Newspoll: 55-45

Seven News has reported that the most keenly awaited opinion poll in recent memory, tomorrow’s Newspoll, will show “a significant shift back to the Coalition” from last fortnight’s 59-41.

UPDATE: The ABC now reports the Coalition has “clawed back eight points”, hence the new headline.

UPDATE 2: Report up at the News site confirms the headline figure, without providing further detail.

UPDATE 3: Graphic here. Note the intriguing resilience of the Prime Minister’s ratings on performance approval and preferred Liberal leader.

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.

642 comments on “Newspoll: 55-45”

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  1. Umm Glen, (#106) even the respondents right up the other end of the spectrum are unlikely to refer to the flailing rodent as “die fuhrer”. I admit to having also made the odd comment about him (mad, paranoid, sick with hatred of all about, even those who leech upon him…). But equating him with Hitler!? Oh well, your call. (And don’t try to pretend it was irony – some iron!)

  2. Re 145. The election is already late.
    Does that mean he is in breach of the Constitution? And if so, what remedy is available to the people?

  3. This is an excellent poll that should give plenty of false hope to the government.

    I never believed the 59/41 poll. I think it was probably really around 57/43. This poll is just a 2 point movement to 55/45.

    Hopefully this poll influences Howard to call the election this weekend.

  4. What is the chance the primaries will be on Lateline?

    If the 2PP figures were leaked for the early news slots, maybe there will be another snippet on Lateline to keep the tradition up

    I’m keen to see whether the coalition primary has jumped, or is this new figure just rounding out for the minor parties

  5. What has happened in the past fortnight for the polls to shift the amount suggested by Newspoll?

    Nothing, in fact the ALP should, by logic, have increased its lead.

    I really can’t work these polls out. They defy all logic. Something is clearly strange when Newspoll bounces around as variably as it has been.

  6. Re the election date – the very longest Howard can put it off would be calling it on 14 December for an election on 19 January 2008, the last allowable date. But Howard has said that it will be ‘well before Christmas’. November 3 looks good. RBA meeting on 6 Nov, possible interest rate rise.

  7. Anyone driven out of Tullamarine airport lately ? I did today and there is a huge high-visibility billboard with a Liberal party negative election ad.

    “Who pulls Labor’s strings ?”, next to about 20 silhouetted people with most coloured red and a few coloured black. Headline over this: “70% of Labor’s front bench are former union leaders.”

    Has anyone else seen this ad at Tulla or anywhere else ? I suspect the Libs were gleeful at such a “good” ad but I just don’t see it working.

    Labor’s links with the unions are not exactly a revelation. The message seemed so 1970s. I reckon ads like that will hardly turn the thinking swinging voters who have all swung behind Rudd. Not a hint of a positive reason why an 11-year old government should be returned. A scare, and an out-dated non-resonating obvious one at that. If this is the best the Libs can do then nothing will save them.

    I am intrigued to hear of other sightings. Is this a “test run” ? It’s a bloody good site. But absolutely wasted with that ad. Bring on the election !

  12. It has been all bad or neutral news for Howard and his camp for a long while and no reason for the slightest move away from Labor. If anything Rudd has been legitimised as an international player by Bush and Hu JianTao. It has been good air for Rudd at and since APEC and probably negative air for Howard since then, and now the news [again]that Howard could lose his seat. There isn’t the slighest ‘logical’ reason for a move to the Govt.

    I don’t expect to see any trend back to the Govt unless they can come up with something more effective and, there is the possibility of a further small trend against the govt.

  13. Well done Rupert! You’ve converted me! Such wit and savoir faire. Truly uplifting. You must be very pleased with yourself. I’m sure all Australians will agree with you. You should stand for parliament, you couldn’t possibly lose with such brilliant insight. “… actually vomit…” That is truly poetic.

    cheers,

    Alan H

    ……………………….

    All generalisations are false!

  15. Yes Sinic, as you say, given this poll result, complacency is John Howard’s only enemy now.

    He’ll be tempted to call a late election, rather than waiting for a very late election.

