Reuters poll trend: 54.8-45.2

Reuters’ fortnightly labour-saving device, Poll Trend, shows the two-party gap narrowing to 54.8-45.2 from 56.2-43.8 last time out. This is achieved by aggregating results from Newspoll, Morgan and ACNielsen and “smoothing volatility by using a five-term Henderson moving average”. Labor’s primary vote is down from 48.3 per cent to 47.8 per cent, with the Coalition up from 39.5 per cent to 40.8 per cent. A weekly breakdown shows that almost all of this movement came in the week before last.

UPDATE: Surprising news from SportingBet: “punters have flocked to the Coalition since this morning’s rate rise with 96% of money bet with Australia’s biggest bookmaker, Sportingbet Australia, going to the Coalition since the Reserve Bank’s announcement was made”.

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.

658 comments on “Reuters poll trend: 54.8-45.2”

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  1. Looks to me that when JWH picked 24/11 he was trying to buy time and gambled on interest rates (remember how he attempted to argue that an increase could not be justified). The line about “a narrowing” was spin and we are seeing a slow destruction, instead a quick and humane removal.

  3. Mid North Coast- simple solution alter priorities. Scrap the stupid tax cuts or decrease the amount and use the money for more public housing. Or scrap the road funding priorities and use that money.
    If you believe that landlords will reduce rents you are in fairy land.

  4. VBooTWet @ 544 (and sorry if I got your tag wrong – make it simpler next time…)

    Which arguments are you saying Labor needs to get right – this smacks very much of the old spin that “they” are bad by definition.

    Please explain 🙂

  6. 544 This is a big move by China that has been brewing for months. The guts of it is here.

    “The dollar was meanwhile further hurt by comments made by the vice chairman of China’s national parliament, analysts said.

    Cheng Siwei reportedly said at a conference in China that his country should adjust the structure of its foreign exchange reserves, the world’s largest, suggesting that strong currencies ought to be given greater weight.”

    There’s been plenty written on this in recent months and we could be seeing the decline of US world influence as China starts to overtake the US in financial dominance.

    Could be handy to have a Mandarin speaking PM rather than a Bush sycophant from now on.

  7. I’m hopefull this has hurt the Coalition but i’m not convinced.

    Remember everytime we have thought an event should hurt the Coalition(the inparty bitch fight for example) the Coalition numbers have gone up.

    Will the punters out there run to the Coalition to save them from the “economic boogeyman” or will the punters out there have a memory long enough that the ENTIRE Liberal Party campaign of the last election was built on the promise of keeping interest rates low???

    Once again, don’t underestimate the stupidity of the average voter… we may all just get a shock next newspoll and see an increase in the Liberal Party vote.

  8. Possum #529

    Of course it’s a bit silly, oh magnificent pouched creature. That’s what publishing is all about and always has been. The Oz has retained its readership quite well over the years, the demographics are the right ones for the target advertisers to go after, and our dear friends on the political round are all paid their salaries by the people who pay a fortune to advertise in its inserts and magazines.

    The fact that we here dislike the politics of the newspaper intensely does not negate the fact that the writing – stylistically speaking – is top notch and that newspaper readers want a national newspaper, whatever its faults.

    Newspapers supposedly have been losing influence since the advent of television, but they still hang in there. If Kevin-0-heaven does get in, he’ll be happy enough to talk to any of the press gallery, whatever publication they are from. People forget things very quickly (excepting perhaps interest rates).

    I should add here that I have never worked for Rupert, although I did spend a horrendous couple of months working for his nephew. As Marie Claire is not known for its political punditry, however, I think I’m safe from accusations of bias.

  9. mad cow – I’d love to comment on Higgins but it would be pure speculation. But there’s always hope. I might flick a few bob in that direction, odds are good at the mo.

  12. Steve, Labor should be doing what it was doing before the campaign, telling the electorate the truth, that Howard is a fraud as a conviction politician and that has run out of ideas, rather than having a secret agenda, that Costello is a harmless joke, not an IR tough guy to be worried about. They might also stop scaring people about a piece of IR legislation that has been a flop and employers don’t need and will have no intention of extending even if the Libs take it further. Individual negotiations are a hassle for most employers and besides, they pay workers less on awards than AWAs.

