YouGov Galaxy: Labor 35, LNP 35, Greens 11, One Nation 8 in Queensland

A new Queensland state poll finds Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government still in command, although both major parties continue to record weak primary votes.

The Courier Mail has disregarded my need for a snappy headline by running Queensland state voting intention results from a YouGov Galaxy poll that don’t include two-party preferred. The primary votes are Labor 35%, down one since November; Liberal National Party 35%, up one; Greens 11%, steady; One Nation 8%, down two; and Katter’s Australian Party 4%, steady. The November poll had Labor ahead 53-47, so given the movements on the primary vote, this one can presumably be read as 52-48 or 53-47. Leadership ratings are good for Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is steady on approval at 48% and up one on disapproval to 38%, and less good for Deb Frecklington, who is respectively down four to 31% and up six to 35%. Palaszczuk’s lead as preferred premier is 47-27, out from 43-26.

The poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 810. There were also federal voting intention results from the poll published yesterday, but I’m going to hold off giving that its own thread until tomorrow, it being too soon for a new federal politics thread.

BludgerTrack: 53.8-46.2 to Labor

A lurch back to Labor in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, plus further polling tidbits and preselection news aplenty.

The addition of this week’s Newspoll and Essential Research polls have ended a period of improvement for the Coalition in BludgerTrack, which records a solid shift to Labor this week. Labor’s two-party lead is now 53.8-46.2, out from 53.1-46.9 last week, and they have made two gains on the seat projection, one in New South Wales and one in Queensland. Despite that, the Newspoll leadership numbers have resulted in an improvement in Scott Morrison’s reading on the net approval trend. Full results are available through the link below – if you can’t get the state breakdown tabs to work, try doing a hard refresh.

National polling news:

• A poll result from Roy Morgan circulated earlier this week, although there’s no mention of it on the company’s website. The primary votes are Labor 36%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 12.5%, which pans out to a Labor lead of 54-46 using past preference flows (thanks Steve777). Morgan continues to conduct weekly face-to-face polling, but the results are only made public when Gary Morgan has a point to make – which on this occasion is that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party is on all of 1%. One Nation doesn’t do great in the poll either, recording 3%. The poll was conducted over two weekends from a sample of 1673.

• The Australian had supplementary questions from this week’s Newspoll on Tuesday, which had Scott Morrison favoured over Bill Shorten by 48-33 on the question of best leader handle the economy – little different from his 50-32 lead in October, or the size of the lead consistently held by Malcolm Turnbull. It also found 33% saying the government should prioritise funding of services, compared with 27% for cutting personal income tax and 30% for paying down debt.

• The Australian also confused me by publishing, together with the Newspoll voting intention numbers on Monday, results on franking credits and “reducing tax breaks for investors” – derived not from last weekend’s poll, but earlier surveys in December and November (UPDATE: Silly me – the next column along is the total from the latest poll). The former found 48% opposed to Labor’s franking credits policy and 30% in support, compared with 50% and 33% when it was first floated in March (UPDATE: So the latest poll actually has support back up five to 35% and opposition down two to 38%). Respondents were instructed that the policy was “expected to raise $5.5 billion a year from around 900,000 Australians that receive income from investments in shares”, which I tend to think is friendlier to Labor than a question that made no effort to explain the policy would have been. The tax breaks produced a stronger result for Labor, with 47% in favour and 33% opposed, although this was down on 54% and 28% in April (UPDATE: Make that even better results for Labor – support up four to 51%, opposition down one to 32%).

With due recognition of Kevin Bonham’s campaign against sketchy reports of seat polling, let the record note the following:

• Ben Packham of The Australian reports Nationals polling shows them in danger of losing Page to Labor and Cowper to Rob Oakeshott. Part of the problem, it seems, is a minuscule recognition rating for the party’s leader, one Michael McCormack.

