Morgan’s now-weekly face-to-face poll, from a sample of 844, shows Labor’s two-party preferred lead narrowing from 59-41 to 56.5-43.5. The Coalition’s primary vote is up from 36 per cent to 39.5 per cent, and Labor’s down from 51 per cent to 49.5 per cent.
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.
View all posts by William Bowe
Uncle Rupert seems to be running out of breath plugging the govt. Too overt, turns even the least politically aware person off as it is obviously skewed.
Does anyone know what time the Galaxy is out tonight, or is it a midnight goody?
RX sez:
The ads (especially the lame Serfchoices ads are on every break in Idol making it run very late. Can’t get the kids to bed until it’s over. So much for the child friendly coalition.
Bloptimist, to be fair I don’t think Gambaro posted that tripe to YouTube herself, and I don’t think it was intended to be a Gamaro advert – she’s in trouble if it was.
Labor must fancy it’s chances in the new QLD Electorate of Flynn.
They are pouring a pile of money into it with some very effective adds featuring the Candidate and Rudd.
I don’t think the Council Amalgamation issue will have much effect on the result, even though there are a number of councils in Flynn that have been a bit noisy over the issue.
They have been fairly quiet though, since Howard announced the Plevicite on the issue.
@ 623 Ashley sez:
He’s been desperate about this election for a while.
He represented the PM at The Scouting Sunrise ceremony at the Popera House a few weeks ago. Before an assembled crowd of bleary eyed kids he made a disgustingly partisan speech spruiking how Howard’s promise to install a rainwater tank in every scout hall at a cost of $17 million plus showed how much he cared about the environment.
I used admire the guy whilst not liking his politics but he lost me that morning.
He’s pathetic really.
Yeah, my partner is watching idol, and every second add, without fail, is government, primarily WC. Does anyone, if one can look at it objectively from a swinging voters perspective, see this as convincing propaganda? Im just not sure either way, scares the S out of me!
I googled “Galaxy” and one response showed a previous poll had an article associated with it posted at 1am. Suspect if this is similar and you are a night owl, you will see it before you go to sleep. I am not, so will get it when I wake up I guess.
The previous Galaxy poll was released at 14 minutes past midnight.
Queries about the election date – My guess is a visit to Yarralumal by the PM no earlier than Friday week – 5 October.
Today’s announcement by the PM suggests why he will not be going any earlier – a string of policy anouncements along with lots of ‘government advertisements” taking advantage of incumbency.
709,
Doug – if he goes between 29 Sept. and 12 October inclusive, he will need to visit the “standin” for the GG as the real deal will be out of the country. Forget who that is, but it has been widely noted on posts here in the last week or two, I just don’t remember at this hour.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelKeenanMP
Now this is a good Liberal candidate YouTube, totally non-political, but does a good job of introducing the candidate.
If the Oakes version of the story is true (and presumably it is) then the real story of this leak is the total collapse of the much-hyped Coalition discipline which has supposedly been its mainstay over 11 1/2 years.
What does this say about the factional poison rampant in the party that they would prefer to dump on a factional enemy than close ranks to try to win the election?
Things must be worse than they appear (if that’s possible) and the disintegration is starting before the election outcome is confirmed.
This is the most public manifestation of the effect of Howard’s capitulation last week. You can’t imagine this happening if the rodent had his hand firmly on the tiller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUn80tgh87A
Another smart pollie. Much as I loathe Pyne, this stuff is quite good.
Cheers, I’ll brew the coffee and bite my nails. I wonder if the Galaxy’s good for my ALP, could be a reason the adds are going nuts. Just shooting in the air, hoping to hit something (alot like the govt.).
I’ll probably stay up too TofK. This is a very important poll. Might affect when the election is called.
Mind you, it’s dragging on so long I’m beginning to think the safest bet will be to put money on Jan 19 as the polling day. Seriously.
Adam, I’ll take your word for it about Gambaro. You’re right: you’d have to hope there is more to her than an mtTube.
