Morgan: 56.5-43.5

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.

828 comments on “Morgan: 56.5-43.5”

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  2. Bill do you really think The Govt will get 54.6 TPP in Qld?

    Under this scenario Bennelong and Wentworth are Labor gains. What this really shows is how difficult it is for John Howard et al to win.

  4. I have constant nightmares that i will be asleep when the election is called and when i wake up theres a FF corflute on the pole outside my house. In the state election I got a good 30 % of the main road i live on but strangely a percentage of them ended up FF. dont let religion get in the way of being lawful

  5. Possum #80

    Thanks so much for sharing your unique thoughts with us. It really helps to have faith when you see an analysis such as this,

  6. #
    103
    The Piping Shrike Says:
    September 21st, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    Bill, Newspoll has a 9% swing for NSW, QLD and SA and 11% for Vic. On what grounds are you slashing it?

    Because there is no way come election day the swings will be that big. ALPers are worried about QLD and WA so the newspoll figures are way over the top. Would you bet your house on those figures? I still believe Howard by three seats if they be including 2 independents then it could be like that. I cringe at the over confidence of bloggers here as the real war is yet to start. Is this another election that a opposition leader cant loose? When things get closer and they will, the Greens preferences will decide the election and that is still up in the air atm

  7. I think the Phelps-Kelly incident shows how desperate the Libs really are, despite claiming to be all reassured by the last Newspoll. The Howard government sends our forces to Bush’s utterly botched war in Iraq. Colonel Mike Kelly goes where he is sent and does his duty honourably, risking his life in a war which he can see is being stuffed up by Bush and Runsfeld, with Howard’s total complaisance. He comes home and goes into politics. At a public forum Phelps, Nairn’s chief of staff, without saying who he is, asks Kelly why he volunteered to go to Iraq if he disapproved of the war. (Kelly did not in fact oppose the war when he was sent to Iraq, he came to oppose it when he saw how badly it was being conducted.) Kelly replies that he didn’t volunteer, he was sent there. Phelps then says: “Just obeying orders, eh? Just like the guards at Belsen. That’s the Nuremberg defence” (or words to that effect). Apart from being grossly insulting, this is quite bizarre. Is it the Liberal Party’s position that Australian service personnel should refuse to obey orders if they disapprove of a particular operation? It is the Liberal Party’s view that the conduct of Coalition forces in Iraq should be equated with the conduct of the Nazis? Have the Liberals now lined up with the extreme left to oppose their own war? To equate Kelly with Nazis because he did his duty very well (and has a letter of commendation from Paul Bremer to prove it) is just disgusting, as well as extemely stupid. Nairn should have sacked Phelps outright (especially since he is a serial offender), and apologised to Kelly in the House. People would have had some respect for him if he had done that, and he would have come out of the incident not too badly. But he just dodged and wriggled and looked sheepish, thus covering himself in the ordure of Phelps’s comments when he need not have done. Very dumb. I’m sure Abbott and co told him to tough it out and not apologise.

  8. Bill,

    NSW will swing more than 4.7% ;-). Too many pissed off I HATE work choices voters where I live in SW Sydney and I suspect similar throughout the rest of the state. NSW has 1/3 of the nations voters.

  9. Tell us Bill, what issue/s will turn the polls so far toward the coalition that they will be returned? When was the last time a government came back this far from the dead before an election with all polls showing Labor a clear favourite and Rudd clearly preferred ovwer Howard?

  10. Antonio at 100. I share your nervousness about either a share market crash or the U.S. economy going into recession or both. They are in debt up to their eyeballs, a lot of it owed to the Chinese, the Iraq adventure proving to be a very expensive adventure (not even considering the human cost). October is often the month when things go pear shaped economically, when it does go pear shaped, and the wobbly 5% or more may decide to stick with the devil they know. I hope that none of this happens, of course, and that Possums theory about lobbing a (rubber) smear bomb is the worst that happens, and that Rudd doesn’t blow it.

  11. Bill @99:

    The swings I listed previously (post 77) were the “minimum” swings that would get the ALP 76 seats. Considering that Qld and WA are coming off a fairly low base, it’s pretty amazing how little swing is needed… provided the ALP can score a 4.9% swing in NSW.

