The party did exactly what Julia Gillard had been warning supporters against doing for months - it burned through a perfectly electable prime minister in a single term.

Kevin Rudd’s polling numbers were no worse than John Howard’s had been at the same point in the electoral cycle on several occasions before he went on to win.

Howard managed to rally his party, campaign and win. Rudd has not been given the same opportunity.

Rudd’s poll support fell brutally in April and May, but had stabilised. Two polls this week, a Newspoll and an Essential Media survey, put Labor ahead by 52 per cent to 48 on the election-deciding two-party share of the vote.

As the former national secretary of the Labor Party, Bob McMullan, told a caucus meeting on Tuesday, no government sitting on these polls numbers this close to an election had lost.

And no opposition leader as unpopular as Tony Abbott at this point in the cycle had gone on to win.

Labor decided not to take a chance with a leader who, just six months ago, was one of the two most popular prime ministers in the 40-year history of the Herald’s Nielsen poll.

Rudd was not assassinated over any great policy question. Unlike the Liberal Party’s decision to tear down Malcolm Turnbull over an emissions trading scheme and replace him with Tony Abbott, there was no big policy struggle between Rudd and his deputy.

Gillard was a party to every major decision of the Rudd government.

Did Labor panic? Perhaps some caucus members did, but it was anger, not panic, that was the deciding emotion in today’s leadership ballot.

It was anger at Rudd’s high-handed leadership style, anger at his dismissive treatment of some of his colleagues, anger at his secretive and centralised decision-making, that drove a handful of key agitators to start the a revolt.

Still, Labor could not have had a leadership challenge without a new candidate.