The Howard Aggregation 1993-1996

In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the Paul Keating's famous and unusual 1993 election victory, I released The Keating Aggregation, an account of the well-known polling downs and lesser-known polling ups of the Hawke-Keating government on its way to that celebrated victory.  

Today, it is 25 years since the Keating Government was turfed by the Liberal-National Coalition led by a second-time Opposition Leader, John Howard.  And to mark the 25th anniversary of that occasion too, today I present a polling aggregation for the years 1993-1996.  Together with the above Keating piece, this means that 2PP aggregations for all the terms from 1990 onwards are now available online; other historic aggregations are available at Poll Bludger.  Incidentally, aggregation itself existed in the early 90s, and while looking for missing poll data I found old newspaper articles by Brian Costar that used 2PP aggregation to estimate election results.  What I haven't found yet from that time are any aggregation graphs.  

Data sources for this 2PP aggregation are polls published by Newspoll, Morgan (mostly face-to-face with a switch to phone polls during the campaign) and AGB-McNair.  My thanks very much to John Stirton for AGB-McNair results 1993-5. (I retrieved those for the 1996 campaign from NewsBank with some guessing of minor party primaries for some polls).  For each poll I've ignored pollster-published 2PPs and calculated my own using 1993 election preferences.  The time weightings are the same as in my 2016-9 aggregate, there are no poll quality weightings, and there is no limit on the number of polls by one pollster included at any one time.

House effects between the pollsters in this term were relatively minor.  I get Morgan's term average as 0.4 points more Labor-friendly in my last-election 2PPs than Newspoll but 0.35 points less so than AGB-McNair.  As the 1993 polls had underestimated Labor, in contrast to polling from some previous years, none of this would have raised any alarm among poll-watchers at the time, and I've decided to apply no adjustments.

So here it is:

For all the ups and downs along the way, this is a polling story with not a lot of key points.  The briefest summary would be that Labor was losing for most of the term, except when the Liberals had leadership issues.  

The re-elected government got a substantial bounce for its unexpected victory, running around three points above its winning 2PP of 51.4 for several weeks after the win.  However, polling tightened quickly after that.  The Coalition retook the lead after four months, around the time that Keating announced that his "L-A-W" tax cuts, promised in the 1993 campaign, were unaffordable and would only be partially delivered.  This was followed by John Dawkins' August budget, which remains the most hated budget in Newspoll history.  Reaction to the Budget was spectacular, with Labor losing about 6% 2PP in four weeks, bottoming out somewhere around 43-57 in early September 1993 (point 1 on the chart).  Prime Minister Keating himself recorded two net satisfaction ratings of -57, the worst in Newspoll history.  

For all the notoriety of the Budget, Labor's recovery from it was steady, and by March 1994 they were back in front.  John Hewson had had no authority as leader since losing the "unloseable election".  The Budget had been bad enough to lift his ratings up to mediocre, but the heat soon turned on him again as anger about it faded.  By January 1994, Hewson's net ratings were worse than Keating's were, and by March 1994 Labor had recovered the polling lead.  In May (point 2) a leadership spill was called, and Hewson was defeated 36-43 by Alexander Downer.  

Downer was initially very popular.  His leadership took the Coalition to 2PPs in the low 53s, and in July he recorded what stands to this day as the highest Better Prime Minister lead for an Opposition Leader over an incumbent PM (20 points).  But it didn't last - the Downer leadership was famously gaffe-prone and the party he led was in chaos over a proposed Australian republic (remember that?), gay law reform and personal scores.  In early August Keating went from a 17 point Better PM deficit to a 1 point lead in a single poll, an 18 point shift that stood as the record for 26 years before being eclipsed by Scott Morrison in April 2020.  After less than four months under Downer, Labor had the lead back again.

The graph shows some respite for the Coalition in late 1994, but this was largely because there were few polls in the aggregate mix at the time.  As soon as the 1995 political year was underway, Downer made more mistakes (including trying to smoke the peace pipe with John Hewson, which resulted in Hewson undermining him by publicly seeking to be appointed Shadow Treasurer).  At the end of January, Downer resigned.

John Howard's path to the leadership at this point had been a long one.  Howard had first sought the Liberal leadership after the 1983 defeat, losing to Andrew Peacock.  He had inherited the leadership from Peacock in 1985 after Peacock tried and failed to remove him as Deputy, but his leadership was often unpopular and his sole election run as leader in the 1980s was blown up by the Joh for Canberra farce.  At the time opponents both inside and outside the party considered Howard to be both unelectably nerdy and at the same time dangerous on immigration, but his party did open up big leads in his first year during a wobble for the Hawke government in 1986.  He was deposed by Peacock in May 1989, and again failed to recapture the leadership in 1993 when he unsuccessfully challenged Hewson.  

Aside from Hewson himself, one of the barriers to Howard resuming the leadership was the continued presence of his old foe Andrew Peacock, but Peacock quit the parliament in late 1994.  This time when Howard ran for the leadership there was only token opposition (point 3).

Howard received a big honeymoon, taking the Coalition to leads exceeding 55-45 in March 1996.  If there was any doubt about the polling, it was debunked when Labor lost the Canberra by-election with a 16.1% swing.  Not all of the boost lasted, but enough did for the Coalition under a now much more cautious leader to stay ahead around 53-47 for most of the rest of the term.  The aggregate shows some largely random ups and downs (eg there was a rogue Newspoll in August 1995 pointing to a Labor 2PP lead) but the right hand side of the graph is remarkably stable.  

After Keating's 1993 win, and with the polling still reasonably close, salvation always still seemed to be potentially just around the corner for the Labor faithful.  The campaign proper started with some bruising polls for the government, but as polling day approached, polls were tightening, and the final reading in my aggregate actually comes out at only 51.8 to Coalition.  (The final Newspoll was accurate at a released 2PP of 53.5 to Coalition but AGB and Morgan at 51.5 and 50 weren't so close.)  Furthermore, Keating led during the campaign as Newspoll Better Prime Minister (a skewed indicator but this may not have been realised at the time.) Election watchers generally expected a Coalition win, but not so many expected the magnitude of it.  The closing shown in the very final AGB-McNair and the final four weeks of Morgans proved to be a complete mirage, and the Government was smashed, losing the 2PP 46.4-53.6 and suffering a net loss of 31 seats.   

I hope this tale from the days of old when polls were bold has been of interest.