Poll: Beattie facing a thrashing in Forde. Which means Rudd will get one, too
Remember: Kevin Rudd couldn’t get a swing back to him even in Forde, a key Coalition marginal seat he must win in his home state.
Then Rudd dumped the Labor candidate and personally asked former Labor Premier Peter Beattie to stand instead in a seat needing just a 1.6 per cent swing to fall.
So after proving he had no real voter appeal, Rudd proved he had no judgment, either:
Labor’s shock decision to recruit Peter Beattie as its candidate for the federal Queensland electorate of Forde appears to have backfired spectacularly, with the Coalition on track to win the seat in a landslide, The Australian Financial Review reports.
Forde is one of eight marginal seats polled by JWS Research… The poll shows that in Forde, in south-east Queensland, the incumbent Liberal-National Party Member Bert van Manen is thrashing the former Queensland premie....
This 10-percentage point lead represents a two-party swing of 8.4 per cent to the Coalition in Forde since the 2010 election.
Seems the locals associate Beattie with state Labor’s disastrous financial performance - a mirror of federal Labor’s - and is punishing him twice over.
This is one more sign Labor is fast heading for a hell of a hiding, with Rudd’s campaign all out of steam with still three weeks to go.
