its own members, and by some in the media, on a poll-by-poll basis.

Comments 69

Bruce Guthrie

Tussle for bravery awards on smoke and poll dancing

Bruce Guthrie opinion dinkus.

Bruce Guthrie And this week's prize for political boldness goes to a) Prime Minister Julia Gillard, b) Melbourne City Councillor Richard Foster, or c) Premier Ted Baillieu?

Live TV crosses, true believers but no poll dance

Jacqueline Maley.

Jacqueline Maley It was not supposed to be a campaign launch. But it looked a lot like a campaign launch.

Comments 109

US looks Down Under to stop poll rot

Hartcher

Peter Hartcher Unwittingly, Australia supplied a couple of the colourful cultural touches to the US presidential election campaign.

Comments 114

Michelle Grattan

US poll gives Labor audacity of hope

Michelle Grattan

Michelle Grattan Good heavens - now Barack Obama is getting in on the misogyny act.

Michelle Grattan

Positive poll results give Gillard breathing space

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Michelle Grattan Politics looked sweet to Julia Gillard when she woke up today to face the penultimate week of the full Parliament.

Comments 138

Josh Gordon

Baillieu's poll hope could be spinning out

Josh Gordon, State political editor

Josh Gordon If the government can't sell itself to voters, what chance has it got?

Poll dancing in the dark with Wayne Swansteen

Bruce Springsteen and Wayne Swan

Tony Wright Call it the Malcolm Fraser effect. Or Swannie's magical invocation to The Boss. As poll-watchers puzzle over how it might be that Newspoll could give the Gillard government a 5 percentage-point...

Misha Schubert

NT poll a judgment on intervention from the people most affected

Misha Schubert.

Misha Schubert In the desert, it's personal experience that matters, not statistics.

Michael Gordon

Poll shows Gillard on slow road back

Michael Gordon.

Michael Gordon Modern improvement should harden resolve of MPs who believe decision should come later, not sooner.

Phillip Coorey

Holed by carbon tax, good ship Gillard limps towards poll iceberg

Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Phillip Coorey THE Gillard government resembles a dinghy being dragged along the bottom of the sea. It bounces up and down as it is being pulled along, but ultimately, it is sunk.

Lenore Taylor

Unions go neutral as poll hopes dry up

Lenore Taylor dinkus

Lenore Taylor IN THE showdown in February with the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard had almost unanimous support from MPs who owe their position to the union movement.

Comments 140

Sean Nicholls

Poll history repeats with trust at its heart

Sean Nicholls dinkus

Sean Nicholls NSW voters will have been hit by a strong sense of deja vu watching the Queensland election result. Here was a female premier leading state Labor to a huge defeat after more than a decade in power -...

Michelle Grattan

Labor borrows Liberal poll ploy

Michelle Grattan

Michelle Grattan Julia Gillard has borrowed from the John Howard 2004 election playbook to try to counter her trust problem, which Anna Bligh's spectacular demise has highlighted.

Comments 85

Phillip Coorey

Gillard has faith in poll resurrection

Phillip Coorey

Phillip Coorey Julia Gillard is not one to bemoan her lot publicly, nor is she prone to reacting to the potshots her detractors take at her personal life.

Comments 227

Rudd keeps Wilde-est dreams to himself

Judith Ireland dinkus

Judith Ireland Irish author and poet Oscar Wilde wrote that ''life imitates art far more than art imitates life'', muses Judith Ireland.