Morgan: 59-41

Roy Morgan’s first poll in two weeks is from a face-to-face survey of 1690 voters conducted over the past two weekends. It shows a slight widening of Labor’s two-party lead to 59-41, with the Coalition primary vote down from 37 per cent to 36 per cent and Labor’s up from 48 per cent to 50.5 per cent.

UPDATE: The outstanding Possum’s Pollytics, whose absence from this site’s blogroll is keenly felt (to be corrected when I overhaul the site in about a month or so), produces some interesting data on variations between Newspoll and Morgan results.

UPDATE 2: And Andrew Leigh has an easy-to-follow run-through of the Portlandbet electorate odds that have everybody talking.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

268 comments on “Morgan: 59-41”

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  1. Phone polls, while imperfect, are good enough for the Centre for Disease Control in the US, (one of the world’s leading medical science institutes), to use as the basic sampling methodology for some of its epidemiological studies.

    But what would they know?

  2. Edward, like the pollsters I think you are missing or misinterpreting what is clearly in front of you but we will all know in time.

  3. My last message should also include Steven Kaye. Love your work Steven – some of the best spin I’ve read.

  4. Steven K is in fact correct in his comment on the declining reliability of opinion polls. More and more people (like me) are inaccessible to pollsters. I live in a 3rd floor apartment. I don’t answer my door buzzer unless the CCTV shows me it’s someone I know, and I don’t have a landline phone any more. On top of that an increasing number of people just hang up on all “spam” callers including pollsters. But he is incorrect in his assumption that this produces a Labor bias in polls. Urban apartment dwellers are just as likely to be Labor voters – in my area much *more* likely.

  5. Pseph, the Oz already had a poll on union issues taken June 22-24 and published Friday June 29. It found that Labor was considered better at dealing with unions than the govt; people were saying that the govt is too tough on unions, while Labor gives unions a fair balance. I think about 55% supported Rudd’s stance, while only 37% supported Howard. I can’t link because the Newspoll website doesn’t have it; the results quoted are from my memory, and could be slightly wrong.

  6. The union poll I refer to previously was published on pg 6 of the Oz; no doubt, had it shown Rudd was not doing well on union issues, it would have been front-page headline news.

  7. Adam

    Urban apartment dwellers are just as likely to be Labor voters – in my area much *more* likely.

    Meaning that a higher labor vote should show in the polls could explain why the libs are showing at 41%.

    Jaz

    I think labor is a good chance at Kalgoorlie, labor to pick up 4 seats in WA and hold their own. From what I hear the soaring house prices are an issue and one that is laid squarely at Howards feet.

    I thought I saw a recent trimonthly voting intention for WA, admittedly at State Government level, that showed around 54 46 to labor. Though it is at state level it still does not look good for the coalition.

  8. Arbie,
    Being a westralian, I would think bugger all seat changes will occur in WA.

    the only possible labor gain scenario is Hasluck. Maybe Stirling… but they could still lose swan and cowan.

  9. Regarding the British election of 1997.

    The Major government’s economic credibility had been permanently shattered in 1992-3 by the collapse of the pound and a painful recession, followed by a wave of ‘sleaze’ stories throughout the term. There has been some ‘sleaze’ (Santo, AWB) but not really in the same ballpark as the Tories 1992-7. And no economic crisis.

    If we must have similes, this election seems to me more like Australia in 1969 or 1980, except with a lot less ground to make up compared with the previous election. Bill Hayden had a 64% approval rating in October 1980 according to AC Nielsen.

  10. Arbie Jay re Labor picking up 4 seats in WA:

    What are you smoking??? The fact that Rudd is well behind in that state considering his bloated lead elsewhere is more than likely causing alarm bells to ring at ALP national headquarters. If I were a senior strategist for Labor at the moment I would be leaping for joy at the prospect a status-qou result, let alone picking up one seat.

  11. Arbie, A-C & Blacklight, interesting thoughts. Are we seeing the usual WA time lag? You know the old gag about be two hours and two months behind the eastern states? Or is it us westerners are only interested in one Kevin at a time and heads up the CFMEU?

  12. Hayden’s strength in the polls in 1980 is a good reminder of the obstacles Labor still faces, although I don’t think Labor was ever as far ahead in the polls under his leadership as it is now.

    Hayden was done in by a classic Liberal scare campaign on capital gains tax, which was particularly effective in the mortgage belts of Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, where Labor gained only three seats (St George, Brisbane and Lilley) and lost one (Swan). It was Labor’s failure to win suburban marginals such as Barton, Lowe, Macarthur, Bowman, Fadden, Kingston, Swan, Stirling and Franklin that prevented Hayden winning, despite picking up seven seats in Victoria.

    Lesson: scare campaigns do work, but only when there is some substance behind them – Labor *was* planning to introduce a CGT and in fact did so after 1983. So the boot is probably on the other foot this time, since Labor’s IR scare campaign has substance whereas the Libs’ “union bosses” scare campaign isn’t scaring anybody.

  15. in all the hullabaloo about trends etc maybe we are missing one point-people are hurting out there and have been for a while-
    ergo the reign of the rodent is over

  16. I think Labor would be disappointed if it didn’t pick up Hasluck. They had a good candidate with name recognition (being the former member) it is a seat as likely as any to have hurt from the 4 interest rate rises they were promised they wouldn’t get, and the PM and cabinet couldn’t help giving their mate Len Buckridge a brickworks at the Perth Airport against all the facts that said it was perhaps the most stupid idea anyone had in a long long time and Mr Henry (mediocre to my mind but I’m biased) had lots of work to do. I don’t know what happened last time, except for the interest rate scare, but there are true blue labor booths that polled very well for Mr Henry … can he do it again? I don’t think so.