    The most glaring example of how weak the campaign has been is the way they let the Mersey Hospital fiasco slip through their fingers. Labor should be hammering again and again on how the Liberals were willing to pay politics on an intensive care unit that could have cost lives. They could also point how they didn’t even have the guts to bring in AWAs at Mersey Hospital because they don’t believe in it and will dump it if inconvenient. I did hear Gillard say that if they are not good enough for Mersey Hospital workers why for other Australians, but they should be making a much bigger deal of it.

    They should also stop being defensive about Garrett, he is not an experienced politician so he will always make mistakes, Rudd is there to check him because Garrett has little real influence in the party. What Garrett does bring is passion for the environment, which is more than can be said for his counterpart who is only focussed on becoming PM (or holding onto his seat).

    Winston, AWAs do not help Howard with Labor supporters but this election is about the Liberals’ base. Howard thinks GST actually helped him and I think he is right, what else did have going for him in 1998?

  13. Brian spot on what is the problem with debt?
    Government debt is the cheapest form of debt due to security it provides. But can’t have that, it is terrible. Much better to borrow privately and let bankers get great returns.
    An ideological load of crap. Greed is what this country is about.

  14. Tabitha 518,
    What The hell do you know about Chinese people. Don’t go trying to speak for the Chinese, you wouldn’t have a clue what they are wanting at the moment. They are just like everyone else. The want a good life for their family and they see that they would be better off in the future if Rudd took hold of the reins. Who the f**k would want to have ‘Hard Work’ as their reason for living. God I hate Libs.

    Libs are only good for one thing with me. As I am a Financial Planner, as soon as someone tells me they love Howard, I charge them double. Some dick in a country town near Perth, told me he was president for the Liberal Party in his region (O’Connor), so I instantly charged his $5,000 for my services.

    Good night, time to go shag my Chinese missus.

  15. Now, as a Monthly subscriber, I would like to suggest that the standard if writing is patchy. For every Richard Flanagan, there’s several fairly dull (if worthy) pieces by Robert Manne et al. I have great respect for the good prof but he’s not the world’s most engaging writer. Judith Brett on the other hand is terrific. A fair bit of dross in that rag, IMHO. Usually a couple of good pieces, and a fair bit of not very much. So there.

  17. I live in Higgins, I think at best 4% swing making it more marginal. The funny thing has been that the electorate has a huge dislike for Howard and would be happier with Costello having the reins. Secretely people want the prime minister in their seat.
    I suggest when Costello becomes the opposition leader that this seat blows back out to the 9s

  18. Ms Twain

    You forgot the wonderfully eloquent Robert Forster, arts and music scribe for the Monthly. The Monthly gets me from one Quarterly Essay to the next.

  20. MarkyMark – Decreased profitability in investment housing due to a loss of negative gearing will result in a decreased number of rental properties and resultant increased rent, not decreased. I guess you are suggesting more commission housing with a combination of tax increases and cutting back on other programs. I think both would make a party unelectable.

    I agree with Brian, if you want to do it, and having grown up in a commission ghetto I must say that I don’t think it is such a good idea. I also wonder about the effects of such rent control/ subsidization on the housing and rental markets. After the Razor gang has cleared out accumulated government waste, I think the only acceptable method is with controlled government debt. I may be an old Keynsian, but I just don’t get this obsession about surplus budgets. Varying the budget according to economic conditions and the need for infrastructure must still have a place in the deregulated global economy.

  23. Agreed CL #565. They need to ditch that arse Robert Forster as well. But it’s worth it for the odd gem and I’d pay to read Gideon Haigh write about plasterboard.

  24. This is a brilliant post on CO’s Blog. I think it deserves a read, especially by you, Glen. I’m posting it here in case she erases it.

