Party Games: What do we look for in a political leader?
OPINION: What do we want in a political leader? Nice, but tough, decisive and experienced. Polling shows Malcolm Turnbull beats Bill Shorten on all of these. But there’s one factor that makes him an even more impressive politician.
Analysis
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WHAT do we look for in a political leader? Is the key attribute competence or is it trust or is it likability?
We want someone running the place who is a reasonably nice person — rather than, say, a serial killer or a sociopath.
However, we want someone who can, as Tony Abbott famously threatened to do with Vladimir Putin, shirt front anyone who needs shirt fronting.
We want someone who can make the tough calls — in polling terms, this is “strong and decisive” and “experienced” — and we want someone who “understands the major issues” and is “trustworthy”.
Malcolm Turnbull beats Bill Shorten on all those metrics but none is as high as his likability.
This was a key factor his backers hung their hat on last September. They thought that after two years of Tony Abbott upsetting people and getting people angry, it would be good to have someone who was calm and assuring.
The Queensland voters’ unbridled rejection of Campbell Newman, who was the antithesis of likeable, was a significant factor in this thinking last year.
Turnbull also scores well against Shorten on experience — 77 per cent for the Prime Minister and 57 per cent for the Labor leader — and he’s 15 per cent ahead on trust.
There are just three character measurements where Shorten gets within 10 points of the PM — on caring for people (they dead heat on 60 per cent), on arrogance, with Shorten having fewer people scoring him on that trait — 49 to 55 per cent — and being in touch with voters, which sees the Coalition leader six points down.
What will keep Coalition strategists happy with these poll results is that on all of the positive character traits Shorten’s supremacy over Abbott has been reversed when he’s up against the more likeable and stronger Turnbull.
Turnbull is a good political brand and an asset for the Coalition. You can bet the Liberal bunker in Canberra has some character defining ads on the books which will seek to drive down Shorten’s ratings.
The bad news for Labor is they’ve got quite a lot of material to work with.
Dennis Atkins and Malcolm Farr’s regular election podcast, Tow Grumpy Hacks, is available on iTunes and Soundcloud.
Originally published as Party Games: What do we look for in a political leader?
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