Guided by our own prejudices. Listening in to the BBC’s Radio Five on the internet last night to a talk-back segment where listeners commented on British PM Gordon Brown having tears in his eyes during a television interview reminded me of just how much our reaction to what politicians say and do is governed by our existing prejudices. PM Brown had gone misty eyed while discussing the death of a child and people who identified themselves as normally being Labour voters described it as touching and moving and a sign of just what a good and compassionate man was running the country.

Avowed Conservative voters, however, saw the whole thing as a put up job designed by the spin doctors to try and get a sympathy vote for a Government that was, as it should be, on the way out.

As a commentator I sometimes forget the extent to which people only hear and see what they want to. Hence while in Australia many Liberal voters will see Peter Garrett as a man who should have the death of four young workers on his conscience, his many admirers will be putting the blame on avaricious capitalist cowboys whose desperation for a quick quid put the lives at risk.

Somewhere in between these two groups of committed people there is a proportion open to persuasion by the cases presented about what really happened and I confess to being someone who thought, with this insulation affair, that enough of them would be influenced against the Government to see the Opposition improve its standing in the polls. Thus it was that I predicted in our Crikey Pick the Newspoll contest that the two party preferred vote this morning would be 50:50.

Clearly I was wrong. The Newspoll figures came in at Labor 53% to the Coalition’s 47% which was exactly what the readers of Crikey, you clever people, predicted.

It really is hard to see much joy in that result for the Coalition. They have had a dream run over summer with climate change and the insulation part of the economic stimulus package yet Newspoll shows them improving only marginally. Little wonder that the Crikey Election Indicator remains at Labor 78% to the Coalition 22%.

Note: we will announce the winner of our Crikey contest tomorrow.

Climate change no Coalition plus. Newspoll is showing a change in the attitude of voters towards an emissions trading scheme. Describing it as nothing more than a new big tax has clearly had some impact. But there is still a very big majority of Australians who believe that climate change is taking place. Prime Minister Rudd can build on this advantage if he works harder to explain what an ETS actually is.

And I notice that he has revived discussion of a double dissolution being possible if his ETS legislation is again rejected by the Senate. A clever PM would actually call one soon after losing a Senate vote and avoid the real odium that will come with a couple more interest rate rises.

How snow means a hotter world. The unseasonal blizzards along North America’s east coast are attracting much more attention from the climate change sceptics than the lack of snow on the west coast where the winter Olympics are being held. Funny that but both events are entirely consistent with what the scientists have predicted.

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