  16. 151 paradiseenough….

    I mean in a comical way referring to how the left wingers deride myself and others as being stuck in the bunker waiting for General Wenck to relieve us…i am merely pandering to the left when i make comments like that…dont take them so seriously lol i know i dont.

    What if the polls drop another 4 points??? We’ll have a ball game thats what…its those last 5 points on Labor that will decide the election….

  17. Bennelong Resident: I think the Libs are running a campaign at their core supporters (see the Age editorial) so I guess that who is who union boss campaigns are targeted at.

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/coalition-must-secure-its-future-regardless-of-polls/2007/09/16/1189881335924.html

    Neil: there is nothing that has happened over the last week to help the government (unless Costello supporters want to say it is due to the winning influence of the Treasurer!). The poll movement is just a bounce around.

  19. A sobering poll for Labor supporters! This election isn’t won yet, it’ll be a long and hard fight to get those 16 seats.
    My advice to Rudd would be to release a big policy this week, blunt the Liberal claim that he’s a phony.
    Of course Shanahan will proclaim tomorrow that Howard is on the way to victory – would you expect anything else?
    As for Mark Reilly: the man is a hack! Those supposedly humorous segments he does on Sunday Sunrise – pathetic!
    I wouldn’t be too hard on the ABC. They are so terrified of their funding being cut, that’s the reason they have to crawl up the Rodent’s butt.

  20. Well the brightside, for those eager for a change, is that this result will shake up the Labour forces. If any of the generals or footsoldiers were getting ready to coast home, this will remind them that there is still a lot of work to do before the parliamentary Liberal party can be reduced to a pale quivering rump.

  21. Thank Christ for this poll, I say. At least it brings some semblance of reality into proceedings. I think we all got a little carried away, and now we can say that it will be a tight fight, not a walkover and therefore Kevin-0-Heaven is in a better position. He’ll actually have to devise a plan of attack, which is good.

    Just me #88 said “Just watched the 7:30 Report (Michael Brissenden) and the lack of context about this poll, including MOE, is woeful, he didn’t once mention that the last poll was an upper limit and this one is just back to average over the last few months.”

    I think that no one outside this sort of blog understands MOE, and no one really cares too much. You take a 59/41 without an MOE, you take a 55/45.

    #113 Antonio said “To say the government has “clawed back” eight points is technically correct, I suppose, as Labor previously had an 18-point lead, and now has a 10-point lead. But the poll result should really be described as a “four per cent swing”. It only takes four per cent of voters to change their minds, to create an eight per cent “clawback”.”

    Antonio is entirely correct, but when I have to explain this to the crowing Libs at work tomorrow, they are not going to pay any attention. A decline of 8% in TPP is, to most people, a ‘swing’ of 8%.

    Canberra boy #114 said “Sit back and watch the very same foolish MSM journos who said Howard’s leadership was doomed by the last Newspoll now pronounce that he is clawing his way back into election contention, Libs did well to stick with his experience etc etc ad nauseum.”

    I agree entirely – it all makes for great fun. It will also mean the same difference as all of this week’s stories about Howard’s doom – not a jot.

    #ad infinitum Rupert’s comments on the excorable and recent criminal past of the Labor Party.

    No one cares about that either. It will only fly with Piers Akerman’s readers, and they all have been told that Julia Gillard wants to institute a Marxist state in Australia. Not only do his readers not understand what Marxism is, they have never heard of Marx and nor do they understand the role of the apostrophe in social cohesion. Someone called him Pier’s the other day.

    #157 Bennelong Resident says a billboard was spotted pointing out the ALP front bench and its links to the unions. This is going to be a massive plus for the Evil Ones – all they have to do is get the pics of the front bench, point out what union they belong to and a lot of waverers will be checking the blood pressure. Does Team KRudd have an answer? I bloody well hope so after 10 months of phony campaigning and planning.