    Stirling is a chance and Peter a fantastic candidate (assuming he is meeting lots people and not just me), but Mr Keenan (third choice for the Libs last time?) has raised a lot of money.

    No great local negatives to my knowledge, Keenan tried a bit of profile raising with some stupid marginal seat grants that needed State money as well and were shot down for the stupid electioneering that they were. But no real harm to anyone from the sound bites I heard. Much as the Howard Biased ABC tried to spin the State Government fixing up dangerous interestections before politically sensitive intersection as a bad thing.

  17. Ross – thanks for your views on Solomon.

    oakeshott country- best we leave the Vietnam issue alone; I saw nothing in your dialogue that would change my mind.

    Whoever said 4 labor gains in WA must be smoking something i wish i was !!

  18. # cynic Says:
    July 9th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    in all the hullabaloo about trends etc maybe we are missing one point-people are hurting out there and have been for a while-
    ergo the reign of the rodent is over

    Will people stop hurting under Rudd? that is the question i am hearing!

  19. Jasmine, do we detect just a teeny-weeny bit of bias in your commentary?

    Possum, since 1901 there have been about 4,500 individual seat contests at Australian federal elections, plus 141 by-elections. I think I could tell you the winning candidate in about two-thirds of them from memory – certainly all of them since 1969 when I started following elections closely, and nearly all of them back to 1943. Some of the earlier elections elude memory.

  22. Forget 4 seats in WA. Kalgoorlie despite my earlier post about the Libs being worried. It looks like one where the ALP failed to find a candidate. Thiel (?) has no profile and campaigning in the worlds largest electorate will be tough without one.

    I’m happy to call Hasluck and Stirling for the ALP (given Latham’s absence) this time round. Bias aside, I think Jasmine makes good points about 4 interest rate rises since 2004 election.

    Haven’t meet Tinley my local candidate, but he sounds like a good catch for the ALP (ex SAS Commander is long way away from being a union boss). Keenan has a fair profile, without actually having done anything special. I’ve got an expectation the ALP will Hasluck, given my surprise that they lost it. Maybe the Lib Henry is good campaigner though.

  26. The letter blitz started for me today with two letters – one from a Labor Senator and an “I love Rudd” one from Peter Tinley. First stuff from Labor I’ve received (though Michael Keenan has sent the occasional “I love Howard” letter over the last couple of years)

  28. I remember Mike Willesee saying “and now to sunny Queensland – as if it is not hot enough here”. Malcolm Mack was also there. Not sure of any others.

  30. I hear on the ABC the first child sex arrest has happened in the NT. Oh well I think I was about 9 days out !

  31. 2004 = Howard misinterpreted the result. Bought in Workchoices which was mentioned in any shape or form during the election campaign.
    2007 = The fear people have is what will Howard do if he gets in again with a senate majority. Thats why the polls are showing ALP in the lead. People have lost their trust in Howard.

    Quite ironic that from the fear campaigns of 2001 (we will decide who comes here) and 2004 (interest rates), Howard has created one of his own making with IR to his detriment.

  33. Despite the opinion polls having Labor ahead by 10 points or more, I do believe the Coalition will get back in office with a narrow majority, maybe Labor winning a majority of the two party vote. The economy is doing pretty well. government has not had any major scandals and Howard’s approval rating is currently around 40% not bad for a guy who has been PM for 11 years.

  34. TREVOR: During the 2004 campaign, Howard SAID he was going to reform the work place relations act if re-elected. From memory he said it was part of promoting an entrepreneurial culture. Surely voters at the 2004 election KNEW that Howard would do what he said, becuase he has promoted work place reform since at least the mid-1980s.

    But I guess not all voters are exactly rational, they kind of vote, then complain when the party they voted for does something in government that they don’t agree with.

  40. OKay so tomorrow’s Oz headline will be “Howard equals Rudd for preferred PM” … focus on the meaningless preferred PM and ignore the more important voting intentions.

  42. 48-39 Primary is very good for Labor, with vote up 2%. Greens never do as well in Newspoll as in other polls, so I’m reading it as 57-43 Labor. Yet another poll with a swing to Labor.

  43. Isn’t this a bad sign for Howard? Surely he would’ve wanted to see SOME movement towards the government influenced by the indigenous intervention. Instead, all that’s happened is some Green voters have shifted to the ALP, or in terms of pure statistics, there wasn’t any change at all.

    The fact the Prefered P.M. stakes shows people seem to agree with the intervention policy, but it isn’t enough to actually shift support to the Government. I actually don’t think that measure matters, wasn’t Keating still prefered P.M. before getting booted in the week leading up to the ’96 election?

  44. When we look over the year this poll will give the Liberals some hope sure they are still looking at a 9% swing but that’s better than 13%.

    Rudd would be happy that the ALP vote has gone up to 48%.

  45. Preferred PM to Howard slightly, positive marks for the intervention, slight negative against the government Iraq stance. Overall result – draw. Problem is Howard doesn’t want a draw.

  47. Edward’s peculiar delusion that the arrest of some Indigenous men in the NT for child sex abuse will have some dramatic effect on national politics will now be put to the test. Why on earth he should think this I cannot imagine. This whole subject arouses feelings of sadness, pity, shame and compassion in most Australians, but it has no political content at all. Most people are pleased that something is being done, most people will ask why it wasn’t done a lot sooner, and the net political effect will be nil.

  49. Simon, I don’t seem to recall any advertising on the matter. All I remember is the “L” for Latham ads. Perhaps a bit of detail is appropraite given what was bought in but then again you are only seeing from yur point of view. The majority would beg to differ on your recollections.

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