By Michelle Grattan
I AM woman! See my polling! The gender factor is playing big time for Australia's first female PM. That's one of the messages from today's Age/Nielsen poll, and there's little Tony Abbott can do about it.
From the day he became leader, there was a question about whether Abbott would have a problem with women - although a look at past polling didn't back up the hypothesis.
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That was when he was against Kevin Rudd. Arrive Julia Gillard, and the equation became really threatening for Abbott. Today's poll shows women have bonded with his opponent.
The Labor primary vote is 44 per cent among women; 39 per cent among men. In Labor's two-party vote, the female-male difference is 58-50 per cent. It's the same on approval of the PM's performance (59-53 per cent) and preferred PM (58-52 per cent).
Only 41 per cent of women approve Abbott's performance but 45 per cent of men do. In the preferred PM contest Abbott gets support from just 30 per cent of women, compared with 38 per cent of men.
This is rather chilling for the Opposition Leader. It will be hard to shift from Gillard those women who are behind her because they are delighted at having a woman as PM, or because they find her empathetic. Abbott is running this race with added weight in his saddlebag simply because he's up against a female popular with women.
The problem is exacerbated by his record on issues of concern to women and his ''man's man'' image. He can talk up his generous parental leave scheme; he can perhaps deploy wife and daughters to bear good witness about him. But he can't remake his persona at this late stage.
The gender factor isn't the only lead that Abbott is carrying. You've guessed it - WorkChoices is heavy baggage. Just over half the voters believe he is likely to break his promise not to reintroduce WorkChoices.
After the first week's campaigning, the Age poll shows Gillard well placed, with strong leads on the two-party vote, approval and preferred PM. (A survey of eight polls done by Nielsen, Galaxy and Newspoll since Gillard became PM shows Labor on a two-party vote of 52.7 per cent.) In the latest Age poll, so many people now expect Gillard to win - 73 per cent - that it's a worry for her. Some voters could decide, just because they think she's sure to win, to give her a warning.
In this overall favourable poll, there's one other thing that should seriously worry Gillard - the Queensland factor. Queensland and Western Australia are bad for Labor, which is trailing in both 46-54 per cent. WA doesn't have many seats but Queensland has 10 Labor marginals.
Queenslanders are upset for various reasons - the Rudd factor seems to be one. Nearly three-quarters of Queenslanders disapprove of how he was replaced, higher than the national figure of 69 per cent. It's a fair bet that when they vote, most people will put aside their sympathy for Rudd - 62 per cent nationally said it would make no difference. But what about in Queensland? While a quarter of people nationally said they'd be less likely to vote Labor because of the way Rudd was replaced, the figure was higher in Queensland (31 per cent), although not high enough to be definitive.
Rudd continues as a campaign presence, hitting back yesterday at the ABC's story that he had shown a ''casual disregard'' for cabinet's national security committee by sending his chief of staff to represent him on occasion.
Apart from fleeting and - of course - locally focused comments, Rudd doesn't seem to speak personally these days. He operates in the third person, his utterances made via his spokesman.
The spokesman said the former PM's practice was to attend all meetings of the national security committee and the strategic priorities and budget committee ''unless he was physically prevented from doing so … because of other prime ministerial responsibilities - including travel abroad or interstate''.
With the ''Rudd factor'' at least in play, Gillard has to be - as she might put it - respectful. Asked about Rudd serving on a UN panel she said yesterday international figures ''understand his huge capacities''. And she repeated that ''Kevin Rudd will be very, very welcome to work alongside me and other colleagues as a senior member of my frontbench''.
''Very, very welcome''?