    Here are the required set of swings:

    NSW 4.9
    VIC 0.2
    QLD 3.0
    WA 2.2
    SA 0.7
    TAS 2.8
    ACT 0.0
    NT 0.0

  12. Bill, people have been saying Rudd’s lead has been unsustainable all year and they have been wrong. I think the onus is now on those people to justify it on more than just saying “no way”.

    I don’t agree with this Rudd melt-down theory, the events of the last year should have proven that it does not work because the Liberals (unlike Labor in 1993 and the Libs in 2004) have no policy basis to attack Rudd. Their main concern is defending their core supporter base.

    I don’t know why people are expecting something magical to happen during the campaign, in case you haven’t noticed we are already in campaign mode. I think it will be a messy anti-climax.

  13. Here a diddy about two Australian kids going up in the Heartland, the Man of steal and Captain Courageous doing the best they can.

    Man of steel was going to be a Political star, Captain Courageous did it in the back of the Man of steel’s car.

    Along come Saintly Kev livin on a pray use to work in an office, Unions in on strike, his down on his luck, life tough with Barren Jules bringing home her pay for love,

    We’re got to hold on to what were got for it doesn’t make a different if we make it or not, as long wee have got one another and that’s what I call love.

    We will give it a shot, give me your hand we will make it elsewhere, you live for the fight with that all your got, livin on a pray your half way there.

  14. Possum,
    What’s the story with the Libs having little money, if you’re able to expand on this? Are they just tight or really skint, and therefore have to rely on the largesse of the likes of the Exclusive Brethren? Surely Turnbull could kick in the odd million without noticing?

  15. “Despite Morgan’s fanciful “soft” vote..”

    For the life of me I don’t know why they don’t simply ask the likelihood of changing their vote rather than this other nonsense.

    The last Newspoll’s data contradicts Morgan’s labor soft vote. Labor’s vote was more firm than the Coalition’s and from memory the Coalition had a net 3% soft vote arising out of the new Leadership arrangement.

    Labor’s primary has been strong all year – 9 months at around 46-51% whilst the LNP have been struggling to get over 40% and stay there. You would think that Labor is the Govt.

    The Govt need’s to do something to win back the vote, it won’t come back just because there is an election campaign on – its been a pseudo campaign since Rudd took over.

    Howard intimated in parliament that they have a serious dirt campaign to come and Gillard revealed a forensic accountant investigated Rudd’s home purchase looking for dirt and so forth.

    In my opinion it could be a very dangerous thing indeed for the Govt or its friends to run a smear/dirt campaign. Get it wrong and it will jolt the voter away from the Govt and risk a bigger loss.

    The heart valve transplant just made Rudd look human and the strip-gate just made him look human with a little naughty hint. People don’t accept that Rudd is intrinsically deceitful or dishonest thus smears have the risk of backfiring. They are more likely to believe him than Howard.

  16. labor must sense something in the rudd meltdown theory and used question time to put smear pressure on the lib’s
    by that they heightened the public awareness of smear as a liberal party election tactic and have tried to neutralize it going in to the election
    if labor wins it will have been part of a election winning strategy

  17. I’m afraid I’m one of the people who believe the result on election day will be closer. I’d base this on the fact that a) the highest ALP vote at any previous fed election was around 53% (apologies I don’t have the exact figure), and b) over the past few decades there is some record for Governments pulling back a bit of support during the election period. While past records are not predictive, I’d suggest that it is suggestive of a likely way forward from here on in.

    This is not necessarily to say that the coalition will be competitive come election day. Several months ago I thought the TPP would be about 52% TPP in the ALP’s favour. I’ve revised that slightly to somewhere around 53-52% TPP – possibly even a new record. Add in the larger swings in marginals and safe coalition seats from Newspoll (and I am eagerly awaiting Possum’s analysis on this :)) and even with a closing of the gap I’m still expecting a landslide.

  18. Monica…

    I know the Libs in Qld were pulling in about $160,000 per month before Flegg and the state election. Now they are lucky to get $160 per month.

