Spectacular fall puts PM on edge of the abyss

100505 pollies

KEVIN Rudd now has a problem. Labor's two-party-preferred vote in Newspoll is below 50 per cent for the first time in four years, and Rudd's personal dissatisfaction rating has lifted to 50 per cent for the first time ever.

When more than half of the public is dissatisfied with an opposition leader's performance, their leadership is usually terminal. A prime minister can pull back from the abyss with the resources and media manipulation of incumbency, but doing so isn't easy.

Rudd's advisers will take some solace from the fact that Tony Abbott's net satisfaction rating has also dropped, from 6 to 2, only just staying in the positive range.

But the Prime Minister's net satisfaction rating - the percentage of voters satisfied with his performance minus the percentage who are dissatisfied - has plummeted from 9 to -11, a whopping 20-point turnaround.

The last time a leader's net satisfaction rating fell so sharply was when Malcolm Turnbull hastily called for Rudd's head over the OzCar affair.

Voters have punished Rudd as never before for his backflips and backdowns from the past two weeks. The cigarette tax hike announced just before Newspoll began its survey wouldn't have helped his popularity either, and some Labor MPs even think there is residual resentment with the government over its asylum-seeker policies.

As much as Rudd and Labor should be worried by the Prime Minister's drag on the Labor vote, the opposition shouldn't become cocky. The loss of support for Labor is a failure of its own making. It can be won back, given that the opposition still is not seen as a viable alternative government.

That doesn't change one simple point: if Rudd remains a drag on the Labor vote, given that he has few friends in the parliamentary party, his time in office will be dramatically shortened whether he wins the next election or not.