State Newspolls

Newspoll is keeping up the good work in the post-federal election lull with a series of state polls, today following last week’s Victorian and South Australian polls with a survey showing the Coalition taking a narrow lead in Western Australia. The following charts show how Newspoll has tracked the progress of the Bracks/Brumby, Gallop/Carpenter and Rann governments.

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.

265 comments on “State Newspolls”

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  5. This is fascinating for those following the Bhotto assassination for a couple of reasons. One is that the MSM no longer needs reporters on the ground, they just need to watch the blogosphere to work out what people think. Another is the blog sites they mention, and I can recommend Pakistaniat.com as a similar site to this one (they even do the grey and white alternating background for each blog!). I’m glad to say the bloggers in Pakistan are not buying the official cause of death. They also seem less than impressed with Bhutto’s party making her husband and son her succesors.
    http://news.theage.com.au/anger-mistrust-at-bhutto-death-among-pakistans-bloggers/20071231-1jlh.html

  7. WA state poll is in early 2009 (so a year away).
    SA state poll is in March 2010.
    Queensland state poll could be any time, but likely to be about a year from now (they seem to like going to the polls every 2-2.5 years there!).
    Tasmania is about the same time as the SA poll in 2010.
    NSW isn’t until 2011.

    I think the ACT is the next election, in about 10 months from now.

  8. Just a heads-up to anyone affected (and I apologise if this has already had an airing):
    Portlandbet has ceased trading – time to remove those winnings, though I doubt anyone hasn’t already.

  10. Its remarkable the WA Libs have a lead in the 2PP (51/49) yet such a low popularity for its leader (13%). Imagine if they had someone they liked.

  12. Deano: I’m not all that surprised. The WA Labor Party has been doing its absolute best to commit political suicide lately: Burke, daylight savings, the mess they’ve made of education. Any competent Liberal opposition would be trouncing them – hell, any average Liberal opposition would be trouncing them. Alas, the WA Liberals barely have a competent MP in their caucus, so I still can’t see them winning government any time soon.

  13. The state Libs might as well write of SA next time around (although I think Labor will get less than 54% of the vote)

    In Victoria, I think Labor’s support is much softer than some of the polls suggest and if they didn’t have a lazy imbecile as an opposition leader they will probably be competitve in 2010 (although judging by the competence of most of the Vic Libs, they’ll no doubt find a way to screw it up).

    In WA, judging by 6 years of relatively weak state poll results, the Federal ALP’s (comparatively) weak showing in November, Carpenter must be jumping up for joy that he doesn’t have an election to fight within the next 12 months. That’s because he has some time to regain support.

    That being said, I’d put money on WA being the first state to change government in 8 years.

  14. [That being said, I’d put money on WA being the first state to change government in 8 years.]

    Doubt it, One Vote, One Value in the lower house has removed the weighting in the rural seats, plus the fact that the libs and nats won’t be in a coalition and the nats standing candidates against the libs in the country will see the ALP retain Govt.

  15. Be wary of writing SA off for the Libs. Rann has had an absolute shocker of a year, and has been drilled on pretty much every front. You know you are doing poorly when you don’t have the political capital to take on the Adelaide City Council. Yes the state libs are pathetic, but then again so was Federal Labor two years ago.

    The ‘Tiser has delighted in dragging Rann down – tall poppy syndrome at it’s finest? The real test for both parties will be 2008. Hamilton-Smith have finished his honeymoon, Labor will have nothing to gain and everything to lose, and for once Rann will not be able to blame the feds for his problems. How will they all adapt?

    Check the polls this time next year, because if the year is anywhere near as bad as the last, then we are in for an interesting time.

  16. In regard to the next Western Australian election, what an opportunity for any half-decent independent candidates. The voting public would not need a lot of convincing, what with the quality of candidates from the WA Labor and Liberal Parties!

  17. Max 15, you are VERY optimistic about the SA Liberals possibly winning government at the next state election. Hamilton -Smith spent months criticising the tram extension and yet everyone knows that it was the last Liberal Government that closed the Hawthorn and Millswood railway stations to save 3 minutes on the timetable!!!!!( The Hawthorn Station being in the electorate of Waite). The guy has NO credibilty whatsoever. The Liberal Party here has not ventured into the 21st century, just old establishment names and fundamentalist loony candidates! Also, the Green vote is strengthening bit by bit and the FF vote is collapsing, so there go the preferences!

  18. Hmmm, 1v1v in WA actually makes a Lib state Govt (without the Nats) more possible. The Lib support is more confined to urban/regional centres, so the non-metro support for the Libs was always diluted by the Nats vote. With the new boundaries the main Lib support in Perth will be maximised and if you look carefully at the Fed ALP result for WA the northern suburbs vote for the Libs will eat away from the ALP majority, so I think a narrow Coalition victory is a potential, but the Libs will be looking long term to see an end to the state Nats and to govern in their own right.

