While consistently and urgently calling for an early election, Abbott has actually benefited from his own failure to engineer one. The full three years in opposition since August 2010 has been good for him and for the opposition.

Though few gave Abbott much chance and some thought him to be virtually unelectable his performance over the past 3½ years is now one possible model for how to be a successful opposition leader.

This model is one in which the leader adopts an overly aggressive, oppositionist stance for the first half of the government's term of office before gradually becoming more civil and accommodating while still retaining a merciless and withering style of criticism.

The aim is to throw the government off balance while adopting an unrelentingly populist stance. Then as the election comes closer some adjustments and compromises can be made.

It is too easy to say that Abbott is highly likely to become prime minister only because Labor too, under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, has fallen over. Despite the echoes of the disastrous mid-1950s Labor split, Abbott's strengths and weaknesses deserve more serious consideration. His persona is complex.

The main question is whether Abbott has just fallen on his feet or whether he has devised and implemented a well-paced personal plan for success. A secondary question is whether he has effectively reshaped his persona over time or whether he remains essentially unchanged.

He was always among the most interesting of the potential Liberal leaders, more so even than Turnbull. But that doesn't automatically translate to leadership success. Labor's Mark Latham, noticed at the same time, was interesting too. That comparison is still valid as they share a physicality and an aggression unlike all others on both sides of politics. They also share an unattractive win-at-all costs intensity.

Abbott has always combined the toughness of the political street-fighter with a relaxed and attractive style of public communication. He can talk the language of many audiences.

He was often rejected on an overly simplistic analysis of his character and motivation.

The 'mad monk' tag failed to differentiate between types of faith and types of Catholicism. Too much emphasis was placed on his attitude to abortion and, later, same-sex marriage as if those positions summarised his whole persona.

In fact, his particular Catholicism makes him an unconventional type of Liberal. It is not just conservative Catholicism but a DLP-type Catholicism, which actually brings him closer to one strand in an older Labor tradition.

Abbott has grown since the Howard government and the very early opposition years. The 'mad monk' tag has much less sting now as he has wisely distanced himself from discussions about faith, choosing not to make a big deal of the differences in this regard between himself and Gillard.

He also seems to have tried to soften somewhat the extremely physical image generated by his apparent addiction to certain types of physical activity.

He has been fortunate that some of the gaps in his own persona have been filled in by his wife and daughters and now by his sister. They are a bonus for him just as the Rudd family was for Rudd. But if anything Margie Abbott appeals to a middle-class audience even more so than Therese Rein.

Abbott's recent forward-looking positions on indigenous affairs, including the coming referendum on constitutional recognition, are to his credit and resonate well with the wider community. They build on his long-standing practical commitment to trying to learn from experience about Aboriginal communities.

At the same time much about Abbott has not changed. He remains grimly granite-jawed and merciless beyond the bounds of civility in many of his personal political exchanges. His political language remains extravagantly warlike when directed towards his opponents.

This linguistic populism plays well to his right-wing audience, to his supporters among shock-jocks, such as Ray Hadley, and to the community activists that he played with and to so effectively earlier in this term.

He still retains the ability to put his foot in it however. This was the supposed Achilles heel that many of his critics thought would bring him down as opposition leader. The weakness remains but it has done him no major harm yet.

Abbott has been willing to distance himself from one of his mentors, John Howard, on attitudes to indigenous affairs but slow to distance himself from other Liberal figures such as Senator Cory Bernardi and Howard-era minister Mal Brough. A more successful government might have put Abbott under more pressure by spotlighting his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Still you can only play the cards you have been given and if Abbott wins the next election his performance as Opposition Leader will be put under the microscope for its possible lessons for future opposition leaders.

Good opposition leaders don't always make successful prime ministers however. We are about to find out in the Abbott case. It looks as if he will have a big parliamentary majority to play with as well as favourable economic circumstances, but big majorities can be squandered quite quickly as Malcolm Fraser, another tough, divisive and effective opposition leader, showed.

John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University. John.Warhurst@anu.edu.au

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