Alas – it’s to no avail!

The nincompoopery of hacks calling PPM ratings “approval ratings” will surely be with us for as long as there are hacks to discombobulate about it.

However, I do think you’re onto something with it being a relatively new disease – I can’t remember it being ranted about before like this either.

JP – very occasionally stuff like that comes out.I’ll have a ferret around and see if I can find some.

I agree that the Libs have problems than run beyond Nelson’s leadership – that’s painfully obvious. But just because his PPM score is on the line in that first graph doesn’t mean he’s not doing a crap job, because part of the impact of the fact that he’s hopeless is to drag down the Libs’ TPP. If they switched to Turnbull, and *he* was on the line too, but further up and to the left, then that to me (a) shows that people think of Turnbull as a better leader, and (b) seems like exactly the sort of thing the Libs should aspire to.

I actually think Nelsons *satisfaction* rating is above the line precisely because he’s a bad leader. He’s bland and uninspiring, which means he offends fewer people, and everyone knows he’s just a placeholder, so what’s to be dissatisfied with? Many Lib voters would be happy that he’s crap, because that only brings the gallows closer. Not to mention that Labor voters like myself are satisfied with Nelson because his tepid uselessness is dragging the Libs to places we’ve thought they deserved to go for over a decade – a bit like the “is Australia heading in the right direction?” question. I think Nelson is worse than hopeless, but I’m satisfied with his performance, and even hope he’s leader for the next ten years

The other problem with PPM is that it’s not only dependent on the person getting the rating, but their opposite number also. Clearly one of the problems for Nelson’s PPM rating is Rudd’s popularity. If Rudd suddenly became embroiled in some scandal, then Nelson could be just as hopeless as he is now, and his PPM would rise anyway – so on that I totally agree with you that satisfaction ratings are superior. As an aside to that, does anyone poll satisfaction with the broad policy platforms of each party? And if not, why not?

I have a question: is there anything not forbidden by relevant nuclear-non-proliferation treaties that we psephologists can do to stop these heathens in the popular press referring to leaders’ preferred PM or premier scores as their “approval rating”?

It’s especially important given that, as you show above, one of these figures (whether it is called “approval” or “satisfaction” rating) actually tells us something and the other is merely a symptom. I can’t remember confusion between the two being *everywhere* in the past, but with the extremely low preferred-PM scores for Nelson, a number of hacks suddenly started calling it his approval rating when it wasn’t. Here in Tassie an epidemic of similar cluelessness broke out when Paul Lennon received a 17% preferred-Premier rating from a local pollster who had previously surveyed his satisfaction rating in the low 30s. Even the advent of a new Premier (preferred Premier rating 46%) hasn’t stopped the preferred Premier rating being falsely referred to as the “approval rating”.

What will it take to get these dunderheads (and sadly, it’s not just the commercial press) to understand that a person who prefers X as leader over Y may well approve of the performance of both, or the performance of X only, or the performance of neither (even Y only is possible, albeit quite unusual) and therefore a preferred leader rating is *not* an approval or satisfaction rating and should not be described as such? Aaaaaaargh!

Rant concludes; I feel much better now.

No – we’d know exactly no more or no less.

It’s a superfluous metric, especially when satisfaction ratings actually do have a leading indicator relationship with the vote estimate.

At the beginning of the article I said “Undoubtedly the leadership of a party will impact on the polling results, particularly the voting intention results that a party receives”. Leadership matters – but leadership doesn’t seem to be everything, and it’s a huge leap too far to effectively say that the party doesn’t matter at all and that it’s all about the leadership.

So we have the reality being somewhere in between – that the party and the leadership both matter.

So looking at the performance metrics of each, the entire party (albeit clouded with leadership issues) via the vote estimate and the pure leadership performance of the Oppositions satisfaction rating – Nelson is doing personally better than the vote is suggesting ought to be the case and/or the Coalition as a whole is doing worse than the leadership satisfaction rating would suggest ought to be the case.

Which leads to the question of whether the Coalitions poor fortunes can all be sheeted home to Nelson – which seems to be a bit of a dubious proposition.

Under both Crean and Beazley Mk 2 – the ALP vote was holding up higher than would have been expected with the satisfaction ratings Crean and Beazley were receiving – so the question of those two holding back the vote was a good one to ask.

But Nelson is actually in the opposite position – his satisfaction ratings are higher than both Crean and Beazley Mk2 ratings were when they were axed, and the party vote is lower than it was under Crean and Beazley Mk2.

I’m not saying the Libs should or should not replace Nelson with someone else – I’m saying that it looks like the problem with the Coalition is larger, substantially larger than Nelsons leadership alone.

Australian politics has become increasingly presidential: The ALP didn’t run an ALP07 campaign, and Howard positioned himself as the face of his party (compare how often the Libs used the term “the Howard Government” vs “the Coalition Government” or even just “the Government”). Even the Dems and Greens are/were seen as extensions of their leaders personal styles and policies.

Whether or not the PPM polling moves with a slight lag, it’s clear that PPM and TPP and just both indicators of who people want in government. TPP is more reliable for mine, because PPM has the added noise of “did the leader act like a goose/announce a hard decision/offer a tax cut this week?”.

From your chart it’s clear that when a party changes to a leader considered better than their predecessor (Crean -> Latham, Beazley -> Rudd) then along with the higher PPM rating, the party (which has usually not simultaneously announced new policy) gets a significant boost in their TPP.

If Nelson (Mr 15%) was replaced with Turnbull (who would probably rate about 30-35%) Then the Libs could reasonably expect their TPP to jump up at least 5%. If it did, it wouldn’t be because of policy, it would purely be attributable to perceptions of the leader as a capable potential PM.

And even if Turnbull’s PPM and the Libs new TPP lay right on your regression line, and even if the rise in PPM rating slightly lagged their TPP (ie, if all your stats were completely accurately predictive) then the rise would still be entirely due to ditching Nelson and replacing him with someone more palatable and credible.

Your analysis above for not replacing Nelson with Turnbull could just as well have been used to justify not replacing Beazley with Rudd. Do you really believe that when that change happened there was something else that dragged up the ALP TPP, and the PPM of their leader just shot up to 60+% because of a lag effect?

I’ll try and get my act together… honest!