By Bartlett and Rayner

Photo: Parties which chop and change their narrative rarely come out on top. (AFP: Alan Porritt)

Hollywood wisdom has it that there are only five viable movie plots and you'd better stick to them if you want to produce a winner. Australian political campaigns are much the same, write David Bartlett and Jennifer Rayner.

There's an old saying in Hollywood that there are actually only five viable movie plots and you had better stick to one of those if you want to produce the next big screen blockbuster.

New research on Australian campaigning suggests that what goes for Hollywood goes for elections as well, as we've found successful parties stick to one of only six tried-and-tested campaign scripts.

In a forthcoming research paper, we identify six basic narratives that have dominated Australian campaigns in recent decades. A campaign narrative is the core story a party tells you about the election and why they deserve your vote. It is communicated through things like the party's slogan and advertising, the leader's campaign launch speech, and those incessantly repeated sound bites that make journalists want to scream.

Importantly, our research suggests that successful parties pick a narrative well in advance of the official campaign and stick to it right up to polling day. Parties which chop and change their narrative, or try to weave more than one together, rarely come out on top. That's bad news for both Labor and the Coalition, because so far it looks as though neither has settled on a clear and distinct narrative for the current federal election campaign.

What are the options?

Two of the narratives we've identified are exclusively the preserve of opposition parties: the 'New hope' script offers hope for the future with new ideas and a new approach, while the 'Time's up' story tells voters the incumbents have made a mess of things for long enough.

Both an incumbent and an aspirant can employ the 'We've listened and learned' narrative, in which the party admits to its mistakes and shows that it has learned from them.

Incumbent parties have a larger range of narratives to choose from, including: the 'Job isn't done' story, in which a government asks for another term to continue the great work of the past one and the 'Are they experienced?' script, which casts doubt on the governing capability of their opponents.

Finally, of course, there's good old fashioned 'Fear' which can be used by any party, any time, but is particularly beloved of incumbent governments fending off a strong challenger.

Observing the current campaign through the prism of these narratives, we can begin to understand why neither party seems to be connecting powerfully with voters or drawing blood from its opponent.

Kevin Rudd came out strong at the beginning of the campaign with a by-the-numbers 'New hope' narrative. But where Kevin07 was credible and inspiring when he promised a new type of politics, Kevin13 clearly brings too much baggage with him for this to be believable.

Perhaps for this reason, in the second week of the campaign we saw Labor switch to an 'Are they experienced?' narrative. Given that a substantial proportion of the current Coalition frontbench were ministers in one of the most stable governments in Australian history, this was a somewhat surprising choice. But that narrative didn't last long either, as this week the party has moved on to an all-out 'Fear' campaign tapping into voter distrust of Tony Abbott.

Similarly, the Coalition also tried to deploy the 'New hope' narrative - even going so far as to call their first ad by this title. But with little to offer in the way of new ideas and a leader who has been intrinsically linked with the negativity and vitriol of the past three years, this narrative just lacks credibility. They now appear to be interweaving elements of the 'Time's up' narrative through this, which is a much stronger option given the events of the past two terms. Unfortunately, however, running with this second narrative also fundamentally undercuts the positivity of the first.

Not long left to work it out

When Abbott and Rudd step up to the microphone to deliver their respective campaign launch speeches in the next couple of weeks, it's a safe bet that they'll both use some variation of the phrase "This election is all about...".

How they finish that sentence will provide a clear indication of the narrative their parties have ultimately chosen for this campaign. History, and our research, suggests that the party that is best able to articulate a clear and credible narrative will be the one that wins. But at this point it appears voters might have to settle for the party with the least inconsistent narrative, whichever that turns out to be.

For Labor, it is particularly ironic that the party is struggling to latch on to a suitable narrative under the newly reinstated Kevin Rudd. The 'We've listened and learned' narrative would have fit a Gillard Labor Government down to the ground, and may have helped to assuage some of the anger towards the ALP which is still simmering in parts of the community.

But by ditching the former PM, the party also appears to have jettisoned the chance to use the only narrative that might have connected meaningfully with voters after all this time.

David Bartlett is the former premier of Tasmania. View his full profile here. Jennifer Rayner is a PhD candidate at ANU. View her full profile here.

This election is all about… - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)