Labor Knows It's Buggered

The campaign is a bit over two weeks old with a smidge under three weeks left to run.

The LNP will win the March 24 election, it's just a matter of by how much.

Labor knows it is buggered.

If the poll had been held last weekend ALP insiders reckon they would have been left with as few as nine seats.

You need 10 to qualify as a party.

The only real show in town at this point is Ashgrove.

So far I've spent a week with Campbell Newman and a week with Anna Bligh. The contrast between both campaigns is 180 degrees opposite.

In the beginning Campbell Newman was up-tight and tetchy.

Anna Bligh was relaxed and kickin' back. Newman's aloofness was understandable. He's never been involved in a state campaign before much less had the political hopes and dreams of a whole bunch of people who've spent two decades in opposition resting on his shoulders.

He's not a nautral politican.

But then neither was Bligh in 2009.

Newman is stiff around the punters, while Bligh puts her arms around people with a laconic, "how ya goin' Mate?".

Newman's interaction with passers-by is more "stand offish". It's like he is one of the nerds who desperately wants to be one of the cool kids.

That doesn't disqualify him from being a good premier. And besides, at this point in the game none of that matters because the vast majority of voters don't get to see that side of the leaders up close and personal day after day the way we political journos do.

Voters have stopped listening to Labor so this election is Newman's to lose.

What a lot of voters do get to see and hear, however, is Newman through the unblinking eye of the television camera and the radio microphone.

His response to hard questions is peculiar.

Once in Townsville he created a story out of nothing by denying he'd criticised the ALP's southern downs candidate.

When he'd done exactly that the day before while bobbing about on a boat in Trinity inlet in Cairns at a packed media conference.

I've started the third week back on the LNP bus. The first thing I've noticed is that Newman has tried to lighten things up. Getting on the media bus at the start of the day rather than driving to events in a seperate vehicle - passing around boxes of lollies.

Bligh has been here before. In 2009 she ran the pants off Lawrence Springborg in the final three days of frantic campaigning to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

That won't happen again. Both party's internal polling shows the LNP in front.

This election is their's and Mr Newman's to lose.