    #169 Howard Hater says “A sobering poll for Labor supporters! This election isn’t won yet, it’ll be a long and hard fight to get those 16 seats.”

    Exactly.

  22. I note that the new poll puts the Greens vote at 4%. I think they’ll do a fair bit better than that. I do agree with the analysis in the Oz that the leadership stuff may have squeezed the Greens support a bit at the moment.

    And BTW, the Greens apparently released their water policy in Wagga a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon beside a noisy highway. No wonder most people (and most of the media) missed it.

    You’d think the Greens could get a few regional votes with a good water policy, but I don’t think their inner city base knows the route out of town. Pity really. The farmers are as worried about climate change as anyone, but no doubt they’ll still vote for the Nats, not the Greens or Labor.

  23. For both parties:

    LABOR: Gets a bit of the complacentcy out of the system, and brings them down to earth, whilst still hold a election winning landslide lead.

    COALITION: Pretty much makes Howard’s job safe, but a warning to them is that they are still a long way behind and they would not want to go backwards during a campaign.

    The election will be announced by Friday night for October 27.

    WINNER

    Labor. Despite this poll, the national mood will still swing their way.

  25. I’m very impressed that someone else has also recognised the role of the apostrophe in social cohesion.

    I find it rather sinister that there aren’t apostrophes in Mandarin.

    But they have them in French – c’est la vie! (as Dolly might ejaculate).

  28. Green also pointed out that 6 of the last 7 Newspolls were either 55 or 56 2PP for Labor, with the only aberration being the last one. Nice point. Looks like we have a watermark.

  29. These numbers have an air of reality about them, much as I long for a 62/38 split. Even at 55/45, Labor is running on a swing from its 2004 result that exceeds 7%. This equals the upper limit of 2PP swings since 1966.

  30. It’s amazing the difference on Lateline watching the news reporter’s version of the story, and then Tony Jones and Antony Green’s version. The former was “govt claws back blah blah”, the latter pointed out that it was the last poll that was out of line from the long term trend.

    And yeah, the new ABC election site looks great. I assume it will be at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/ but there’s just an empty directory there now.

  32. Antony Green was excellent as always. He put things into perspective saying that the last 7 Newpolls have all been at 55 or 56 TPP for Labor except for the second last one at 59%, which most agree was an outlier. No overall trend, and still a lot of work for the government to do.

    Have to check out the new ABC election site tomorrow!!

  33. The problem with those calculators is although they may be fun to play with they dont take into account uniform swings occur very rarely, thus as Antony says so long as the Coalition can bring it down to say 52-48 the Coalition can hang on…

  34. I really can’t believe how much people are reading into this.

    As Antony Green just said on Lateline, this poll is in-line with the average of the polls since the start of the year. Yet analysts are saying that the Coalition is now “gaining on” Labor, and that this will be a big boost for Howard.

    In reality, it is just the same old story (once you ignore the last aberrant poll). Anything between 54/46 and 58/42 is pretty much on-track with earlier polls. If we get a number of consecutive polls outside this range, then I’d say something is going on.

    While I expect newspapers to overreact to polls (they have to fill the pages somehow), I can’t believe that politicians seem to be actually taking shifts in individual poll results seriously. The last poll almost caused a leadership spill, and this one suddenly proves that Howard is OK… it’s a bit much, really.

  35. #76 sorry for coming in so late, but Rupert, there`s really no need to apologise for any semblance of `Paul Keating speak`. Crude, he may have been at times; witless, repetitive and hysterical, never.

  36. I think Green’s wrong on this. The last Newspoll showed the same thing the Galaxy, AC Nielsen and Morgan did, a shift back to Labor, which was quite explicable given that stupid War on the States before it. It differed from previous Newspolls but that differnece was in line with what other organisations were reporting.

    blindoptimist, why do we have to take 1966 as the upper end? Why is there such resistance that something NEW could be happening?

  37. Glen is stuck in the bunker waiting for General Wenck to relieve us…
    You really should concentrate more and learn how to spell German. His name is General Waenk!

