A small cheer for News Limited, which has at least posted today’s Newspoll results on The Australian’swebsite. As it happens, the numbers are hardly interesting enough to bother with, although that itself is instructive in a way.

The Coalition is on 53% two-party-preferred – up 2% since the last
poll – to Labor’s 47%. In other words, back to just where they were at
last year’s election. Apart from one rogue result at the beginning of
April, the parties haven’t moved more than 2% from that point all year.
The preferred prime minister ratings (now 54-29 in Howard’s favour)
move even less. Approval ratings bounce around a little more, but no
serious analyst gives them more than passing attention.

So what’s the lesson from this? The papers are playing up the swing to the government for all it’s worth – not just The Australian, but also The Age, “Support for Labor sinks.”
They attribute it to Beazley’s mishandling of the budget tax cuts, and
no doubt there’s some truth in that. But the real message is the
stability. There’s still two and a half years to go to an election:
people just don’t care.