The night before Newspoll: episode two

‘Twas the night before Newspoll, and a new open thread was stirring.

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.

345 comments on “The night before Newspoll: episode two”

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  6. Bah, with the Morgan Poll showing a significant drop in Labor’s primary i wouldn’t be surprised if Labor’s vote continued its fall south past 55-45 to a margin of 54-46…

    A 2PP Labor vote at 57-43 is uber inflated and cannot be taken seriously if Labor’s vote is below 55-45 and with APEC as a plus for Howard he may close the gap further yet…

    54 ALP
    46 Coalition

  7. I’d be happy with 2PP 55-45. I want Labor to be still on their toes. I haven’t forgotten that gentleman on Insight re Bennelong who said that he’d vote for the Libs if there was an indication of a Ruddslide.

  8. I doubt there will be much change, but I’m usually wrong. I think things will drift along like this until the campaign proper begins. Then we will see who gets the break.

  9. Baz

    I liked your contributions on the Public Service debate over on the Lindsay thread, some things of interest:

    1. I certainly agree that the status quo will be maintained, there is too much at stake for senior bureaucrats to suggest the scalpel..
    2. Agreed about the future fund. Not a vote winning exercise. In truth, Peter Costello probably thinks it is a good idea (and it is) but it has the convenient effect of making Commonwealth public servants feel secure about retirement. I take your point about voting intention, it probably would not make it to the list (consciously at least).

    Like many other Australians, whilst I certainly agree that some public servants are very hardworking (some of my friends are some), some have the rightly deserved reputation as economic leeches (some of my friends are some!:)).

    Is there a reason why companies salivate over “government contracts” for tender? Time delays, inefficiency, duplication and paying over market price is par for the course when dealing with an Australian bureaucracy.

    I brought a BMW back from Hong Kong and dealt with no fewer than 6 Commonwealth Departments. The car cost me less than $10000 in HK but I paid over $5500 in government charges, customs fees, administrative costs and even GST on the customs due!! (so much for not double dipping for GST.. the response from Customs “yeah, yeah whatever, see your MP about it, is that all?”).

    Imagine what this country could do with a leaner, more efficient bureaucracy?

  11. The polls were interesting last week with Galaxy and Morgan showing large movements in opposite directions that effectively cancelled each other out in the poll average.

    Newspoll on Tuesday will be very interesting to see if there has been, in fact, any real change from the steady 45-55 TPP.

    What is equally interesting is how the News (Corp) media seems to have realised that an ALP victory is now almost inevitable. The Australian last week published a scathing editorial of the Government’s poor record of reform. We have not seen Shanahan raising his head lately, when through July he was leading the pro-Howard charge in the Oz. Even Piers Ackerman on Insiders this morning stated flatly the the ALP would win.

    Whether this aceptance by News of the ALP’s supremacy will filter through to their pollster, and affect the way they ask their questions, and therefore the result of the poll will be interesting to see.

  12. [Is Newspoll due out tomorrow morning or tomorrow night?]

    Tomorrow night – Lateline will probably have the results as part of their first story.

  13. Wasn’t the last Newspoll released on a Monday morning?

    Maybe I’m getting myself confused.

    I can’t see much change from last time. We are in a holding patten until the election is announced in a few weeks.

  14. Paul K

    You speak from experience then. I take your point about City-state vs. Country-Continent however:

    a) Our payroll spend (as you aptly referenced) is far greater than any gross infrastructure spend and citizen level delivery cost, so the beast is still really bloated.
    b) We will never actually have enough infrastructure like roads. We can’t afford them. The space required for our traffic to move well cannot be afforded by the people that use them in Australia.

    Per Capita Road Cost= Space required per vehicle (at average commuting speed) X cost of building road

    Our road build costs are too high (Labour is too high, bureaucracy too inefficient) and our space required too large (mostly single occupant cars, too long a commute).

    In Australia, the sad reality is that we will always have log-jams and over time these will get worse.

    We would do far better to bite the bullet with subways in our cities and put severe restrictions on car use (high regos, limited parks etc). Your experience in HK, like mine, no doubt left you awestruck with the efficiency of the MTR in HK?

    With a leaner public service, we could pay less for paper and more for rail perhaps?

  16. Do not understand the nay sayers despite the polls, in threads other, esp if pivoting off comment emanating from certain of the Insiders.

    Courage, all!

