Rosemary Follett has been pipped in the performance stakes for the first time since self-government, according to the Canberra Times-Datacol poll. Voters were asked to rate the 10 most prominent ACT politicians from very bad to very good.
Since polling began just before self-government in 1989, Ms Follett’s performance has always been rated higher than any other party leader or candidate until this poll. Now both the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, and the Minister for Health and Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, have overtaken her.
Adding the middle and positive ratings, Ms Carnell has a 75 per cent rating; Mr Connolly 68 and Ms Follett 63.
Ms Follett’s performance assessment, however, has dropped back only very marginally since the last poll just before the 1992 election from 2.91 to 2.78. (Those ratings are an average calculated with a rating of one for very bad, two for bad, three for middling, four for good and five for very good.)
The difference is the change in the Opposition. In 1992 the then leader Trevor Kaine had a rating of 2.26; Ms Carnell’s rating is 3.04 _ the most positive of any MLA since polling began just before self-government.
How this translates electorally is another matter. Federal experience, for example, shows that a leader can be less popular personally than an opponent, but still win the election. Paul Keating in 1993 and Malcolm Fraser in 1980 are examples.
The polling showed Independent Dennis Stevenson with the worst rating of those polled at 1.82 and a neutral or positive rating of only 28 per cent. However, Mr Stevenson has never relied on overall popularity.
Michael Moore rated the highest “”very-good” score at 6 per cent, but his “”very-bad” factor of 18 per cent dragged his overall rating down. The “”very-bad rating is likely to have come from right-to-life supporters and pro-development voters because of his stand on euthanasia and in-fill.
None the less, Mr Moore can take some comfort from this element and other elements of the poll.
His high very-good rating is likely to translate into critical first-preference votes and his high very-bad rating will not matter in a poll where he needs 12.5 per cent after preferences to get a seat.
Also there is a high level of dissatisfaction with both major parties over one of Mr Moore’s pet issues _ in-fill. This will leave room for independents to pick up _ especially in the present environment of a very high undecided vote _ unless the major parties work on the issue.
Mr Connolly’s high rating shows that voter dissatisfaction with the health system (details of which were published yesterday) has not translated to him personally. Voters appear to acknowledge that he inherited a poison chalice from his predecessor Wayne Berry.
Voters rated Mr Berry’s performance second-last of the 10 MLAs polled with a very significant gap between him and the eight above him. His middle and positive rating was 40 and his “”bad” and “”very-bad” rating was 60 with an overall rating of 2.14 on the one-to-five scale. Clearly, there has been an adverse rub-off from his handling of health and the Vitab affair.
That also comes out in polling on how would people vote seat-by-seat.
Given the Hare-Clark Robson-rotation system, Canberra Times-Datacol polled on the question “”Who would get your last vote?” Under the ACT voting system voters cannot vote for a party ticket. Candidates are put into party columns, but the order of candidates is randomised and does not follow the party pre-selection order.
In that question a “”punishment factor” for poor performance came out fairly strongly against Mr Berry (presumably for Vitab and health). Ten point six per cent of voters in his electorate said they would put him last and 10.6 per cent would put Ellnor Grassy last. Trevor Kaine scored an 11.6 per cent; David Lamont 7.1, and Gar Humphries 6.5.
It may be that the “”punishment factor” is made up mostly of voters from the opposite party, in which case it will have no effect. If, however, it is made up of voters from the same party, under Hare-Clark it could translate as putting that candidate’s seat at risk in favour of another candidate of the same party.
Details of polling on how people will vote will be published tomorrow.
Overall, personal-performance ratings were higher than just before the 1992 poll. This is not surprising given the instability of the first Assembly and generally jaundiced view of self-government. In the past three years, government has been more stable and the Assembly has made much greater use of the committee system to deal with contentious legislation, rather than hastily passing ill-thought-out legislation.