A shrinking lead?
You can just sense the disappointment at The Australian when the fortnightly Newspoll figures came in last night. The Fairfax lot had got a great run all day with their AC Nielsen poll showing a decline in both Labor's vote and the Prime Minister's popularity. And now their people had come in with a finding that the support for the Government had gone up and not down. Talk about rotten spoil sports! What's a sub to do?
Well forget about the support for the parties for a start. Accentuate the negative. Give the Coalition punters some hope. And hence this headline in the print version giving an exagerrated importance to a small decline in Kevin Rudd's personal approval rating.
Over on the website they thought that could be toughened up a bit. Change the Rudd word to Labor and hey presto our poll findings are every bit as dramatic as Neilsen's
Until, of course, someone had a look at the actual figures showing the backlash trimming to be an increase of four points in Labor's primary vote and a one point improvement in two party preferred terms
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