The Keenan tube is devoid of political content. I wonder what the play is? Is the tactic to put distance between the candidate and the party/PM? The visuals are warm & fuzzy. It resembles some ads run for the Labor/ Downer state Government years ago: no policy, but gee Perth is a great place – love WA and love the candidate too…
Must work to some degree…
I was at Bangalow market today handing out hundreds of car stickers saying “IT’S TIME FOR CHANGE Vote for Action on Global Warming” and almost everyone took them, many quite enthusiastically. One old lady said she loved Mr Howard and that she thought the GST was good and she was a climate change sceptic. We parted on good terms. A good half of the people there were from Queensland. Some of the stickers are going quite a way up north. Quite a few took some for friends too. It coincides with John Howard’s announcement and Al Gore’s support of Kevin Rudd. Finally it’s properly on the agenda.
Geothermal energy was the second energy source mentioned by the Liberals. The four companies GreenRock, Geodynamics, Petratherm and Torrens have enough geothermal energy to supply Australia with electricity for a thousand years carbon free and baseload.
Yeah, my fear is if Howard decides he’s well and truly beat, he’ll just ignore election calls, head for defeat and introduce as many bills as he can before the times up.
Electoral suicide, but would tie a Rudd government up for a good while trying to undo all the damage.
Again, shooting into the air. Hope I miss!
you have to wonder about the logic of this FLOOD of Coalition Workchoices ads on tv.
I was just watching Channel V, (the music channel on foxtel) and saw 2 workchoices adds in a row. what is their logic putting these adds on this channel. it has to be counter productive *scratches head*
maybe they are just throwing some money Rupert’s way, via foxtel, as payment for services *shrugs*
Richard, since you are in Richmond, the two candidate YouTubes here may interest you. Sue Page seems quite smart, but once again she is rabbitting on about soft, pale-green local issues as if she was running for Byron Bay Council. You’d hardly know she was a Nationals candidate. This is obviously a deliberate Coalition tactic.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2007seats/richmond.shtml
Adam,
I agree with you. The PyneTube is better than the others. It engages with issues and elevates some of the Liberals’ positives: the economy, household incomes, confidence, the Team……but I think these messages play best to the Liberal-inclined.
The Labor-inclined are “feeling” left behind by economic prosperity, their income gains have not matched expectations, higher interest rates eating away at disposable incomes, the Team imagery is a handy construct.
Playing on these themes is likely to reinforce people’s existing preferences. It will proably work best in electorates like Sturt, where the Liberal base is essentially quite large in the first place. But it is not likely to work so well where the Labor base is resurgent.
Still, the focus is away from Rudd and Labor, which has to be a basic campaign goal for the Liberals.
They have enough damage to undo already, lord help us if there is more in the days or weeks to come. They can start with revamping Howard’s changes in regards to voter registration and make that more user friendly again. The Republic will take a bit longer to undo that mess, which has been festering since 1999. Also, they have to fix the refugee and detention centre mess that is a blight upon society. There is heaps more but I will stop with those 3. God, I hate the politics of fear that the Libs have used over the last 11+ years, I hope to h*** that they get their just deserts in this election >;-(
Typical Govt Head in the Sand.
[THE Federal Government says it is not embarrassed by revelations that a pro-WorkChoices advertisement campaign featured two actors with criminal records.
The advertisement was pulled off air last night after Fairfax newspapers revealed two of three men featured in it as “union thugs” – Brendan Piper and Mark Lesser – had been convicted of serious drug and dishonesty charges.
The ad withdrawal came as the Workplace Ombudsman today announced he would prosecute another actor in a government-funded Work Choices commercial for allegedly underpaying workers in his other role as a house painting contractor.
Prime Minister John Howard today was dismissive of the latest revelation.
“These people are engaged by an agency, it is not an embarrassment,” he said.
Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey also brushed it off.
“These are actors but, of course, there has to be some element of truth to this since you have union officials that have criminal records … perhaps it’s a case of method acting,” Mr Hockey said.]
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22467818-5005361,00.html
Hi Adam Thanks for that. The state Nationals MP Don Page, for whom I shouted a red wine the other evening at the passing away celebration for our old friend Tony Narracott, plays the same role. He is a passing green and almost never mentions that he is a National Party member in any of his literature and gets in easily each time. He is a very good member and the locals recognise that.