    This is part of the reason for the printing allowance stuff, it was a way to slip the state branch a few bucks.

    The Qld Libs are broke.

  20. The Government has to now strike a balance on going to the polls between taking advantage of incoumbency to make announcements about funding that will be locked in provided that the announcement(s) are made before the PM goes to see the GG, and on the other hand exacerbating a feeling in the electorate that he is simply hanging on to power.

    I reckon we have two more weeks before the trip to Yarralumla.

  21. All year the average poll numbers have been 57-43 so while I can understand why Bill thinks the result will be closer a position I once agreed with but I’m now starting to feel that if the Liberals go too negative then we may see a reverse Latham.

    While the polls are closer than in March and May, I would have expected by now that for the Liberals to win they would have needed all 4 polling companies to have the gap below 10 points this isn’t happening.

    Based on the campaign I suspect the following

    A winning campaign for the ALP, ALP win 57+

    A drawn campaign the ALP win with between 53-56%

    A winning campaign for the Liberals, with ALP leading TPP but losing Election 52-

    From this naval gazing exercise I cannot see the Liberals winning the TPP unless something big happens.

    Looking at these poll numbers there something about them, we are either about to witness the biggest Political slaughter of all time or the four polling companies have been talking crap for 9 months.

  22. 114
    Monica Lynagh aka Harry ‘Snapper’ Organs Says:
    September 21st, 2007 at 7:34 pm
    Possum,
    What’s the story with the Libs having little money, if you’re able to expand on this? Are they just tight or really skint, and therefore have to rely on the largesse of the likes of the Exclusive Brethren? Surely Turnbull could kick in the odd million without noticing?

    I have read in several places in the last few weeks that both Turnbull and Howard have “personal” piggybanks for their own electorate and campaigns and that the Federal Liberal party might raid those to some extent to support other campaigns around the country. How much say Turnbull and/or Howard would get in how much was siphoned off I don’t know.

  23. I suspect the swing to Labor will be less than shown in some polls. Sorry in advance to those who may be offended by my lack of scientific evidence for this, it’s just my feeling!

    Reasons:

    The Govt already (of course) has to have a position on everything. As Labor announces more of its policies, inevitably some of them will turn off some people.
    I think there is historical evidence for a slight bias towards Labor in opinion polls, on average.
    Some of the marginal seat members will hold on against the swing (because some of them always do). My number 1 prediction for that is Turnbull. Howard may also – who knows?
    And I suspect the don’t knows (not that there seem to be many of them remaining) could fall marginally the Govt’s way.

    What would it take for the Liberals to win? A miracle, a major Rudd stuff-up, or some combination of the two! Unlikely to happen …

  24. Hi

    This may have been mentioned on the other thread, but I’ll say it here.

    I put the Newspoll state by state into Antony Green’s calculator, and Labor win 102-46 (assuming they pick up the 2 Tassie seats and Solomon)

    If you put in the latest newpoll (55-45), Labor win 92-56.

    The fact that NSW and VIC look so bad must be a concern. These are the two states with the most electorates, and they look terrible.

    Also, the marginal seat analysis shows some good news for Howard. They have retaken the lead 51-49 in Coalition safe seats.

    Please note I said SAFE seats. Shouldn’t the Libs be comfortably in front in this figure? Some of them could be gone come the election. In the marginals, the ALP are ahead 58-42. A 16 point lead.

    I’m only new at this psephology game, and I understand that the election is a seat by seat proposition, but can someone explain to me how the hell Howard is anywhere close to winning, as I hear other people are saying?

    Help me out people…..

  25. I suspect the Gillard “look out for the next Govt smear” line is nearing the end of its trajectory. But it’s been good for her whilst its impact has lasted.

  27. Anthony Green’s site is great. I’ve been playing with the state figures and have now satisfied my concerns. I feel these swings are easily achievable at even the most pessimistic outlook compared to the 9.2% being predicted by Morgan.

    NSW 4.2% 52.3%
    VIC 3.0% 52.0%
    QLD 3.0% 54.1%
    WA 2.1% 53.3%
    SA 3.0% 51.4%
    TAS 2.7% 56.9%
    ACT 0.0% 61.5%
    NT 0.0% 52.1%

    ALP 75
    L/NP 73

    I feel better now 🙂

  28. #82
    “Or install the ImgLikeOpera firefox extension, which gives you the same functionality.””

