3 Days To Go In Australia

Remember - it's tomorrow over there!

Even with throwing in the usual caveats about polls, I can imagine a conservative candidate for President here who would love to see numbers like this!

One other thing about voting in Australia - it is MANDATORY! If you don't vote you can and will be fined.

Liberal (or Coalition) = Conservative; Labour (or ALP) = Liberal. No, it makes no sense. Take my word for it.

Howard Maintains Big Lead
By Patrick Walters
October 6, 2004

JOHN Howard has maintained his big lead over Mark Latham on the key issues of managing the economy and national security, according to the latest Newspoll.The poll, taken last weekend, shows the Opposition Leader has failed to make up any ground on either issue during the six-week election campaign.

The Prime Minister continues to enjoy a more than two-to-one lead on who voters think is more capable of handling the economy.
According to Newspoll, 56 per cent of voters favour Mr Howard ahead of 25 per cent for Mr Latham.

Support for Mr Howard has fallen three percentage points since the previous poll, taken in mid-September, while support for Mr Latham has remained static.

On national security, Mr Howard also continues to lead by a wide margin - 50 per cent to 32 per cent.

Support for Mr Latham is at the same level as at the start of the campaign, while Mr Howard's support barely moved from 51 per cent a month ago to 50 per cent last weekend.

On the question of who is more capable of handling the economy, the poll shows 95 per cent of Coalition supporters back Mr Howard, compared with only 57 per cent of Labor supporters backing Mr Latham.

Newspoll found 27 per cent of Labor supporters or nearly one in three continued to believe Mr Howard would do a better job of managing the economy than Mr Latham.

On managing national security, 68 per cent of Labor supporters backed Mr Latham, with 17 per cent nominating Mr Howard as the more effective leader.

For Coalition supporters the figure for Mr Howard on the same issue was 90 per cent.
Opposition defence spokesman Kim Beazley yesterday likened the final days of the campaign to the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

"John Howard obviously feels he is going to win easily and he said as much as that on Sunday," Mr Beazley said.

This appeared in "The Australian"