One third of Byron Bay and the hinterland vote Green and we have the first popularly elected Green Mayor, Jan Barham.
I don’t think this will work for Sue though.
It’s also likely that the next seat along Page may well fall to Janelle Saffin now that Ian Causley has finally retired from politics. Janelle will be an excellent member and is well known.
The actions of this government already have forced me to act, as many other have, in an attempt to save our country from this mob that is destroying the very social fabric that has kept our diverse and dispersed nation together for over a century, just.
Nothing is beyond this government. Bullseye!
This Galaxy is an extremely important poll for the PM and of course Galaxy is his favourite pollster – see their site.
A bad poll here would truly sink the Govt and its pseudo momentum – the LNP would give its right arm to get a good poll here. So I am predicting 54 or 53/46 since it shows an improvement on 55/45. I remember they gave us a 53/47 earlier in the year just as Howard was coming under leadership threat. Pardon the synic in me but this is the most critical poll of the year [apart from the election] for the Govt. Even a 55 might actually be a 57. This is why it has been good to have Morgan and AC Neilsen during the year -something to callibrate the others against and to help confirm trends and pick out the rogues.
But Kina if they do rort it as you may be suggesting, it would surely backfire. If the real poll was 56-44 and they came up with 53-47 the Liberals would be lulled into a false sense of security. Kevin Rudd would even start to look like the underdog! Australians do love underdogs.
Polling companies would not rort a poll. If it was leaked to the media by one of its staff, a quite high likelihood, then it would destroy that company’s credibility.
kina@725 that is not being a cynic. that is being a realist. this galaxy will be as biased to the coalition as they can credibly get away with
Are you suggesting that Galaxy actually falsify their poll results? Can you substantiate this? I don’t know who Galaxy are, but I will assume they are a reputable polling company unless anyone has evidence to the contrary. Polling companies make most of their money from commercial polling for advertising purposes, and any suggestion that they rig their polls would be commercially fatal.
August Galaxy was 57/43 and I predict a small move back to the Coalition like 54/46.
But will be thrilled with anything above.
Anything below 54/46 will mean a bad day tomorrow.
#717 Richard Jones. Brilliant Richard where do we get the stickers to do the same. It’s good to see they’re using global warming not the dumbed down by conservatives climate change.
If the Coalition are returned climate change will be right back off the agenda again. I don’t know what we’ll get with the ALP.
I think people are kidding themselves if they think we’re in for a major change on climate change after this election. Best we can hope for is the Greens to win balance of power in the Senate and an inquiry.
Scorpio @ 698: Matt Price implied in his last blog that the press was going to make it a nasty campaign for Rudd as well. He justifies it by calling it democracy working, I call it deliberate spite and malice from a press corp, some of which are incestuously invoved with govt.
Dianna @ 699: They fawn to Howard [the govt] because thats where they have been getting their sense of self-importance and affirmation these past 11 years. They cannot see the difference between a morally bankrupt govt and a responsible govt. To them Rudd is the opposition to Howard so he is the enemy they must take down. Little salivating little dogs barking at their masters feet they think they are something important. YOU can bet Govt ministers look upon Milne and other journos with distaste and derision.
The Howard govt has become adept at managing taming many a journo. AND of course it is no secret that many Murdoch papers around the world are often phamphlets supporting the right-win. It will be interesting to see if News Ltd try to run a elect Howard campaign this time around – not a given yet if you look at their papers as a whole. IF they do then they may find themselves losing 50,000 odd customers and costing their sponsors the same amount of lost busines.
I believe Galaxy will be in the 55-57 range for the alp 🙂
The smear that has appeared is a really dumb move by whomever leaked it.
It was meant to paint the alp as bad as the coalition. In the end it may just reinforce what type of govt we have.
I am getting really sick of this false election campaign. Why can’t he just call it and get it over and done with already.
No, I can’t believe the professional pollsters would rort a poll. Get caught and you’re out of business – too big a risk to take.
