Looking Towards the 2007 State Election

The Sydney Morning Herald had an interesting series of articles this weekend looking towards the next NSW State election. Yes, it's a year away, but that's a blink of an eye in political years. These very much reflected what I'd suspected about perceptions of the Iemma Government - that the public is generally more positive than the media, which has been pretty harsh, and that recognition of Peter Debnam is nearly nil amongst the wider public.

Election analyst Antony Green's article explaining the nature of the government's 12% buffer in detail is well worth a read. I've heard many people mutter darkly that the current government is `obviously going to lose' the next election - and I've tried in vain to explain that the large buffer, and the seats it is spread across, would make losing an almost impossible task. As always, Green does a sterling job of such an explanation.

This is not to say that the always-worthwhile Ross Gittins' column on the NSW Government is not also equally important reading - but, as Gittins himself quotes, in politics, perception is reality, and in the rarefied atmosphere of the commentariat, the perceptions of the only people who matter in the end - the voters - can be surprisingly difficult to uncover.