Timing counts in tale of three polls

ANYONE obsessed enough with Australian politics to have caught all three recent polls on whom voters prefer as Liberal leader would be justifiably confused.

That's because each poll registered an entirely different result.

Last Friday's Morgan poll suggested 30 per cent of people supported Joe Hockey as Liberal leader, compared with only 21 per cent for Malcolm Turnbull.

The Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers yesterday put Hockey's lead over Turnbull a little closer, at 33 per cent to 31 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum, Newspoll yesterday showed that it was Turnbull who was preferred over Hockey, 32 per cent to 24 per cent. All three had Tony Abbott registering less support than both of them.

How can this be? If evidence were needed that a week (or even a day) is a long time in politics, we now have it. The political events of late last week, and over the weekend, dramatically changed the internal Liberal winds in Turnbull's favour (at least in the short term).

The Morgan polling agency was telephoning voters early last week. At the time, the Opposition Leader was under pressure, caught up in a war of words with an increasing number of backbenchers who were challenging his authority, while responding to a survey that put him at odds with more than two-thirds of his back bench over how to deal with the government's ETS. In that climate, it isn't surprising that Hockey looked a good alternative.

By the end of the week, the opposition was in damage control. On Thursday, Turnbull appeared side-by-side with Hockey to quash rumours that a leadership crisis existed.

Hockey declared he didn't want the job, and didn't intend to challenge for it. That was the evening Nielsen commenced polling and, unsurprisingly, fewer people backed a Hockey transfer than Morgan recorded.

Newspoll only started polling voters on Friday evening and did so until Sunday, which meant that people had time to take in Hockey's rejection of interest in the leadership. Also over the weekend, media coverage of Turnbull's visit to Western Australia was, by and large, positive - a boost to his leadership. The result: an inversion of the results from the previous two polls.

The sting in the tail for Turnbull is that all three polls did show a large undecided block - about one-third of those polled - and for an incumbent leader that is a major problem.

It is also unusual for a shadow minister such as Hockey to have the name recognition in the community that he does.

It means that if he changes his mind and wants the leadership, the public is likely to support themove.