The latest AC Nielsen poll shows Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are both quite safe, at least from a polling point of view, as leaders of their respective parties. You could be pardoned for not knowing this, as the media has been reporting the opposite.

"Labor hits a 15-year low but Rudd wins" is the SMH headline. Well, the first point is probably true but the second certainly isn't.

Nielsen doesn't appear to have its April results up on its site yet, but we can be reasonably certain that it is going to be fairly close to the March results. What March results show is that Kevin Rudd is more popular with non-Labor voters than he is with Labor voters, and that it is the strength of support for Bill Shorten and Greg Combet amongst Coalition voters that pulls Julia down. (As Greens voters are 12% of the vote their preferences have only a minor effect on the result).

So it is most probably good performances from Shorten and Combet that are causing the effect rather than any intrinsic strength in Rudd's support. These are the men to watch for any future leadership challenge, not Rudd.

With support for Gillard well in advance of Rudd's amongst Labor voters she is at little imminent risk (from a polling perspective).

On the Liberal side a similar dynamic is at work.

Malcolm Turnbull is preferred by non-Coalition voters, and the reporting obscures the fact that Abbott has substantially improvedhis position since taking the leadership. This haspartially resulted in a decline in the rating for Joe Hockey. Again, with Coalition supporters clearly favouring Abbott over Turnbull, he is at no risk. In fact it was Abbott's ability to mobilise the support base that essentially won him the leadership in the first place. For that base his low ratings with ALP and Greens voters would be taken as a sign that he is doing his job well.

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