Marginal voters have eye on rates

VOTERS in the six Queensland marginal electorates polled by The Weekend Australian don't like what Kevin Rudd is doing with asylum-seekers or Telstra or the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but they like what's happening with interest rates and that seems to be what counts.

The raw figures do not bear out the optimism in the Coalition that it could pick up the Queensland coalmining seats of Dawson and Flynn -- in both, it shows Labor improving on its 2007 election result by almost 3 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.

And the figures bear out in only a limited way the Coalition's hopes that an unpopular Queensland state government and Queensland's historic political exceptionalism will work in their favour.

Labor is ahead of its 2007 vote in Queensland by about half the gains it has made across the board. Queensland is not yet good news for the Coalition, it is just slightly less bad than elsewhere.

But the negative judgments in the issues questions are likely to give Labor pause for thought.

In fact, since the Prime Minister has visited Townsville, Hervey Bay, Brisbane and the Gold Coast just this month, it seems likely they already have.

Only 26 per cent of voters across the electorates like what he's doing with Telstra, only 27 per cent think he is doing a good job with asylum-seekers and 56 per cent think he's being too soft on them.

And while none of the electorates likes the CPRS, Dawson and Flynn like it least, with only 30 and 29 per cent of voters thinking the federal government is doing a good job. In Gladstone-based Flynn, Labor trails the Coalition on primary votes.

Just as John Howard won four elections when most voters judged him best to handle the economy, but almost never best to handle education and health, it seems the all-important hip-pocket voting assessment is still working strongly in Labor's favour.

Sixty-one per cent of voters in the six electorates thought Labor was doing a good job in handling interest rates.

More interest rate rises are certain as the economy recovers but the question is whether this political paradox of recovery is enough for these swing voters to revise their economic assessment, when the cash rate goes up from 3.5 to maybe 4.5 per cent.

And if the election is fought on the CPRS, it also remains to be seen whether it can be turned into a powerful vote-changing hip-pocket issue, as Labor succeeded in doing with Work Choices.