By Claire Aird 13 March 2015
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird is more popular than any leader in the country's three most recent elections, according to data from the ABC's Vote Compass survey.
Out of more than 32,000 respondents to the online survey who rated how trustworthy and competent the leaders are, Mr Baird scored 5.5 for trustworthiness and 6.1 for competency.
His results were higher than any leader in the recent state elections in Queensland and Victoria, and at the previous federal election.
Trustworthiness:
Competence:
Labor leader Luke Foley scored 4.3 for trustworthiness and 4.2 for competency, a very similar result to his Queensland counterpart, Annastacia Palaszczuk, before the Queensland election.
The then-Queensland premier, Campbell Newman, was polarising. He scored well with LNP voters on trust (6.1) but his rating was low among Labor (1) and Green voters (1.1).
Mr Baird is much more liked by non-Coalition voters in comparison.
Labor supporters scored him 3.6 out of 10 on trust and Green voters gave him 3.4 points.
The question is whether he can succeed where Mr Newman largely failed - in using that popularity to sell privatisation to the electorate.
ABC political analyst Antony Green said Mr Baird's high approval was a strong advantage.
"Nowadays, when people are less tied to one party, the image of the leader is important and the trustworthiness is important," he said.
"The advantage this gives him is that he's trying to sell a complex policy in the leases of the electricity assets, which a lot of people distrust, but he's selling the message so they may trust him to do the right thing."
Baird's image not tarnished by 'political scandals'
Mike Baird was sworn in as Premier in April last year after Barry O'Farrell stood down after giving misleading evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about a $3,000 bottle of wine.
Despite several other Coalition MP resignations over damning evidence aired in ICAC hearings, Anika Gauja from Sydney University's Department of Government and International Relations said Mr Baird had consistently polled well.
"Over the past year, Mike Baird has made a series of positive policy announcements and I think that his image has benefitted from the fact he's managed to avoid being involved in any political scandals," she said.
Ms Gauja said while Mr Foley was scored reasonably well by Vote Compass respondents, his main problem was being relatively unknown.
"When he became Leader of the Opposition, he was previously a member of the Legislative Council and he didn't have a huge profile," she said.
"Luke Foley has been a competent politician who has been around in the Labor Party for a long time but voters don't really know who he is."
Vote Compass scores for recent elections
In the lead up to the Queensland election a Vote Compass survey of more than 70,000 people revealed Ms Palaszczuk, the then-opposition leader, was considered more trustworthy than Mr Newman (4.4 to 3.2) but the leaders were given a similar rating on competency (4.2 to 4.1).
In contrast, during the Victorian election in November, then-premier Denis Napthine scored higher than his Labor opponent Daniel Andrews on both trustworthiness (4.1 to 3.9) and competence (4.5 to 4) in the Vote Compass survey.
However, it did not predict the election result.
At the last federal election, Liberal leader Tony Abbott won on both measures over prime minister Kevin Rudd (trust: Abbott 3.8, Rudd 3.2; competence: Abbott 4.2, Rudd 3.8).
FAQ
What is this?
The ABC launched Vote Compass NSW on Sunday March 1 in the lead-up to the state election on March 28.
It is a tool that allows voters to see how their views compare to the parties' policies.
The data was weighted across a range of demographic factors using the latest population estimates to be a true representation of opinion at the time of the field.
The findings are based on 32,462 respondents to Vote Compass from March 02 to March 11.
Vote Compass is not a random sample. Why are the results being represented as though it is a poll?
Vote Compass is not a poll. It is fundamentally an educational tool intended to promote electoral literacy and stimulate public engagement in the policy aspect of election campaigns.
That said, respondents' views as expressed through Vote Compass can add a meaningful dimension to our understanding of public attitudes and an innovative new medium for self-expression.
Ensuring that the public has a decipherable voice in the affairs of government is a critical function of a robust democracy.
Online surveys are inherently prone to selection bias but statisticians have long been able to correct for this (given the availability of certain variables) by drawing on population estimates such as Census micro-data.
The ABC applies sophisticated weighting techniques to the data to control for the selection effects of the sample, enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population with a high degree of confidence.
How can you stop people from trying to game the system?
There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the authenticity of each record in the dataset.
Vote Compass does not make its protocols in this regard public so as not to aid those that might attempt to exploit the system, but among standard safeguards such as IP address logging and cookie tracking, it also uses time codes and a series of other measures to prevent users from gaming the system.