    Michael Kroger looked and sounded so unhappy last week, and a little before in Fran Kelly’s Friday round up managed to insert the must be outdated by now ‘inexperienced Labor’ line. Not that the intent of these interviews are to provide a platform for party partisan Ra Ra.

    The ever cautious Rod Cameron is closer to thinking it could be so. Seem to remember he thought otherwise not so long ago.

    I remain confident of a 57% Newspoll Tpp Labor result.

    JWH is doing himself no favours with APEC/Bush. Old strategy, been there. Esp in light of Lowy Institute report.

  18. 7PM ABC News has lately been giving hints of the next day’s Newspoll, so it’d be an idea to tune in to Aunty a little earlier. If there’s a swing back to Howard, you can bet it’ll be their lead story.

  20. Question: Has Channel 7 turned against their former Sunrise pinup boy Kevin Rudd? That was a rather vicious piece from that hack Mark Reilly.

  21. Meanwhile, in other people’s elections, when they don’t like a poll in Greece, they say so:

    PASOK criticises opinion poll

    Main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) on Wedensday sharply criticised a most recent opinion poll giving rival New Democracy, the ruling party, a 2-point lead, 35.2 percent to 33.2 percent for PASOK.

    PASOK Secretary Nikos Athanassakis said the results appeared “outrageous” and “incomprehensible”. The PASOK cadre also took exception with results showing an almost identical negative opinion of both the ruling party and the main opposition.

    The MRB firm, which conducted the poll for a local Athens television station, said that “it was the inalienable right of every political party or citizen not to accept results of an opinion poll. However, they should avoid disputing the professionalism and objectivity of respected polling firms because they disagree with the results”. The firm also referred to “slanderous statements” by the PASOK official.

  22. Carrying on Adam’s theme: Rumours that UK PM Gordon Brown is about to call a snap election, to capitalise on Labor’s 10 point lead in the polls.

  23. I would if I were him. The Tories installed that lightweight Cameron as a sort of ersatz Blair, but now Blair has gone and has taken all his baggage with him, and they are up against a heavyweight in Brown. He will do them.

  24. My prediction for Newspoll

    52/48 Headline: The Rodent Strikes Back.

    After nearly a year of toying with the prospect of change the Australian people tell John Howard he is still in with a good chance.

    This is actually cathartic. If it is 52/48 I wont be feeling so bad.

  25. Adam, I think Brown will wait until next year. You’re correct, he’s an impressive man, and he’s surprised many people over there with his performance so far as PM.
    My favourite election: the 1997 UK General Election – how I wish Howard would be swept aside by a similar landslide.

  27. Most political pros take the view that you should go when you’re ahead because you never know what might happen next year. If yon wee Cameron is allowed to stew for too long the Tories might axe him and come up with someone better, though goodness knows who that might be. I’m sure the hard-heads will be telling The Broon to “go the noo, laddie.”

  28. William, well done on the so nostalgic heading. Certainly encapsulates the feeling of the times.

    But surely, Generic Oracle #9, the Howard Government has had ample opportunity to deal with such inefficiencies? Managed to do heaps in regard to single parent, disabled, wilful unemployed and so on.

    Reckon your GST implication is the master key. Why would the Government wish the bureaucrats to recommend reduction in revenue?

    ‘Imagine what this country could do with a leaner, more efficient bureaucracy’?

    Imagine what this country could do without the force fed geese fattened in the various pens paid for those of us who may still be called ‘the taxpayer’. The consultants, the spinners, the lawyers, the public defenders et al.

    No need to go on.

  29. Kina if you go to the last thread and read my comment (158) it will give you some idea what the whole channel 7 thing was about. Just a bloody disgrace.

  31. Can there ever be another Thatcherite in Britain or has the European Human Rights act etc put paid to that?

    Getting this on Australia – will much of Howard’s policies survive a change of goverment, especially if the Greens gain the BOP in the Senate to pressure Labor?

  32. Come on guys. The samples are around 1000, that means one percentage point represents the answer from 10 people. Ten people to represent the views of thousands.

    The mathematics say the results are a bit rubbery and so does logic.

  33. Yes, Charles, that’s how opinion polls work – a small number, if randomly chosen, does indeed represent a large number. Shock horror, what will they think of next?

  35. Charles is correct as we all know Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are far more accurate than a scientifically tested system of sampling opinions.

  38. I doubt that running a story on extra-public servants is going to create fear or any great concern that will stick in anyone’s head more than 2 minutes. There is going to be lots of electioneering noise about fairly soon. Sounds a lame story to me and if thats all they got. Now if they said cut jobs. Even the story ackerman is trying to run is silly and will look like a rolled gold government smear campaign of the lamest kind if they try to go with it.

