dirty politics

So the Labor party made an obvious choice in this election campaign to go dirty, early. They have been running a very negative campaign against the Liberals since day one. This campaign has not only continued, but it has actually gotten dirtier since then, broadening to include the Greens as well.

This is all very well, they're obviously desperate to stay in office and doing everything they can to achieve that.

I personally thought that the campaign would backfire on them, with the contrast between negative Labor ads and positive Liberal ads showing up the differences between the two parties. However, in the last week the Labor party have been pushing heavily their ad about the Liberals "preferring a road to a hospital" and letting down the state when it comes to health.

I believe that these ads have the potential to be really significant in the community. Why?

My grade 9 classes have been doing some polling as part of our SOSE course, asking people about the election. Results from last Thursday came in almost identical to the results from the Sunday Examiner EMRS poll, showing pretty clearly 1 vote each for Greens, Labor and Liberal, with the remaining two seats carved up somehow between the big two, possibly both to Liberal but probably one each. On the important issues, the biggest (far and away) was health, with well over twice as many people worried about health over education, itself 4 times more important than the next issue, the pulp mill.

Other polls we've done since then back up the importance of the health issue, it is far and away the most important issue raised when people are asked.

Not only that, but classes that have gone out this week (today and yesterday) are showing a marked decline for Liberal and Greens with votes going back to Labor. The undecided vote has also dropped.

While it's impossible to be certain based off a small poll in one town, I have to say that the health/midlands highway issue is resonating and could potentially turn things around for the Government.

If it does it will give the green light to ultra-negative campaigning nation wide, which doesn't sound fun. Guess we'll just have to see what happens.

On a side note, if you go to my first link, which is a Labor website pretending to be a Liberals website but bagging out Liberal policies, you will see they attack the Liberals because their Midlands Highway proposal isn't serious or feasible or costed. Yet in their TV ads they're attacking the Libs because it is! Hypocrisy, thy name is desperation....

:)

Two days to go!