Westpoll: 52-48 to Liberal in WA

I am informed via comments that Sky News has reported on a Westpoll survey to be published in tomorrow’s West Australian, showing the Coalition with a 52-48 two-party lead in WA. This compares with 53-47 to Labor’s favour in Westpoll’s last statewide survey on October 6, displaying a volatility which has been fairly typical of the series. The Liberals’ primary vote lead is 47 per cent to 38 per cent. The sample is usually around 400. The Coalition’s two-party vote in WA at the 2004 election was 55.4 per cent, so the latest figure still points to a swing which if uniform would win Labor Stirling and Hasluck. Between the two statewide polls, Westpoll produced a survey from Stirling, Hasluck and Cowan on October 20, each with a sample of 400, which had the Liberals ahead in all three. In other poll news, Lateline tells us that a Galaxy marginal seats poll to be published on Sunday will show Labor with a two-party lead of 53-47, although it’s hard to say what this means exactly until we know which seats were covered.

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.

797 comments on “Westpoll: 52-48 to Liberal in WA”

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  2. I think it’ll probably be a close thing in WA, probably the Coalition slightly above 50% (but not quite 51). I think it’ll be interesting to see how the seats fall and find it interesting to hear talk of Brand being in trouble for Labor. My tips is a no change. Libs to pick up Cowan, Lab to pick up Hasluck.

  3. WA poll swing

    http://www2.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=201136

    The Coalition has had a much needed boost in the latest Westpoll results, which show a major rise in the government’s support in Western Australia.

    The poll, to be published in The West Australian newspaper shows the government gaining 10 points on Labor on a two party preferred basis.

    Westpoll shows the coalition ahead of the ALP 52 per cent to 48 per cent on a two party preferred basis, which is a huge swing from last month when Labor led the coalition 53-47.

    The poll also shows a rise in the Prime Minister’s personal popularity, with Mr Howard winning the preferred Prime Minister vote for the first time since July.

    Mr Howard scored 49 per cent to Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s 41 per cent.

    The Liberals have also gained ground in the primary votes, attracting 47 per cent of the vote, which is up from 43 per cent in October.

    Labor dropped 8 points to 38 per cent of the primary vote.

    The results are not all good for the coalition though, with the poll showing that they stand to lose the seats of Stirling and Hasluck to Labor in the election.

  5. Westpoll, never heard of it? Oh right it’s a WA thing.

    400 people? 1 point and Sky News reports that as a much need boost???

    Pft!

  6. No wonder Strong Arm held onto that poll releasing it in time for the final week.

    I’ll bet it’s a deliberate ploy to elict some sympathy for Howard ?

    That said Hasluck and Stirling are ALP Gains – Midland had a Full page ALP ad on Interest rates.

  7. Talk about being thankful for small mercies.

    Most likely scenario, ALP win 1 seat.

    Second most likely, ALP win 2.

    Why people are talking about Brand I have no idea.

  8. Labor will hold Cowan easily on these CBet figures:

    PRIME, Liz (ALP) 1.31
    SIMPKINS, Luke (LIB) 3.15

    will win Hasluck on these:

    JACKSON, Sharryn (ALP) 1.45
    HENRY, Stuart (LIB) 2.55

    and is not the roughest in Sterling:

    KEENAN, Michael (LIB) 1.60
    TINLEY, Peter (ALP) 2.20

    ALP will win either one or two MHR seats in WA, imho.
    Whaddya reckon, Frank?

  9. EC:

    looks about right, and also the big upset will be Forrest – I reckon Brunning will win and do a Tony windsor, because of his TV profile in the South West via GWN.

  10. Is this the poll they have been sitting on? If so it was taken before the campaign launches and before the AG busted the Coalition for pork barreling.

    Any idea of how they sampled?

  11. [Any idea of how they sampled?]

    They “allegedly” (according to a post on Poll Bludger) tend to ring areas in electorates with a high coalition vote to produce whatever Paul Armstrong wants 🙂

  13. [Is this the poll which was reportedly held back, for a week?]

    Sounds like they went back and polled a few more times until they got the result they wanted…

  16. Speaking of WA Marginal Seats.

    [LABOR desperately needs Peter Heggie’s vote in next week’s election. Heggie lives in Swan, the inner Perth seat that Labor clings to by a margin of 0.1 per cent. Each day, he drives to his newsagency in Hasluck, another marginal electorate that Labor wants to take back and the Liberals hold by a mere 1.9 per cent. Heggie won’t help either party over the line: he plans to vote independent.

    “I think Labor’s lost touch. I believe it’s every man’s right to strike, but I don’t have a problem with workplace agreements. And the Liberals are buying votes by spending too much money, too late, on health, education and roads.”

    Quite why Labor hasn’t clinched Heggie’s vote is puzzling: he’s a former shop steward and boilermaker with a 27-year-old son working on building sites. He commutes between two traditionally working-class suburbs that, like much of Perth, are being landscaped and upgraded in this economic boom time. But this surging affluence may be the main reason Labor has found it harder to win people over in the west.