  39. I’m not sure that Corcoran would have won had he waited. It’s easy in hind sight to say he made a fundamental error but would he have done any better had he waited? We will never know. Gordon Brown may be in a similar position but again if he calls an early election we’ll never know if he would have been better off waiting.

  40. I don’t think the tale of Des Wossname in South Australia is particularly important in the context of the UK. The British seem less concerned when elections are called–I suspect it is because they do not confuse the American system with their own as is wont to happen in our fair land; where there is an air of suspicion about early elections as some form of cheating.

    The 1966 general election is a good example of this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election%2C_1966

  41. The irony is that while the Americans feared a powerful monarch, they effectively ended up with one through the expansion of Presidential power–an elected emperor, pretty much.

    Whereas the British, who HAD a monarch (and obviously still do), effectively turned their king or queen into a well-paid ribbon cutter.

  42. Regarding Brown calling an early election… the News International-stabled “News of the World” states that Brown will hold off on calling an election until 2008. According to their article, there never was any real prospect of holding an Autumn [Northern Hemisphere] election, but Brown wanted to scare the Conservatives [still with a big “c”] by suggesting that he would call one. In addition there is a lot of bad feeling about the Government refusing to allow a referendum on the EU Constitution and this will cost them votes, particularly as some of the larger Trades Unions have come out in favour of a referendum [or plebiscite in Howard-speak].

    I don’t know whether I believe this newspaper any longer with its political comment as, not long ago, one of its correspondents – Fraser Nelson – said that Howard was on course for a fifth election win!

    If there is an Autumn election in Britain then Labour will likely win.

  44. I reckon it will remain 55/45 2pp, as this pretty-much represents the popularity flatline the Government’s been on sitting-on since March.

    Everyone in the MSM (and a few here) seem to think there will be some movement back toward the coalition during the campaign, but I reckon this is likley wishful thinking.

    The people pushing this idea are mostly the same jokers who have been assuring us for the last 6 months that a coalition “bounce” (and the end of Rudd’s honeymoon) was just around this or that corner.

    Well, we’ve turned a crapload of these corners in that period and the polls have remained more or less the same.

    This suggests to me that, barring the Second Coming of JC and a ringing endorsement of Team Rodent from the Big Guy hisself while walking on water across Sydeny Harbour, the Government’s jig is well-and-truly up.

  45. (the Big Guy hisself while walking on water across Sydeny Harbour)

    If He shows up during APEC He’ll be in a sh*t load of trouble with the cops shooting or arresting anything that moves. I can see the headlines. “Bearded terrorist/hippie type in long robes arrested while attempting to attack APEC leaders from Sydney waterside”

  46. I reckon it will be another small step towards the coalition, say .5% to 1%.

    As issues get more tightly defined in people’s minds you will see a tightening of the gap. In a 10 second sound grab, the opposition can get the message that it disagrees with an existing policy and gains support. An upcoming election means there is more analysis of their position.

    eg
    “we think there should be an Australian head of state”
    becomes
    “we think there should be an Australian head of state elected by a joint siiting of parliament”
    The first statement might get 70% support, the second 30%

  47. The punter effect should be of interest.

    Looking more and more likely that Aqis was responsible for the equine flu getting loose from the eastern creek centre. Howard has said a retired judge will conduct an inquiry into if this is so.

    Any hint that the Howard govt via Aqis was responsible for the flu getting loose will hurt them as Tyrone said.

    It is not just the owners trainers and strappers, it is the bookies clerks, attendants, bar staff, tab workers. Plus all the pissed off punters who like a flutter, especially the spring carnival.

    The compensation Howard offered is a joke, he gave more money in total to his brothers company to forestall a ASIC investigation.

    So aside from upsetting a load of punters Howard has also managed insult the industry, should be some affect on the polls there.

  50. Further to the equine flu, this will hurt them.

    THE Howard Government was warned repeatedly three years ago that changes to quarantine procedures on imported horses would expose the country to the kind of equine influenza epidemic that has devastated the $8billion industry.

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22351517-601,00.html

    Looks like Howard will have to increase the compensation, at the momment he is offering $50, fifty dollars, per person, 80,000 people depend on the industry for their livelihood.

    Surely Howard hasn’t let his close association with the Exclusive Brethren and Family First affect his views on gambling?, his response to the crisis, the amount of compensation offered is puzzling.

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