    Ok i did this but now when i go to “news “site images don’t appear/download. What have i done wrong?

  30. Adam @ 107 and Martin B @ 126. I suspect that the fact that Phelps wasn’t sacked (or Labor pressuring Nairn/Howard to do so) was so that it could be used to portray Howard as a) a weak leader and b) being able to show disunity in Liberal party ranks regarding the invasion of Iraq. There is quite a bit of unused ammunition on this particular deck so to speak and Rudd has a lot of dry powder in the hold for the election proper.

    Tom.

  32. Monica Re: Lib funding

    There are really 4 types of donors that the Libs get money out of. The avid, wealthy party supporters… be they businesses or individuals, where the larger of them are usually hooked into the 500 Club stuff and its peripheral activity. They will always donate regardless.

    The next one is the equal opportunity business doners that donate to both the major parties – legal greasing of the wheels type stuff. The third group which is where the Liberals are having problems are the group of businesses that donate according to which way they think the wind is blowing. For these guys its simply about political access. So what’s been happening is that this group, which has donated a large proportion of the Libs campaign finance previously, has been starting to reduce their funding and started to shunt it toward the ALP, donating equally and hedging their bets.Some are actually sending more money toward the ALP than they are the Libs.

    But the worst for the Libs is the local campaign fund raising. The local fund raising is responsible for a large part of the local advertising legwork.The National campaign ads are funded by the larger Liberal party apparatus, but a lot of the local campaigning is reliant on local doners and they’ve apparently dried up.The poor state of the Liberal branches and their collapse into factionalism in many parts of the country has driven a lot of their own supporters away.

    The ALP on the other hand are enjoying the new corporate funding flowing their way plus the labour movement knows that it’s fighting for its life and are pulling out all stops to send money either to the ALP or to the broader anti-workchoices union campaigns.

    Not that long ago, expensive ALP fund raising dinners were as popular as the plague in Qld– recently, you need 5 figures to get a bad seat, let alone a good one. And that sort of thing is happening across the country more or less.

    The Libs have got a bit saved up in the piggy bank, but if they are forced to use it there’s going to be a serious argument in the Libs about whether it should be kept for the rebuilding or blown on losing an election and thereby contributing to prolonging the period the Libs are out of power anywhere in the country.

  33. (131) Must say Scotty, except for the last sentence “Howard’s finished” I thought the rest of Fagin’s post was fantasy. There is no way Labor will lead its campaign with Workchoices! Rudd has been moving away from opposition to it all year. He is not going to do a U-turn now. He will limit it to “fair-go-for-all” vague stuff halfway through the spiel.

    I thought an interesting thing about Phelps: I wonder if that sort of bad discipline woudl have happened in a real margin, rather than the comfortable Labor seat it soon will be.

    Just on predictions, it is strange that the only other place I can find such rosy forecasts for the government as from (what seems mostly) Labor supporters on this thread is in The Australian. What a strange alliance!

  34. Bill – the Libs are cactus. I don’t know where you got the 5% for SA from; the ALP will get at least a 56% in SA (they are currently polling at astronomical proportions in excess of 60% – I’m being conservative by saying 56% on election night) and that gains them 5 seats. This means the ALP only need to get 11 seats IN THE REST OF AUSTRALIA to win the election. On current polling that is not only doable, it’s a near certainty.

    Okay, absolute catastrophes nothwithstanding. But I would be VERY surprised if the ALP lose from here. The Coalition have simply run out of time and they have nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament they find themselves in.

  36. Shrike, you are so wrong I hardly know where to start. 80% of the swing to Labor is being driven by WorkChoices, which is utter poison for the Libs among the key demographic, the “upper working class.” This is the class that abandoned Keating in 1996, and now they have flipped back, because WorkChoices has brought CLASS back into Australian politics with a bang. All the work the Libs have done over the past decade to weaken Labor’s class base (reinforced by demographic change) has been undone. OF COURSE Labor will base its campaign around WorkChoices – they’d be bankers to do anything else. This may be news to you, but a “fair-go-for-all” in the workplace is not “vague stuff ” for working families in the suburbs and regional cities. It is absolute bedrock, and is switching somewhere between 5 and 10% of the electorate over to Labor.

