It was the beginning of the end for Tony Abbott.
A week after his surprise victory over John Howard, he was in the middle of a political crisis.
The party had lost its majority in the upper house, and was under pressure to make sweeping changes to the party’s electoral laws.
Abbott had tried to soften the party and, as treasurer, had given the PM a free pass on the party policy of a proportional representation system, which would have made him the first prime minister since Howard in 1996 to be elected without having been re-elected.
That had left the party divided.
Labor had won all but six of the state seats it had contested in the last election, and had held all but two seats in the House of Representatives.
Abbott was looking for a way out.
The next morning, the party was sitting in its office in Canberra.
“I have a bit of a sore throat, but I’m going to work out a solution and we’ll move on,” he told the media.
It was a strange moment in politics for the former prime minister, who had built a reputation as a pragmatist who would compromise to get things done.
He had previously been in charge of a troubled federal health service, and he had a reputation for being a man who wanted to get stuff done.
But that didn’t stop the party from voting against his reforms and, after he was re-appointed, Abbott was asked to resign.
He was replaced by Andrew Robb, who was a relatively inexperienced and inexperienced PM.
But the change had an impact on the country.
Newspolls showed the Conservatives had taken a commanding lead, and Abbott’s government was no longer in a position to implement his reforms.
Newspapers were reporting a huge swing towards the Coalition.
But, in the final days of the campaign, the Newspoll was down to about four per cent, and Newspoll suggested Labor might be able to gain some seats in a swing that stretched from the north of the country to the south.
The result was a blow to Abbott.
Newspoll had a swing of around 13 per cent against him.
“It was a bit like a football match,” says Anthony Smith, a political analyst.
“When you win the game, you have to go on to win the next one.”
Newspoll fell to about two per cent.
Newspop was down a further three per cent from the previous week, and the ABC and Radio National had both dropped to two per the final day of the election.
Abbott and Robb’s reforms came under heavy fire from both sides of the political divide, and their failure to win an outright majority was seen as a major mistake.
Newspot went down to two, with Labor getting just over three per, but it fell to a two-party preferred result.
“The big question is, is it a real mandate for the government?” says David McNally, a professor of politics at the University of Melbourne.
“Or is it just a distraction for Labor?”
Newspoll and Newspop both had one key difference.
Newspoping was designed to give voters a sense of the government’s position on key issues, while Newspoping is designed to make the government look more “presumptive” about the outcome of the vote.
“They are two different tools, and they both use different sets of rules,” says McNally.
“But they are very similar tools.
They have the same set of rules.”
Newspoping allows people to see what the government is saying, and a lot of the time, the opposition is also using it.
Newspopes analysis is very different to the analysis that the Prime Minister uses, which is designed for a narrow electorate.
Newspope is also more accurate, as people tend to focus on the government position more.
The two tools also share the same data.
Newspopy’s data is more comprehensive, and therefore more relevant to people.
Newspopa is more granular, but doesn’t allow people to do as much analysis.
Newspops focus on a specific issue, and often, it’s only a small number of voters that make up the sample.
The government, by contrast, uses more granularity, which means the polling company can give a much wider coverage of an issue, says McNal.
Newspoplans data is not based on a poll, so it is more accurate for people.
The prime minister’s position is not always based on the polls, but Newspop’s data allows people the opportunity to make their own judgments.
“That is really important,” says John Hart, a politics professor at the Australian National University.
“If we can see that the people who are voting have some level of knowledge, then we can better judge their positions.”
Newspolls is a tool that is well understood by both sides.
But it has the potential to be an issue that can cause a big political scandal, says Smith.
Newspoped and Newspopa both provide a lot more detail about the government than