One of commentors on a Slashdot article (somewhat tangentially to the question's topic, discussing a Liberal Democratic party Senate win) noted that the main reason Labor lost the nation-wide election[1] was "intra-party" fight - e.g. Rudd/Gillard issues.
Random Googling shows that at least one rag agrees:
Party infighting and the [Rudd's] battles with Julia Gillard played right into the hands of the Liberals, setting up Tony Abbott for a victory
Is there a rigorous evidence (e.g. polls that ask whether voters were turned off for that specific reason, or some other line of questioning allowing what-if analysis of what'd happen if that fight didn't happen from polling data) that this was indeed a main or important factor in Labor loss in 2013?
[1] As clarification:
- Australia's Liberal Democratic Party is a minor party that is expected to win one seat in the federal senate for Political-Science-very-interesting but off-topic-to-this-question reasons. They are only mentioned since the article where I saw the Labor-related comment was about LDP's Senate win
- Independetly, overall, the previously-ruling Labor party (led by Rudd) lost the national election to a coalition of the Liberal Party of Australia (led by Abbott) and the National Party of Australia, generally called the "Coalition".
- Liberal Party of Australia is unrelated to Liberal Democratic party despite name similarity (one is more rightish, one is more classical liberal/libertarianish, from my understanding)