The Poll Bludger

The latest Newspoll result from The Australian has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged from a fortnight ago at 51-49, with both major parties down a point on the primary vote – to 38% in the Coalition’s case and 36% in Labor’s – with both the Greens and One Nation up a point, to 10% and 7% respectively. On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is down one on approval to 41% and up one on disapproval to 49%, Bill Shorten unchanged at 32% and down one to 56%, and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 46-31 to 48-29. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from an as yet unreported sample size that would have been between 1600 and 1700.

UPDATE: The sample was 1644. Respondents were also asked if they approved or disapproved of the fact that the government has granted residency to less than 165,000 new migrants this year, compared with a cap of 190,000. Seventy-two per cent did so, compared with 23% who disapproved.

There were no new federal polls this week, but we did get repackaged old ones in the form of quarterly state breakdowns from Newspoll and Ipsos. I only have full results from the former at this stage, but am hopeful of acquiring the latter next week. So all that’s happened in this week’s BludgerTrack update is that the new Newspoll data has been used to recalculate state breakdowns, with the national results exactly as they were last week.

As is often the case, the big hit of Newspoll state data has made little difference in the larger states, but quite a bit in the smaller ones, where samples are smaller and results less robust. This puts the Coalition solidly up in both Western Australia and South Australia, where they gain one seat apiece on the seat projections. While the changes in Victoria and Queensland are small, they have put the Coalition up a seat in Victoria and down one in Queensland. So the net effect of the changes is a two-seat gain to the Coalition, with Labor now projected to win 86 seats nationally to the Coalition’s 60.

Full results through the link below.

The Australian has today brought us its quarterly Newspoll breakdowns, whereby three months of polling is condensed into results broken down for the five mainland states, so as to provide such numbers from reliable sample sizes. That much at least was predictable, but we also have today the same exercise from Ipsos courtesy of the Fairfax papers, which is a first. This is because Ipsos poll samples have been pared back from 1400 to 1200, presumably for reasons of cost, and the pollster no longer cares to publish state breakdowns from such small sub-samples, and has thus gone down the Newspoll path of aggregating them on a quarterly basis.

The Australian provides comprehensive Newspoll tables if you’re a subscriber (also featuring breakdowns by gender, three age cohorts and mainland state capitals versus the rest), but all we’ve got from Fairfax so far as I can see is two-party results (more detail may follow in due course). In New South Wales, Newspoll has Labor leading 52-48, while Ipsos has 53-47 (there’s an error in the Fin Review graphic, but that’s what it is); in Victoria, it’s 53-47 from Newspoll, and no less than 56-44 from Ipsos (which is most of the reason Ipsos’s results have been better for Labor lately than Newspoll’s); in Queensland, it’s 53-47 from Newspoll, 52-48 from Ipsos; in Western Australia, Newspoll has it at 50-50, while Ipsos unusually has the Coalition up 53-47; and in South Australia, Newspoll has Labor up 51-49, while Ipsos has it at 52-48 (the latter is inclusive of the Northern Territory, although that shouldn’t matter much – ditto for Newspoll rolling the Australian Capital Territory into New South Wales).

All of which should put BludgerTrack on a firmer footing for its update later this week, despite the likelihood that there will be no new national poll. Also out today is a ReachTEL state poll from Victoria, which is covered in the post below.

After recording a slight spike to Labor last week on the back of the Ipsos result, the latest results from Newspoll and Essential Research have brought the BludgerTrack two-party trend reading to about where it was before. This has happened without any changes in the seat projection, in any seat. Newspoll and Essential also both provided leadership ratings, which cause Malcolm Turnbull’s net approval result to improve a little, and Bill Shorten’s to worsen a little. This will be an off week for both the regularly reporting pollsters, but Sky News may step into the breach with a ReachTEL on Sunday morning. We’re also due for Newspoll’s quarterly poll state and demographic breakdowns. Full results from BludgerTrack by clicking on the following:

Preselection news:

• A preselection for the Queensland Liberal National Party Senate ticket has dumped incumbents Ian Macdonald and Barry O’Sullivan in favour of Paul Scarr, described by Jared Owens of The Australian as a “low-profile mining executive”, and Susan McDonald, managing director of a chain of butcher’s shops and member of a Queensland grazing dynasty. The third position goes to Gerard Rennick, a finance executive. Macdonald will have to make do with number four, which was last productive in the freak result of 2004 than delivered the Howard government a Senate majority during its final term. Also frozen out was Scott Emerson, the former minister in Campbell Newman’s government who lost the seat of Maiwar to the Greens in the state election last November.

• The first of two retirement announcements this week from federal Labor MPs in Victoria was that of Michael Danby, who has held Melbourne Ports since 1998. Danby insists the decision was wholly his own choice, which reflects suggestions his pro-Israel outlook may have been contributing to the pressure Labor has increasingly faced in the inner city electorate from the Greens. Three names that have long been mooted as potential successors for Labor preselectionn are Josh Burns, an adviser to Daniel Andrews and former staffer to Danby; Mary Delahunty, a Glen Eira councillor and former mayor (not to be confused with the former state member for Northcote); and Nick Dyrenfurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre. The latter reportedly ruled himself out in February, but has been rated a potential starter in media reports following Danby’s announcement.

• The second was that of Jenny Macklin, who had held Jagajaga since 1996. According to Noel Towell of The Age, the vacancy could finally provide Labor with a solution to its dilemma of how to accommodate Jane Garrett, who refuses to defend her existing state seat of Brunswick from the ever-rising threat of the Greens, and was rebuffed in her bid for a berth in the state upper house. It was earlier suggested that Garrett might get the safe Labor federal seat that was predictably produced by the recently finalised redistribution, but Bill Shorten is now considering taking it instead, as it takes much of his existing seat of Maribyrnong. The redrawn Maribyrnong is perhaps not of interest to Garrett because, as Fairfax recently reported, it was “tipped to turn marginal in the coming years”, although I have my doubts about that personally.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 52-48, and The Guardian report provides full primary votes for a change: both major parties are up two, the Coalition to 40% and Labor to 37%, with the Greens steady on 11% and One Nation down one to 6%, with the “others” vote presumably well down. Also featured are Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which tell a remarkably similar story to Newspoll: Malcolm Turnbull’s approval is up one to 43%, his best result since March 2016, and his disapproval is down two to 40%, his best since the eve of the July 2016 election; while Bill Shorten is respectively down two to 31% and up one to 47%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out to 42-25, compared with 41-27 last time.

The Essential poll also finds only 15% of respondents expect the government’s national energy guarantee will reduce power prices, compared with 22% for increasing them (down nine since the same question was asked last October) and 38% for making no difference (up seven). The government’s proposed tax cuts for big companies have 41% support, up four on a month or so ago, with 36% opposed, down one. Further on company tax cuts, The Australian has a comprehensive set of further results from the weekend’s Newspoll, which find respondents tending to be persuaded that the cuts will be good for employment (50% responded cuts would create more jobs versus 36% who said they would not, and 43% believed repealing them would put jobs at risk versus 37% saying they would not), yet 52% supported Bill Shorten saying cuts for businesses with $10 million to $50 million turnover would be repeated if won office, versus only 37% opposed.

UPDATE: Full report from Essential Research here.