Reuters poll trend: 55.3-44.7

Reuters has released a new Poll Trend result, a weighted aggregate of the past week’s Newspoll, Morgan and ACNielsen polls. It shows the first increase in Labor support since the campaign began, to 55.3-44.7 from 55.0-45.0 last week. Both parties are down on the primary vote, Labor from 47.4 per cent to 46.9 per cent and the Coalition from 40.8 per cent to 39.9 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.

760 comments on “Reuters poll trend: 55.3-44.7”

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  1. Julie. I came up with a novel solution for Sky News – I just don’t watch it. I turned off some time ago. They are totally irrelevant to the political landscape. More people would watch the local commercial TV news in Darwin that watch Sky all over Australia. Speers thinks he is a player – he’s not. Their cadre of smug newsreaders could walk down any main street in any Capitol and not a soul would know who they were.

  2. Good on Anna 😉 ……. [from the Streuth Column in Today’s Australian]

    Low-key Flegg flogged

    QUEENSLAND Liberal leader Bruce Flegg copped a shellacking in state parliament yesterday after he was overlooked as master of ceremonies at the Coalition’s official campaign launch in Brisbane on Monday. Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman got the gig as Flegg sat and watched from the audience. John Howard also omitted the Liberal leader from his opening acknowledgments. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh pounced on Flegg’s embarrassing exclusion. “For those of you who watched the launch of the Liberal Party federal campaign yesterday, you will have been as bemused as I was about the Lord Mayor of Brisbane being invited to introduce the Prime Minister, not the state leader of the Liberal Party, who I understand was hidden somewhere in the back row,” Bligh told parliament. “There’s some suggestion that the Prime Minister might have even bought him an overseas plane flight ticket but couldn’t get a seat in time.”

  4. “COALITION MPs are getting depressed and frustrated”

    Thats just GREAT. I hope it hurts 🙂

    We have had to put up with their crap for almost 12 years

  5. Many thanks to all those who provided ‘real-time’ commentary during the broadcast today, as well as on earlier occasions. Since I’m usually well away from a TV during the day it’s great to be able to keep up with what’s happening.

  6. 101 alpal,

    My problem is that I am a news hound. I simply can’t wait for the other stations to come on with their news. If Sky had some left wing competition, I would be much happier. In the US, they have CNN and Fox News. You DON’T watch Fox unless you are a Republican. This market is monopolized in Australia

  8. Did anyone notice that during the after campaign interviews, David Speers mentioned ‘we may come back in the polls’ or something similar to that. How dare a political commentator say ‘we’ when talking about politics… he showed total unprofessionalism… He needs to go along with all other stinking Lib cheerleaders in the media. Particularly the freaks at the Government Gazette.

  10. My guesstimate is that Labor went too far in the “economic conservative credentials” direction. Mr. Rudd could have promised twice that much and still spent under half of Mr. Howard’s big splurge Monday. By going for the high moral economic ground, Mr. Rudd just might have gifted Mr. Howard a free shot at the hip pocket nerves of voters for the last 10 days. So, Team Rudd are showing an amazing blind faith that former “Howard Battler” are savvy enough to understand what the Reserve bank is telling us.

    The most amusing exercise tomorrow will be to read the opinions of all those right-wing media pundits (mostly in News Ltd. media outlets) who have badgered and dared Mr. Rudd to take this low spending route today. Whaddya’ bet most of them will be saying Team Labor had already promised too much before his Launch, so $7 Billion is not nearly enough to make a difference to inflation. In which case, as I’ve suggested, then Mr. Rudd might as well have been hung for half of Mr. Howard’s sheep than a quarter of lamb.

    As for David Speers, he repeatedly brought up Howard’s education $800 for all as though it was a completely new Howard idea rather than a Me-too variation of the Lap-top and books (means-tested) money that Rudd had pledged. Only the Shadow Minister for Education, Stephen Smith, corrected Speers (although that didn’t stop Speers from trying it on afterward).

    Seems a shame that the very presentable, articulate and experienced Mr. Smith has not been given more media responsibilities by Team Rudd (or Senator Faulkner or Jenny Macklin). But why would you want them out front in the media when you can have two “stars” like Mike Kelly and Peter Garrett selling Labor’s policies? Obviously, the Launch’s slick video presentation was created long before Colonel Kelly’s heavy artillery barrage on his Leader’s education policy.

  12. About the poll in the Newcastle Herald!
    Mmmm, .1% moe means polling about 80k of the voters in Paterson!!!
    Even at 1% (a misprint?) they’d have to poll around 8000.
    But these are strange times.

  15. Howard deep in the bunker is toying with the revolver while Costello is looking for the jerry can of petrol so he can burn the body……

    It could have all been so different, retire in 2006, place in liberal party history assured and let Costello take the rap for the defeat in 2007.

    But I’m so glad he stayed so we can give him the size 12 up the backside he so richly deserves. Thanks Johnny!

  17. Julie, Sky does not need left wing competition – just competition. I occasionally watch Hannity and Colmes on Fox and watch CNN regularly. I get most of my US news on the election direct from web site of the candidates and the NY Times and the WAPO. I think Rupert owns 50 per cent of Sky – maybe Fairfax could get into the game and start some competition. However, I understand your reasons for watching.

  19. ACOSS response

    ACOSS welcomed Mr. Rudd’s recognition that a “fair go for all Australians” is an important Australian value.

