Anna Bligh's problem - Labor isn't selling this time ...

Labor isn't selling this time

16 March 2009

How do you win an election when whatever you say seems to turn voters off? That's a question Anna Bligh has seven days to answer, or be evicted from the executive suite.

We've market-tested the positive and negative ads of the ALP and the Liberal National Party with 665 voters. The results were devastating for the ALP.

It didn't matter which ALP ad voters were shown, twice as many were less likely to vote Labor after viewing compared to more likely: a net movement away in the vicinity of 20per cent.

By contrast LNP negative ad enhanced the party's vote, with a net positive movement towards it of 17 per cent.

This is good, but as it is less than the movement caused by the ALP ad, this means it is less effective for the LNP than Labor's ad.

Worse for the ALP, among those voters who have already swung from it to the LNP, 70 per cent said the negative ad made them less likely to vote Labor.
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The Labor ad is yet another rehash of the Whingeing Wendy ad, first seen in 1987. Twenty-two years later Labor is still using the same format, and even if voters weren't born when Wendy made her debut, the genre is as recognisable, and tired, as carpet-warehouse type ads. Subliminally this confirms what voters already think: that Labor has been in power too long.
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See - The Australian - Labor isn't selling this time.