No doubt though, different companies use slightly different techniques in selecting their sample, asking the questions and interpreting the results. Which is why some polling companies’ results can be systematically more in favour of a particular party than others.
I think overall that the polls are slightly (emphasise the word “slightly”) biased to Labor in Australian Federal elections, if you compare say the last poll before an election with the election result itself. Others may have some science at their disposal to back my statement up (or contradict it). The average bias is about one percentage point I think – in other words, totally irrelevant to the overall result if the opinion poll figures for Labor stay anywhere near current levels. But I don’t think there’s anything sinister about this bias – it’s just how the numbers work out.
The papers will not lose business because of supporting a political party. Papers often support a political party (usually) and don’t get penalised from their readers.
732,
Chris, if William doesn’t get with you inside of 24 hours, email him off of the address on the main page. The same site I have for you also has Global warming stuff too.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess the Galaxy doesn’t show a major move. I suspect if it did the result would’ve been leaked by now?
Obvious poll comments: anthing between Labor 54 and 57 will be within the current range of polls and won’t tell us anything except that nothing is changing. Anything below 54 will convince Howard he is getting a trend and might lead him to go while the going’s good. Over 57 will tell him his goose is cooked.
Can someone please tell my why people consistently attempt to predict a random variable?
The poll number is random. It fluctuates. It has a margin of error. Even if anyone knew the ‘true’ result, it is essentially meaningless to predict the result of the poll.
If you get it right, it is a fluke, but you are most likely to get it wrong. At best, you should offer a range.
Correct me if I am wrong, please, but I have learnt a little bit from hanging around the ozblogistan pseph sites. Hasn’t anyone else?
pollsters have to have overall legitimacy but Newspoll and Galaxy seem very capable of “producing a poll on demand” every now and again.
the successive galaxy 57-43 and newspoll 59-41 seemed a bit out of whack and along with a torrent of punditocracy forced a seemingly desired Howard concession to Tip.
then the swing back to the more believable 55-56 range against all logic of the preceding 2 weeks events. hmmm
getting the final predictions right is vital for these companies. lead-up polls probably aren’t tinkerproof by numerous semi-legitimate means.
Galaxy wouldn’t be so silly as to falsify polling results; that would run the risk of destroying their market research credibility in a very competitive market.
There is however, little doubt in my mind that David Briggs is biased towards the Coalition; one only need read his published articles to come to that conclusion.
Also, the Galaxy website posts its 2PP polling results thus:
Coalition
Non-Coalition
WTF is Non-Coalition if not a complete disregard for the ALP?
CETP (736) – agree, and also many journos like to be “players”.
Plenty of journos obviously support one side or the other. Many used to work for one party or another.
Financial journalists now have to disclose if they own shares in a company they are writing about. I wonder if political journalists should have to disclose tangible political connections, eg if they are a current member of a party, or used to be employed by one.
Galaxy don’t have to falisfy polls, just poll according to the wishes of their clients. If their clients request a particular type of sampling then they can just follow instructions – it isnt dishonest at all. It depends how the clients then use the data and how they represent it. Not that I am claiming that it is happening just that I carry a degree of scepticism knowing how desperate things are and, how important some polls can be in the scheme of things.
In the world of high order politics where billions of dollars of business opportunities are at stake and so forth it is naive to assume that everything is at it seems. For instance the election of Howard will certainly mean a move down the path of a full blown nuclear industry – got any idea how much money is involved in that? 25 nuclear power plants or so over the long term, a full blow nuclear waste dump and reprocessing. There is enormous sums of business involved in this alone. AND where there is huge amounts at stake don’t be too surprised at what some might do. That is healthy scepticsm, to keep the B’s honest as it were.
On Insiders this morning Malcolm said that he thought Galaxy would be “interesting”, but then reiterated that he didn’t know the result.
I suspect there will be a small shift back to the government of 1 or 2 points. Enough to encourage the PM to delay calling the election for another week or so.
Thanks Julie. I won’t be checking my email till the morning.
Sorry I meant to say “Malcolm Farr”.
Because it’s fun.
the last QLD Newspoll reported the result as Labor/Non-Labor