Newspoll: ALP 56 - LNP 44

For something completely different, Newspoll released a poll that showed the ALP streets ahead of the Liberal and National Parties.

At this point does anyone really expect anything different? The ALP ahead on the two-party preferred by 56% to 44% is just par for the course at the moment.

Even more scary for the opposition is that Kevin Rudd continues to be obscenely preferred as PM 65% to 20%. And think for the moment that this poll would have been largely conducted before the governmnt's IR legislation passed through the Senate.

Ok, even more scary for the opposition is that on preferred Liberal Leader (the only category that is even close) Peter Costello is preferred over Malcolm Turnbull by 45% to 38%. Among coalition voters however, Costello is favoured 53% to 40%.

So it's got to the point where half of people who would still vote for the Libs or Nationals want as their leader someone who three times now has turned down the opportunity to lead the party.

This is also reflected in Turnbull's satisfaction rating. 42% are satisfied with his job; 40% are dissatisfied. A high dissatisfaction rating often means your own party are against you (the other side generally don't like you, but never really care enough to be against you).

At this point opinion seems pretty set on Turnbull one way or the other. His satisfaction rating is still OK (though obviously not compared with Rudd's 63% rating) what he needs to do is get his own party on side and that is obviously not going to happen while (to quote Bernard Keane from Crikey) "a man without courage, capacity for hard work or policy substance" who has "done nothing but destabilise his party since November 2007" still sits on the backbench making out like he wants to be leader.

All this is manna from heaven for the ALP and with Rudd about to have a stack of photo ops with Barack Obama, is likely to keep the polls stuck in this vortex at least until the budget (which by all reports is not going to be fun).