    ACOSS also welcomed the increased investment in training, with one-third of the extra places going to Australians locked out of the labour market. Jobless people need real and relevant opportunities to improve their skills if they are to get and keep a job.

    Given that so many children from low income and disadvantaged backgrounds lack access to computers and the internet, connecting 9000 schools to broadband and providing access to computers for all students in Years 9-12 will significantly reduce the digital divide.

    ACOSS is looking for all parties to commit to a national plan with targets to assist the more than 1 in 10 Australians living in poverty.

    http://www.acoss.org.au/News.aspx?displayID=99&articleID=3639

  24. 7 has now changed to “Rudd’s attempt to become the education PM” Maybe I should just relax and watch the ritual humiliation of Deal/No Deal

  27. This makes me very sad. I am a Labor voter. Always have been, thought I always would be. I can not stand Kevin Rudd and his troupe of wannabes. I know that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to agree with me, but I will be working against the swing come election night.

  30. I don’t expect that the MSM will be giving fair and reasonable coverage of today’s launch. Most of them have consistently been cheerleading Howard all year, and I seriously doubt a change will happen only 10 days out from election day. But the fact that this bias has been going on all year and yet not reversed the polls just shows that their influence is overrated.

    They are cheerleading the losing side, but hey, I guess Howard’s media laws and massive taxpayer advertising has its pay-offs.

    If Rudd gets in next week, some big changes will have to occur in the MSM. Nobody would blame Rudd for shutting down government access to particular media outlets or for favouring some outlets when it comes to taxpayer advertising, especially after all the various manufactured scandals that concerning Rudd that they whipped up in cooperation with Howard and his ministers.

    The MSM are full of fools. And they seem to think that Australians are fools too.

  33. [This makes me very sad. I am a Labor voter. Always have been, thought I always would be. I can not stand Kevin Rudd and his troupe of wannabes. I know that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to agree with me, but I will be working against the swing come election night.]

    Bahahahahahaha! Behold… the NEW LIBERAL TACTICS!!!

  36. Yeah, it’s hard to know what to make of Paul’s contribution, no reason, no rationale, just he’s sad, he can’t stand kev, and he’ll be working against the swing… BUT he’s a Labor voter… this is one mixed up fella.

  38. No 131

    Can you blame their hostility to Rudd, a man who has a tendency to ring up editors of media outlets and hurl vitriol and abuse in order to stop them from publishing criticism.

  41. Has anyone seen those ads with the Labor rat former hawke minister corbett in it? It stinks of desperation, but I dont like it one bit! Whats ppl’s thoughts on its effectiveness?

  44. Thanks Possum

    I knew it was something like this but defer to the wiser psephologists such as yourself.

    BTW my back of the envelope calculations about how much of a TPP vote the Coalition could get away with goes something like this – I wonder if others would like to comment?

    Statistically speaking the Coalition could actually win with something like less than 25% of the overall 2PP vote. This would be an unfeasible feat obviously and would involve winning all the Tasmanian and NT seats (the ones with less electors) with one vote to spare and 69 others with a similar thin margin and then having noone vote for them in any other seat, including the 2 independent seats.

    Moving forward to some form of reality:

    If we assume that the Coalition never go below say 30% TPP in any seat and that by pork-barrelling and ignoring their core constituency they manage to move all of their safe seats down to a margin of about 10% TPP in their favour. We are left with a range where all seats are between 30% and 60% TPP Coalition.

    For the Coalition to win the median and 76thseat would have to be a TPP in their favour of about 50.1%. This implies that 75 seats would be between the 30-50% range and 75 seats would be between the 50-60% range (here I am ignoring the presence of Independents for simplicity).

    A straight average of these 2 halves gives you 40% and 55% assuming an even distribution (an assumption which I acknowledge is open to statistical critique). Adding these 2 averages together gives us a result of 47.5%.

    Which to me this implies that the Coalition (or Labor for that matter) could still win a Federal Election with 47.5% of the overall 2PP vote although pretty much everything would need to go right for them. This seems to be what most psephologists are implying – I have seen 48% often quoted as a floor. Does anyone think the Coalition could win with less than 48% 2PP – including a situation where 2 Independents held the casting vote?

    What follows on from this argument is that if a party attempts a marginal seat campaign and deliberately seeks to narrow their margin range across the electorate this may well be a good strategy in a close run election but could lead to disaster if there is a massive swing to the opposition as it draws even more seats into play.

  45. Paul Says:
    November 14th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    This makes me very sad. I am a Labor voter. Always have been, thought I always would be. I can not stand Kevin Rudd and his troupe of wannabes. I know that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to agree with me, but I will be working against the swing come election night.

    Look at the date of the letter requesting that you go onto blogs and ring up talk back with this sort of angle, that was last month before the election was called.

    You should read your mail when it arrives.

  46. [There’s only a couple of hundred votes in the ABC Poll so far, so it will help.]

    Hemingway, there has been consistent spamming of online polls by pro-Howard persons (organised or otherwise).

    Given Paul’s appearance here but the absence of some of the cheerleader type posters, it seems there may have been a move from attack-dog forum actions by the (probably Young) Libs to “concern troll” behaviour.

    Certainly a signal of confidence!!!

  47. re. the troll alert @ 128, the training budget seems to have been cut back judging by the very elementary script. Paul, change name, grow up and try something more ‘clever’.
    or email Caroline Overblown, she’s a bit down too…

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