    “The economy in this state is going so strong I reckon Daffy Duck could run the government,” says Heggie only half-jokingly. “At the moment, people are doing well and they’ll stay with what they know.”

    Heggie’s opinion may reflect West Australian parochialism, but it was voiced often as Inquirer roamed widely in four Perth marginals last week. Another sentiment was that as long as WA and China kept booming, who cared a fig which political party was in power. ]

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22771402-5006789,00.html

  17. Another poll, more misery for the Coalition

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22772731-601,00.html

    “JOHN Howard enters the final week of his last campaign facing defeat as Kevin Rudd and Labor hold their election-winning lead in key marginal seats.

    According to the latest Newspoll survey, covering both parties’ election launches this week, the Coalition has failed to peg back Labor’s lead in the Government’s 18 most marginal seats in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

    On primary votes in the 18 seats, Labor extended its lead in the past two weeks to five points — 47 per cent to the Coalition’s 42per cent — to give the ALP a two-party preferred lead of 54 per cent to 46 per cent.”

    Is this new polling, or is it extrapolating from the last nation-wide Newspoll?

  18. The WestAustralian will say anything if it suits their end game. As Paul Keating once said it is the worst paper in Australia and it has not lost any of that reputation over the years since. It is a blight on our democracy that such a powerful postion is in the hands of Strong Arm and his neo-conservitive hillbillies. The only poll that they won’t celebrate is the real poll next weekend where all will be revealed despite their over estimated influence. News papers as such are dead and this guy should get a real job where he has to earn his money and influence. I lived in WA for ten years and never bought one of their papers but I was always amazed at the headline story when I saw it in the shops. Full on negative Tory crap. If they ran a poll on the consumers approval of their only WA paper then it would never be published. They can keep up the crap all they like, it wakes more people up to their bias than influences how they say they should think.

  19. If this poll is correct, it’s just another compelling reason for me to flee this idiotic and backward state.
    Then again, it is Westpoll.

  20. Frank i remember when our shop steward fessed up to being a liberal party diehard, was only in the job to get his percentage of the union dues collected. Not long after we gave him the arse the company went to electronic banking, the dues came out automatically and the new rep got his percentage for nothing. You could hear the old reps teeth grind across three machine shops. Laugh i nearly shat.

  21. It’s all over!!!!!!! Shaninigans FINALLY ADMITS DEFEAT!!!!!!!

    Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor JOHN Howard enters the final week of his last campaign facing defeat as Kevin Rudd holds his election-winning lead in key marginals.

    Jesus… it only took 12 months!

  23. Hey all,

    I just saw this poll on Sky News and came searching online for confirmation when I came across this site. Great site! so many intelligent people discussing the polls 🙂 Shame I missed it for the bulk of the campaign 🙁

    I’m glad to hear some people (and other threads) confirming what I thought; that Westpoll is about as reliable as a Howard promise.

    Anyway, I’m a Bennelong voter hoping (in vain?) for the day our Sydney suburbs seat shows Howard the door, and ushers in a strong Labor candidate to help form the new government 🙂

    Anyway… great site!

  24. “The economy in this state is going so strong I reckon Daffy Duck could run the government,” says Heggie only half-jokingly. “At the moment, people are doing well and they’ll stay with what they know.”

    If only Heggie could think ahead a little.

  25. [Labor leader Kevin Rudd today clasped hands in a victory handshake with the man he deposed as leader, Kim Beazley, at the campaign launch for Labor’s West Australian candidates.

    Mr Beazley, who will retire at the November 24 election, was in the front row at the launch in the Doubleview Bowling Club in suburban Perth.

    Mr Rudd received a standing ovation from the crowd of Labor faithful, including from a man riding a mobility scooter, as he grasped Mr Beazley by the hand.

    He used his speech to make a series of promises for WA, including 25 brand new child care centres and $350 million for the Perth urban transport freight corridor to Fremantle.]

    http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=47301

  27. [So all’s well in WA land. We’ll have our GST back thankyou very much, ungrateful lot you are.]

    This is a state where people whinge when there is a scheduled rail outage or if trains run late cos of signal failure.

  29. I’m happy with WA delivering it’s quota of an extra 2 seats to ALP.

    As stated lots of volatility in this series. I’d be very suspicious if there wasn’t with the sort of error margins @n=400.

  30. From the Kalgoorlie Miner re Nationals/Greens Senate Preference Deal.

    [The Nationals have played down their preference deal with The Greens, describing them “another minor party”.

    Senate preference deals are crucially important as 95 per cent of voters allow their chosen candidate to direct preferences on their behalf.

    The Nationals have divided their second preferences evenly among the Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Party.

    But they have chosen to give their next set of preferences to the Greens, putting Green candidates in positions 11, 12 and 13 on their ticket.