    { Funny stuff, detest, really funny stuff. I make sure to check long-term ABS statistics. According to those, Labor pushed unemployment rates from over 11% to around 8% between 1992 & 1996, against a rise in the participation rate of 2%. Nearly 1 million people started jobs during this time-around 500,000 of which were Full-Time-all without the benefit of a Mining Boom. By comparison, under Howard, Unemployment fell by only 2% between 1996 & 2003, in spite of slightly lower Participation Rates over this period. Actually, unemployment rose by 0.4% between 1999 & 2001, about the same time Interest Rates rose by almost 2%. Total employment over this time was about 1.2 million people, of which about 600,000 was full time. This equates to employment growth of nearly 4% per annum for the 1992 to 1996 period, compared to around 2% for the 1996 to 2003 period. Also, unemployment rates fell at an average of 0.7% per annum between 1992 & 1996, compared to around 0.3% per annum for 1996 to 2003. In the 4 years since 2003, even with a mining boom, unemployment has fallen by an average of 0.42% per annum. Also, your population growth rates are totally skew whiff (as are most of your so-called stats). In 1996, the population was around 18.4 million, & was 20.9 million as of this year. That means the population has grown by more like 2.5 million over 11 years-not the 4 million you claim-around 200,000 per annum. The population rose by around 800,000 per annum between 1993 & 1996, or around an average of 270,000 per annum. Oh, & may I remind you, detest, that this fall in unemployment rates occured against a backdrop of +3.2% productivity growth & falling Interest Rates. So, as usual, you are totally WRONG on pretty much everything &-unless you now have a valid e-mail address, perhaps its time Caroline followed George’s example & banned you from this blog site. }

  25. [Someone should call the ACCC on Dazzamack from Perth if he does what he says he does, shameful just shameful.]

    WTF are you going on about now? Small businesses can charge whatever they like.

    For a Liberal hack you often sound a lot like a communist.

  26. 562 Shrike

    IR doesn’t just connect with traditional Labor voters.

    Research shows that more than half of those who have swung to Labor have done so mainly because of Workchoices.

    IR has been the defining issue of this election.

    What else did Howard have going for him in 98? One term.

  28. 547 kina

    Equally, Lindsay, if I recollect correctly, a couple of nights ago.

    Sad at hearts. Not to mention the various roundups this evening, on radio. All ABC.

    Voted Howard last time, not this time.

  29. Someone was asking about Higgins before? Internal polling is showing a swing of about 8% to the ALP there. No on in the machine actually thinks it is winnable, but some extra bods have been sent there to lend a hand, and to give the libs the sh*ts.

    Bennelong – a number of people who have seen the internal polling are having ‘value’ bets on Maxine. Not huge bets, but a couple of hundred or so. Smart tip is that Howard will scrap in in Bennelong, but Maxine will win it in a landslide in the by-election.

    Some other polling results – these are based on marginals or semi-marginals only, but then almost everything is a marginal at the moment (at least if it is currently lib held).
    Qld 12.9 %
    Vic 10.1 %
    NSW 10.something (it’s getting late for me).

    All these numbers are expected to decrease, but seats where we thought we had no chance are now seen as possibles.

    Also, as an aside and because of the interest rate stuff today there has been some interesting polling and focus groups on that. Basically if you target the group to those most likely to be affected by the interest rate hikes they are far more brutal in their assessment of Howard and cohorts than the general populace seem to be in Newspoll et al. Also what is coming out of it is that economic management at a Macro level they believe the Libs may be better, but when you go micro they think Workchoices is going to screw them personally and that Rudd will actually be better for their hip pocket.

    As for betting, I got ALP at $2.50 in August last year on a hunch that interest rates where going up, Workchoices was going to be as popular conscription with the young, and that Beazley was already having numbers done against him. Best bet of my life at this stage. But I will be honest and admit to having a bet on Howard in Bennelong – but only because he is a value bet for a sitting PM at $1.40 in his own seat.

    Sorry for being a long time lurker and not posting much – but posting from the office is not an option (thank god for 24hr internet cafes these days).

  30. 560 [Government debt i think, there is nothing wrong with debt if you can service it.]

    Brian, depends very much whether debt is used for buying good income producing assets or just pissed up against the wall and wasted. If used for non income producing assets then debt becomes a problem whether or not it can be serviced.