  40. Adam – I know the Libs are bankers (at least, Turbull is), but I did assume you meant bonkers.

    Actually, a lot of the Libs (including Turnbull) are something that rhymes with bankers 🙂

  42. Piping @133.

    Having given some thought to the Phelps issue, particularly after digesting some of the background stuff of him in Crikey, I can’t help feeling that what we saw in his outburst is representative of the wider problem in the Libs. With the takeover by the religious right, the emphasis has been shifted to “winning the argument” rather than smart politics. The naiivete shown by Phelps in using such a ridiculous argument in a public forum shows how they have lost the plot. That is the kind of “winner take all” attitude which you adopt in a backroom debate not in a public forum in a marginal seat with a war hero as your target.

    Possum @ 132

    The problem for the Libs at the local level is not just campaign funds. In the past two elections (state and federal) the Libs have not been able to staff our local polling booth (1000 voters so it’s not small) in a safe but not super safe labor seat.

  43. First I love the new Green site, I was looking at several of the seats and in light of the polling I’m curious as to how Anthony Green can call certain Liberal seats safe when they are around the margin that the polls are threatening to swing.

    Casey while its a 11% margin and looks safe could surprise considering its a very Christan seat.

    Apart from Victoria the Liberals had gained 1-2 points, this for a post Budget period really is a poor outcome for the Liberals, more concerning for them is while they appear to have improved slightly in there really safe seats and appear to have imporved their primary vote at the same time the ALP have maintained their primary with no movement.

  44. Work Choices is a big issue.

    Pru Goward said she door knocked hundreds of houses in Goulburn and Work Choices came up often, she said it was worth at least a 5% swing against her. The primary vote for the libs dropped about 23% in Goulburn but this is put down to other factors such as new candidate and changed boundaries.

    Spot light and cleaning firms are moving away from Work Choices as a collective agreement is fairer,easier and less costly to administer.

  45. People ignore the feeling potency of the anti workchoices vote at their own peril. Labor have the right message and the right messenger. It will be Howard’s undoing.

  47. I heard from a friend of a friend that the last Mayo branch meeting – remember for a moment this is Downer’s Adelaide Hills seat with a 14% or so margin: rock solid Liberal – only had TEN people show up.

    I thought others were exaggerating when they suggested that Downer might actually lose his seat (as opposed to my mere wishful thinking) but I’m now wondering if it is a real possibility. Our last ALP Mayo FEC meeting had about 30 people present…

  48. Hockey had a full page ad in the Daily Telegraph where he assured nurses that their wages and conditions are safe because:

    They are employed under state awards and
    where they are not employed under state awards
    they are covered by union collective agreements.

    Effectively Hockey is saying if workers want to protect themselves against Work Choices they are best off being in a state award or being in a union that can organise and bargain a collective agreement.

  50. Well Adam, as a member of the ALP I guess you will know what the ALP will campaign on. You think they will lead the federal campaign on Workchoices, we’ll just have to see won’t we? I can also understand why you prefer to think Howard won his “battlers”, rather than the more uncomfortable fact that Labor lost its heartland during the Hawke years in the late 1980s (I refer you to Antony Green’s paper on the subject). A reason why they did was the way Hawke/Keating nobbled the unions and imposed the burden of the financial deregulation on their core supporters. Keating finished the unions off and now Labor’s historical role as their political representation is over.

    You can kid yourself that the current Labor leader, the first non-union sponsored leader in living memory will campaign on workers rights etc. etc. but meanwhile back in reality, this election is not about the ALP and what it campaigns on but the profound vacuum of the Liberal party. One can try and console oneself that what in some ways be a hollow victory for Labor, will be a vindication of its proud stance on employment rights (like they tried after their hollow victory in NSW this year), but I’m afraid it is not very useful for an objective discussion on Australian political reality.

    Possum your comments on the funding problems of the Libs is very interesting. Do you have any sources?

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