Over at 'Pollytics' Possum poses a political puzzle. At 'The Sydney Morning Herald' Hartcher supplies one explanation.

I have to admit that I wasn't exactly crying tears as Kevin Rudd was taken down by his own party.

The best thing about his prime ministership was his Apology to the Stolen Generation and his leadership during the global financial crisis.
As well as his earlier support (during the 2007 election campaign) of Northern Rivers communities in their fight against that mindless water grab attempt by Howard and Turnbull and, his determination to lift pensioners out of the poverty trap in which the far right of the Liberal and National parties had kept them.

However, that silly 2020 Summit clearly showed a man out of touch with the ordinary voters who had backed him at the polls and one who really had no idea why he had been elected.
While his failure to sell a national emissions trading scheme to the Australian electorate was the real tragedy of his federal political career and his support of the Howard Government sedition and certain anti-terrorism laws his constant disgrace.

Possum Comitatus addresses that strange political puzzle within the leadership change in his Spill post on 24 June 2020:

the first PM to ever be removed from office while having a strong election winning lead, and possibly the first in any western democracy for decades

NewsPoll pdf showing three month comparisons.

This was Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 June 2010 - two days after Gillard ousted Rudd as Australia's prime minister - with an alternative explanation of the puzzle:

Each word is printed in a typesize to reflect how commonly it came up. The dominant word glaring from the "cloud" was ''arrogant'', followed by ''weak''. Never mind that these seem to convey wildly different conceptions of the man. The Labor powerbrokers who commissioned the poll were only concerned that both are bad qualities for a prime minister.
But asked the word that best described Julia Gillard, the dominant word in her cloud was strong, followed by capable. This was the poll on which factional bosses based their case for replacing Rudd with Gillard.
The poll was commissioned by Sussex Street, shorthand for the head office of the NSW branch of the Labor Party, to test the validity of the Herald's Nielsen poll published on June 7.

Surely this wasn't the internal Labor Party polling the media was talking about in the days before leadership change?

However, if it was then Sussex Street has a problem or three.
Firstly, simple Internet access across the country carries no demographic weight suitable for use in polling. Patchy doesn't begin to describe it.
Secondly, if one were to post a comment which stated "I don't believe that Kevin Rudd is arrogant and weak" the cloud would show "arrogant" and "weak" without the qualifier.
Depending on cloud parameters the results probably said more about how original polling data were collated or, if the cloud was generated from Internet items, more about the mainstream media and blogosphere than it did about voter opinion/intentions.

The cloud is in fact worthless as an opinion poll and, reliance on it is a measure of the level of panic among Labpor Party powerbrokers.

Gillard will naturally have an opinion poll honeymoon period which will see the Labor lead in the polls lengthen. However, neither Federal Labor nor Sussex Street should rely on this surge being either a strong or long one.

UPDATE:

Labor now leading the Coalition on primary votes by two percentage points as of 25-27 June 2010.


Published in
The Australian
on 28 June 2010

Click on images to enlarge

YET ANOTHER POLL.

This time from the Essential Report published on 28 June 2010 with a 1,803 sample size:

Q. If there was a Federal election held today, to which party would you probably give your first preference? Q. If you ‘don’t know’ on the above question, which party are you currently leaning to?












An additional question Do you approve or disapprove of Julia Gillard replacing Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister? resulted in:
47% approved the change from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard as Prime Minister and 40% disapproved. Opinions reflected political party preferences.
Labor voters strongly approved the change by 68% to 23% while 60% of Liberal/National voters disapproved and 36% approved.
There were no significant differences by gender.
However, older respondents were more likely to approve than younger respondents – 55% of those aged 55+ approved and 37% disapproved.