• There’s a uComms/ReachTEL poll of Flinders for GetUp! doing the rounds, conducted on Wednesday from a sample of 634, which has Liberal member Greg Hunt on 40.7%, an unspecified Labor candidate on 29.4% and ex-Liberal independent Julia Banks on 16.1%. That would seem to put the result down to the wild card of Banks’ preference flows. There was apparently a respondent-allocated two-party figure with the result, but I haven’t seen it. UPDATE: Turns out it was 54-46 in favour of Greg Hunt, which seems a bit much.

• The West Australian reported last weekend that a uComms/ReachTel poll for GetUp! had Christian Porter leading 52-48 in Pearce, which is above market expectations for him.

• Another week before, The West Australian reported Labor internal polling had it with a 51.5-48.5 lead in Stirling.

Preselection news:

• Following Nigel Scullion’s retirement announcement last month, the Northern Territory News reports a field of eight nominees for his Country Liberal Party Senate seat: Joshua Burgoyne, an Alice Springs electrician, who was earlier preselected for the second position on the ticket behind Scullion; Bess Price, who held the remote seat of Stuart in the territory parliament from 2012 to 2016, and whose high-profile daughter Jacinta Price is the party’s candidate for Lingiari; Tony Schelling, a financial adviser; Tim Cross, former general manager of NT Correctional Industries; Gary Haslett, a Darwin councillor; Kris Civitarese, deputy mayor of Tennant Creek; Linda Fazldeen, from the Northern Territory’s Department of Trade, Business and Innovation; and Bill Yan, general manager at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre.

• Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports Liberal nominees to succeed Michael Keenan in Stirling include Vince Connelly, Woodside Petroleum risk management adviser and former army officer; Joanne Quinn, a lawyer for Edith Cowan University; Michelle Sutherland, a teacher and the wife of Michael Sutherland, former state member for Mount Lawley; Georgina Fraser, a 28-year-old “oil and gas executive”; and Taryn Houghton, “head of community engagement at a mental health service, HelpingMinds”. No further mention of Tom White, general manager of Uber in Japan and a former adviser to state MP and local factional powerbroker Peter Collier, who was spruiked earlier. The paper earlier reported that Karen Caddy, a former Rio Tinto engineer, had her application rejected after state council refused to give her the waiver required for those who were not party members of one year’s standing.

• The Nationals candidate for Indi is Mark Byatt, a Wodonga-based manager for Regional Development Victoria.

Essential Research: 55-45 to Labor

Shortly after Newspoll found the Coalition’s tentative momentum grinding to a halt, Essential gives them their worst result since August.

Essential Research has come out with a second poll in consecutive weeks, the previous one having departed from its normal practice in having a longer field work period and a later release, tailored to work around the interruption of the long weekend. Coming after a period in which a media narrative of Labor taking on water over franking credits has taken hold, the results of the latest poll are striking: the Coalition has sunk four points on the primary vote to 34%, Labor is up two to 38%, the Greens and One Nation are steady on 10% and 7% respectively, and Labor’s two-party lead has blown out from 52-48 to 55-45. Other questions relate to the banking royal commission: you can read more about them from The Guardian, or await for Essential’s full report, which I assume will be with us later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1067.

Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

The second Newspoll for the year finds no continuation of the Coalition’s recent improving trend.

After a period of improving poll results for the Coalition, the latest Newspoll records a tiny shift on primary votes to Labor, but not another to alter their existing lead of 53-47 from a fortnight ago. Labor is up one point on the primary vote to 39%, after a three-point drop last time, while the Coalition is steady on 37%, retaining their two-point gain in the last poll. The Greens are steady on 9%, while One Nation is down a point to 5%, the lowest it’s been in a year. Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are improved, with approval up three to 43% and disapproval down two to 45%, and his lead as prime minister out from 43-36 to 44-35. Bill Shorten is down one on approval to 36% and up one on disapproval to 51%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1567.

South Australia: Cheltenham and Enfield by-elections

By-elections today to pick successors for Jay Weatherill and John Rau, and a general opportunity to discuss South Australian matters if that takes your fancy.

Live commentary

Cheltenham live results page
Enfield live results page

10pm. Final Enfield booth now in on primary and two-party. I gather there are no declaration votes counted on the night.