    The Greens don’t seem to have returned the favour, putting Nationals candidates Tony Crook and Wendy Duncan in positions 30 and 31.]

    http://kalgoorlie.thewest.com.au/Regionals.aspx?MenuID=243&ContentId=46963

  32. Some recommendations from over the water …
    &t=OEgsToPDskJyVX-9G9LkJNZSSsC8-tzK&&rel=1&border=0″ rel=”nofollow”>The Spooky Mens Chorale – Vote The Bastards Out

  33. I can only hope that this is yet another example of the well-known bias of the West Australian. After all, they predicted a landslide victory to Colin Barnett up until the last week of the 2005 WA election. Not to mention several very public quarrels between Armstrong (ed.) and Jim McGuinty (State A-G, ALP) and some kind of generic antipathy between Armstrong and the ALP generally – virtually all of the reporting has focussed on the Burke/Archer link, not the Fels/NCB link on the Lib side of the floor. Seriously, who did the West call? Every address in Peppy Grove?

    And, yes, I am starting to believe that Labor can still get across the line even if they lose Brand AND Swan AND Cowan. It will simply ensure that WA misses out on the benefits of having a friendly government in power at the Federal level.

    Mark #26,

    Sure, you can have your GST revenue back. We’ll take our mining export revenues back, thanks…not to mention our income taxes, both of which subsidise the rest of the Commonwealth.

    madcow #31,

    Please do. Please…. lots of us want to be gone from the Commonwealth.

  34. Actually I was thinking more along the lines of:

    http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/81excised.htm

    Except that we change the phrase to “Australia for voting purposes”.

    Don’t forget too that you guys have a lot of “Eastern Staters” working there now so we should perhaps be more refined and simply deny voting to those who were born in WA.

    Hey, this is why we have a constitution and referendums after all. You know “majority of votes and majority of states” I’m sure it would pass 🙂

    p.s. we don’t mind if you guys keep paying taxes of course 🙂

  35. It has always been on the cards that we could lose a couple of WA seats in my opinion. However the swing to Labor is so strong in the East that it will not really matter anyway. Polls like this are a non-event in the scheme of things, they just serve to raise the Tory spirit a bit so that the crushing becomes even more painful when it happens

  36. madcow #34,

    Well, now the Eastern scheme is revealed! I knew that you ba$tards couldn’t be trusted any more than your wonderful “man of steel” PM. OK, done channeling Lyndon LaRouche for the day. :^)

  37. From ABC online:
    Mr Howard says the Government has lodged its pledges with the Finance Department and all its big commitments are now on the table.

    “We’ve put out a lot policies. I think you can reasonably conclude that there won’t be any further major announcements made, but that doesn’t mean to say there won’t be the odd announcement which has particular value to a local community,” he said.

    Do you mean Regional Partnership announcements, Ratty? LOL

  38. Lateline last night was interesting, Hewson and Cameron were good, they both agreed that this is still a close election, the fact that they were both giving 12 to the ALP highlights the need for 5 more in the 5-7% category. Imagine how unworkable a LNP government with Katter as a number and an incredibly hostile Senate would look. Sorry, don’t imagine, to horrendous, but there is an element of an election within an election here. The leaks coming out of the ALP are saying things like 12-15 locked in, thats not government. If they do win it could still be about 77-85 seats. This is of course reflected in the Betting markets, Hewson mentioned this last night.

  42. Headlines from The Australian:

    Rudd on course for victory
    Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor JOHN Howard enters the final week of his last campaign facing defeat as Kevin Rudd holds his election-winning lead in key marginals.
    REPORT: Unionist drops challenge to expulsion
    GEORGE MEGALOGENIS: Rudd’s youth appeal
    DENNIS SHANAHAN: Coalition clutching straw
    SOL LEBOVIC: Labor commands marginals
    NEWSPOLL: Cumulative results
    SPIN CYCLE: Little fight left in dispirited incumbents

    With friends like that, who needs enemies.

  43. LaborVoter @ 21,

    That’s great news!

    So this just leaves Piers Hackerman, the Liberal trolls (such as Glen) and Labor pessimists (like LTEP) still predicting a from behind Coalition win.

  44. Kiwipundit I repeat yet again that I’m not predicting a come from behind Coalition win. I just acknowledge it’s a possibility. As Shanahan says (I’m quoting him?) there’s the possibility that the polls are wrong, the marginals won’t swing etc. but it doesn’t look likely.

  47. I think this is still a good result for Labor – especially considering how strong the state has been for the Libs in most polls throughout the year.

    Perhaps the total seat count might see Labor with a net gain of one?

    BTW – on the polls are ‘wrong’ theory. Might be the case with one poll now and again – which is always the case hence the old MOE defence. But every poll – for a year?

    Doubt it.

  49. My Hubby and i were joking the other day about Mark Vaile and pork in our electorate. Living as we do in the Bonny Hills/Lake Cathie area, we unfortunately have this man as our rep. Bonny Hills consistently votes higher Labor than Lib/Nats.After the 4oo thousand dollars to Lake Cathie Medical Centre we laughed about what he would try to do about Bonny Hills.As B.H. is a very small town with few options for pork. Mark,or one of his people,came up with 500 thousand for our Surf Club. Is this how one acts in so called safe seat? Or is there more to it? Or is this man just a joke? Sorry about going off topic.

  50. S @ 39, holy toledo, you are right, has Rupert given a directive to be nice to our new PM. It is hard to believe but maybe he wants to curry favour now he has been down to sniff the breeze, or perhaps more accurately, the GALE.

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