  31. For those who missed it, the segment by Associate Professor Steve Keen from the University of Western Sydney on the 7.30 Report was brilliant.

    {STEVE KEEN, ECONOMICS, UWS: Well, it is going to make what might look like a farily minor increase in the amount of money that has to come out of the household budget that has to pay the new level of average mortgage payments just in term of the interest payments that are made on the mortgages. It’s going to go from 11.4 cents in the household dollar just to pay the interest on mortgages to 11.7. Now that doesn’t look like very much but if you go back and history and take a longer view and, say, what was it like 30 years ago in 1977, it was two cents in the dollar, so we’re talking virtually six times as much. You go back to 1990 which is when we had those of course, astronomically high nominal interest rates was 4.5 cents in the dollar. So even though we’ve go a substantially lower rate of interest now, it’s almost three times as much coming out of the household budget to cover interest payments, and just since the 2004 election, we’ve gone from eight cents in the dollar to now about 11.7. So almost 50 per cent higher again than during the 2004 election.}

    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2084263.htm

  32. Piping Shrike @562, wouldn’t it be fairer to say that Rudd is bordering on overcautious and is thus paying the price of letting the media drift in and out of the trivial?

    If I were Rudd, I’d be a bit scared about making too much of an issue of Mersey. Its essentially only influenced local votes and fussing about it could have national risks.

    I saw Gillard (I think) making the point about dodging AWAs wrt Mersey, but heck, that was Lateline. The mainstream media seem to disinterested in getting to the heart of the issue. And I’m not sure how Rudd can deal with that.

    I think Howard’s appeal as a conviction politician sunk along with his credibility. A death of a thousand cuts, crowned by WorkChoices. So he can’t really do that. His last stand was with the NT intervention and that got drowned out by his own mismanagement.

    And I really don’t know what Rudd can do now that would be a ‘master stroke’ of strategy. Nor do I think Howard has much left. Its the battle of the ads now, and the best that Labor can do is neutralise the scare and try to get back to ‘hwy we’re new and fresh and we really do have different policies’. Somehow. If only the press gave a rats.

  33. Xamiam @554 (apologies for the delay – was trying to register with Centrebet!)

    I’m not saying Labor has its economic argument wrong (they way I wrote it might have misled you). What I’m saying is that Labor’s message will probably pack a bigger punch if it goes for the emotional response (as I’m sure it already knows). It needs its economic argument in order for those times it’s on the ABC, but to cut through to the punters, it should just keep hammering the point that homeowners are paying for Peter Costello’s mistakes. And if the polling indicates that people think Smirkyboy is lazy, then that’s the message – he fell asleep on the job – you’re now paying for his years of inaction

  34. Re housing affordability.

    The cost of tax breaks to housing investors is around 8 times the amount spent on public housing, rent asisstance, etc. Anyone else think there is something wrong here?

  35. I hear what you’re saying Shrike, and love your work, but I personally think the Howard campaign is kinda falling apart – held together now by a media narrative of narrowing and comeback, and alleged ALP gaffes.

    The mersey scheme is dead (agree with you there, needs more focus), ‘go for growth’ has had to be shelved (I mean, seriously … the campaign slogan… gone!), his lieutenants (save Turnbull) are embarassingly, shockingly hopeless against their respective shadows, Abbott’s totally lost his mind, Downer had to be put down etc.

    And above all, Rudd has managed to put together an economic counter-narrative that floats. Thats all he probably needs. Add a nuclear scare still up the sleeve and I cant see that banging the IR drum is bad campaigning. Its an establsihed negative for the government, and I suspect their confusing position (we need wage restraint, and yet magically, higher wages thru Workchoices) isnt to be feared – not likely to gain any more traction than they would have got anyway from assorted nervous nellies as the date drew near.

  36. 570 Midnorthcoast

    Spot on about the commission ghetto’s, defeats the purpose of of social housing. The infrastructure should be spread across all socioeconomic suburbs, the obvious increased expenditure not withstanding.

  37. Lefty, the worst problem for Rudd, is the failure of the media to grasp that his policies really are radically different, where it counts.