9.14pm. Back online now. Still one laggard booth in Enfield, but all done in Cheltenham; no declaration votes yet (which are reported as a single lump sum by ECSA, and not broken down by pre-poll, postal and absent).

8.08pm. All booths reported in Cheltenham, but still a bit to come from Enfield. There will be a delay of half an hour or so before I next update the results pages.

7.43pm. Most booths in on the primary vote in Cheltenham, half still to come in Enfield. The situation seems to be that much of the SA Best vote has gone to Labor and the Greens rather than independents, except to an extent in Enfield where Gary Johanson is on nearly 20%.

7.32pm. Three booths in now from Enfield, where Labor’s projected primary vote swing has moderated to 3.9%.

7.24pm. Five booths in now on the primary vote from Cheltenham, still only one from Enfield.

7.19pm. Clearly not going to be much to report here. Labor are looking at primary vote swings of 5% to 10% based on five booths that are in, and have a 75-25 lead over the Liberal Democrats from three booths in Cheltenham.

7.15pm. Results pages are looking good now. There are four booths in on the primary vote in Cheltenham, and Labor’s vote is well up in all of them. One booth in from Enfield, ditto.

7.05pm. Now there are actual results in, I’ve hit a glitch where my booth results display isn’t working. Should be fixed soon enough. The rest of it is working though, and it suggests Labor is handsomely up on the primary vote in both electorates and shouldn’t be troubled in either.

6.40pm. No results yet, but my election results pages are open: Cheltenham and Enfield. ECSA is conducting two-candidate preferred counts between Labor and the Liberal Democrats in Cheltenham, and Labor and independent Gary Johanson in Enfield.

6pm. I have posted profiles for the two by-elections: Cheltenham and Enfield. Live results will be posted on the site from about 6:30pm Adelaide time, which should be good enough since these are suburban electorates with no small booths that report early. My results reporting facility will be drawing the results from the ECSA media feed and calculating booth-matched primary vote swings for Labor and the Greens, which are the only apples-for-apples comparisons that are available in the context of by-elections being forfeited by the Liberals.

Earlier

There are two state by-elections for traditionally safe Labor seats of Cheltenham and Enfield in South Australia today, following the resignations of former Premier Jay Weatherill and Deputy Premier John Rau. I haven’t been following any of this too closely, but I will have live reporting of the results this evening, and will knock up some electorate profiles later today if I can find the time. The candidates in Enfield include former Port Adelaide Enfield Mayor Gary Johanson, who has made a number of runs for seats in Adelaide’s inner north as an independent, and came within 2.9% when he ran in Port Adelaide at a by-election in February 2012. Labor’s candidates are Joe Szakacs in Chelthenham, secretary of SA Unions, and Andrea Michaels in Enfield, a commercial lawyer, who respectively won preselection with the backing of the Left and the Right.

Other than that, it’s been a long time since there was a thread on South Australia, with Steven Marshall’s government still waiting for its debut published opinion poll almost a year after it came to power at the state election last March. So feel free to use the opportunity of this post to weigh in on state political matters more generally. One point worth discussing might be the question of the looming electoral redistribution – always a matter of great sensitivity in South Australia, particularly with the Labor government’s abolition last term of the contentious “fairness clause”. Daniel Wills of The Advertiser offers an overview of the situation.

BludgerTrack: 53.1-46.9 to Labor

The one new poll for the week maintains the trend of incremental improvement for the Coalition.

First up, please note the threads below this one dealing with state politics in South Australia and New South Wales.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate continues to inch in the Coalition’s direction with the addition of the Essential Research poll, the only one published this week. Whereas Labor finished 2018 with a lead of 54.4-45.6, the latest result has it at 53.1-46.9, which is a 0.4% shift compared with a week ago. However, this only makes one seat’s difference on the seat projection, with a projected gain for the Coalition in New South Wales. No new results for the leadership ratings this week.

Full results are available through the link below. There is a bit of bug here that often stops the state breakdowns from loading when you click on the tabs – I will get around to fixing this one day, but for the time being, it should work if you do a hard refresh.