  38. I gnerally agree with Antony Green’s analysis of the latest poll. but as the purpose of Poll Bludger appears to be to dissect the entrails of each individual poll (and then declare that only the trend matters), I do think voters may be welcoming the coalition coming up with a resolution of the Howard-Costello leadership wrangle. Whether it’s a good resolution is debatable, but at least it’s a plan.

    And, of course, it’s really only the poll trend that matters.

    The game will change again when the election is called, the policies roll out and the debate(s) is/are held. Normally an Opposition can benefit from an election campaign, because it gives the leader equal time with the Prime Minister and its policies equal analysis. But this time, I don’t know about that. Rudd has had the running so much in the lead-up to this campaign, that maybe Howard will benefit from the “equal time” syndrome.

    And in response to the billboard depicting Labor shadow ministers as red union men, perhaps Labor could erect a billboard listing the lawyers on the coalition team. Maybe they could have yellow wigs on the guilty parties.

  42. Michael Proud says:

    “This poll keeps howard at the helm.

    It is good news.”

    Absolutely. It means we’ll get to vote him out, rather than being robbed of the opportunity by his own panicked backbenchers prior ot the poll.

    He’ll still lose both his own seat and Government by a landslide on these figures, which as others have pointed out, are consistent with the 4 or 5 Newspolls prior to the last one.

  43. How many repulsive comments are you letting through William?

    SNIP – Rest of comment deleted, yet again. In answer to the above question, Rupert: loads. I don’t have a problem with repulsive, up to a point. What I won’t allow, for your sake and mine, is statements that are false and defamatory.

  44. Piping shrike #186

    I Agree. If this was a change from a single poll it (and the other poll) should be viewed with caution.

    What we had was several polls at about 60/40 and now this poll at 55/45. If a second large poll comes in at 55/45 then it says there is a great number of voters only loosely associated with a party.

    I suspect that there is a significant number of people who are looking for leadership, when Howard stood up and said “I will lead the party” it was showing strength and leadership and people liked it.

  45. Last election the ALP absolutely failed to tackle the govt head on when they attacked over economic trustworthiness. They can’t make the same mistake with this scare campaign over Union Bosses. I see a lot of haranguing from the government side of the dispatch box, but I haven’t heard a single response from Labor yet. They have to decide on a line of defence and stick with it. Either play up the fact that Crean took to the unions with gelding tongs years ago and reduced their influence, or stick up for unions as the true champions of the interests of average Australians and contrast their record with James Hardie, the BCI (thanks very much for WorkChoices) and sundry hundreds of employers who’ve fought every OH&S reform and every minimum pay rise and every unfair dismissal law since the year dot.

    Pick an angle and go for it, guys. Being a stationary target on this one isn’t going to work. The Liberal campaign doesn’t have to sway millions, it just has to shift a few hundred thousand goobers. Don’t let ’em do it.

  47. I only saw it for a moment, so forgive me if I got this wrong, but did Lateline just say Primary for the coalition is up to 41%? and Labor down to 47%??

    a 41% primary for the coalition is at the top of the range for LNP primaries since Kevin Rein came along late in 2006

    Just one more point and I think the LNP is in the ball game

  48. #167 – Piping Shrike

    I agree. The ad could be part of a Lib firewall strategy to shore up their core vote. I certainly can’t see it changing any lost votes back to the Libs.

    It struck me as odd to see it well before the election starts. It must be part of a trial as it is in a highly visible site with plenty passing traffic.

    Anyone else seen it or anything else similar ? It’s by the traffic lights opposite the Formule 1 motel and just before the freeway starts. Let’s see how long it lasts. It’ll be a few weeks before I’m back down there.

  49. Sportingbet has just updated Election Date betting.

    Oct 27: $2.50
    Nov 10: $4.50
    Nov17: $5.50
    Nov 3: $6.50

    Money has come in for Oct 27 today in from $2.80.

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