  38. The dollar is in free fall and it’s going to have gigantic repercussions.
    All those trillions of dollars floating around the world are not going to be worth the paper they are printed on. Dollars are the second currency in many “third world” countries and their owners in those countries are becoming poorer by the day.
    If this crash continues at this rate for the next two weeks it could just have an effect on our election. The USA is heading for a severe recession, if not depression. The Chinese hold well over a trillion US dollars and they will want to switch those as swiftly as possible but who wants them? Oil will be sold in euros and other currencies.
    We are witnessing the death of the dollar.

  41. From Mark
    [LP tribulations – surviving the great spam attack!
    To members of Larvatus Prodeo
    Mark Bahnisch

    9:31am November 6th
    Reply Hi folks

    We’ve had major problems over the last few days with a spam attack of unprecedented size, which has rendered LP almost unusable due to constant database errors. We’ll be upgrading and moving to a new host over the weekend (at which point we’ll disappear altogether for a few days).

    Basically, the increased traffic we’ve had since the election began (up by about a third on normal) has made us a more attractive target to spammers.

    In the meantime, we’ve found turning comments off keeps the site working as the spammers posting comments is the cause of too many database connections open at once – hence the outages. We’ve picked the new host for greater reliability as well as more bandwidth.

    In the meantime, we’ve set up a backup blog – LP in Exile – where we’ll be crossposting and where comments can be posted:

    http://larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com/

    We’re also appealing for donations to assist with costs involved in the move:

    http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/11/06/blog-issues/

    We’d be very grateful if you could post about this, or disseminate it in other ways to other friends of LP.

    Please bear with us during this time of transition, and we hope we’ll be back all shiny and new next week.

    cheers
    mark]

  42. 588 On the other hand we may be seeing a closer tie between China and Europe. Consequently the UN could come into its own again rather than having the US roam the world playing policeman.

  43. Hi Winston (576), I am open to surveys that show Workchoices has been important and genuinely ask if you know of any let me know. I was looking at the May ACNielsen and the October Newspoll and the focus groups conducted by Fairfax in September that suggest Workchoices is not the major vote-turning issue that everyone says. I agree that it has been a defining issue this election but more because the parties, and their supporters, are comfortable campaigning on an issue that used to define them and on which they were both formed. If IR was the real vote winner for Labor then they would not have replaced the leader most asociated with it with one who is at best lukewarm about the issue.

    In reality I think the IR issue is dead, the unions lost. Keating finished them off and when both parties faced each other in 1998 they were empty shells. GST at least gave Howard the appearance of standing for something. Standing for something unpopular is often better than standing for nothing at all.

    I don’t think the electorate care whether you have been in for one term or four, when they are sick of you they throw you out.

  45. Agree, Mad Cow – and he stands for way more than Latham did, IMHO. All that 3rd way stuff was empty guff when you actually examined it.

    The other problem is the media’s takeup of the ‘me-too’ line – failing to note that Howard’s also been doing it all year (broadband, renewable energy, GP centres in hospitals etc).

    Anyway, media’s influence is much exaggerated. I think we’ve hit the final result about now. It will be 53-47, or close, on the night.

    Rudd just needs a closing statement of add – going back to his inital themes (as Shrike wants) – and I suspect we’ll be seeing all that soon enough. You cant accuse Rudd of being ill-prepared.

  46. Richard Jones @ 588
    And tomorrow a sizable number of Europe’s major corporations – from Alstom, AXA, BNP Paribas, BT, Deutsche Telekom, ENEL, Hannover Re, Repsol-YPF, Siemens, etc, etc, etc, will be reporting their 3Qs, and the expectation is that there’ll be another bloodbath on the European markets…

  47. My 6 year old likes to do the “Where’s Wally” books, and a few comments on this blog and elsewhere got me thinking we should start a game of “Where’s Johnny”

    So, anyone who sees any Liberal candidates office, or literature, without a picture of JWH, can put up that seat in the “Where’s Johnny” competition.

    Let’s see how many seats there are where we can say “Johnny’s not here!”

    Here we go:

    Seat of Oakleigh, where’s Johnny?

    Johnny’s not here!

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