  20. Frank Calabrese,

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but given the fact that WA Labor won with a relatively small majority (by state standards) last time around, if the non-Labor parties won over 50-51 % of the vote then the ALP would lose its majority. That doesn’t seem like such a big task.

  22. A-C, you haven’t reckoned on the one-vote one-value redistribution, which you can read about in very great detail here. It means the uniform swing required by the Coalition is 4.0 per cent, which would give them 51.7 per cent.

  23. Brenton,

    Not really, I’m of the opinion Rann will win although perhaps might have to rely on independents again. I don’t think there’s much doubt that they will suffer a swing, the question is how much of a swing it is.

    But consider this:

    – Public transport stories are only going to get worse
    – The drought is scaring the bajeezes out of everyone
    – HS looks to be the first Lib leader in years who is mildly competent. Yes he has wasted a lot of time this year, but to be fair there isn’t much impact any opposition can have 2.5 years from an election.
    – No Liberal federal government to blame
    – General unease about the new hospital, although in typical Adelaide style people are more concerned about the bloody name of it.
    – Running for a third term now with a leader who has been in charge of the party for 13 years (15 by 2010 by my reckoning)
    – And all this on top of the daft pledge to abolish or reform the upper house at the same time of the election, something which people haven’t fully comprehended yet.

    Anyway, 2010 will be a cracker of a year all over the country, hopefully SA will be a part of it all.

  24. Max 23 , thankyou for your response, I found it thoughtful and interesting. NO Labor or Liberal Party will be able to deal with issues of public transport and drought (global warming etc) A REVOLUTION is needed and the old parties are too frightened to make the necessary changes that will address the HUGE ENVIRONMENTAL and SOCIAL emergencies now and ahead of us. The Murray -Darling River IS a national emergency, but we spend billions on IRAQ and other wasteful enterprises!!!!! Last week there was the sad announcement to raise $150,000 to save 2 fish species that almost have nowhere to swim in our River Murray system in South Australia !!!!! Governments are failing our citizens and our environment!

  25. how often are they doing these newspolls when is the next? With SA and WA they are the comparatley younger labor government and might be able to scrape in another term each. If the W.A government scrapes back in i would assume Tassie would be the first to fall. Partly due to the fact that the Alp will not recieve the bulk of prefferences as they win seats because of PR voting. And the condition the libs are in federally and at state level they would be very willing to give in to green demands to get their hands back on power. Remembering Tasmanian labor only has a 2 seat majority. The Tasmanian newspoll should be very fascinating. They are also an older Alp government that is camporatley bad to other states.(maybe even New South Wales).

  27. I agree Max, state Labor seem to have lost the plot lately on a number of issues.

    Not only has public transport become a joke, they’re making it positively dangerous. Most of the buses from/to Mt Barker in peak periods are now packed solid with standing passengers because the government won’t pay for extra buses. God help those on the first one that crashes at 100K on the SE Freeway!

    They’ve also made a pig’s breakfast out of water. We have one of the world’s leading experts on storm water aquifer recharging living here but instead of using his expertise to help solve our water woes they’ve taken the easy, but expensive, desal option which will exacerbate the probable root cause of the lack of water, global warming. According to the expert we could reclaim at least as much water as the plant will produce for a fraction of its cost and with minimal ongoing expenses.

    Then there is the outright theft being planned over the new hospital. Seems we start paying extra taxes for it next year – 2008 – even though its likely to be built as a public/private partnership that won’t actually cost the state anything until after 2011/12. So what are the $1 billion+ in extra taxes for?

    Then there’s my personal gripe, the shemozzle over the increase in payments for solar generated electricity. They promised payments of 44 cents per KW many months ago and despite the legislation being passed by the parliament it still hasn’t come into effect. However, the ‘sunset’ date hasn’t been adjusted, so it appears that the promised 5 year payback will in fact be 4 years 6 months at best, and this assumes they do something this week. To make it even more interesting, ETSA is now taking months instead of days to install the new meters that are required.

    However, there is a better than even money chance that the Libs will stuff it up before the next election. The rumoured move of Lord Downer of Mayo to the state sphere being one possibility.

  28. 5
    Diogenes

    From the general tenure of that Pakistani blog there’s hardly anyone who thinks the PPP should just be bequeathed to Bhutto’s son with hubby riding shotgun. As one article I read yesterday put it succinctly, they more resemble the Borgias than any other political dynasty.

    It’s a pity that Pakistan has such a corrupt and venal military, as there is no chance for any kind of real democracy to flourish, and the more Washington backs the ‘security’ of Musharraf’s military men, the less stable the place becomes.

    Benazir was driven to try and get the better of the military, and turned off her past support for the Taliban to curry favour with Washington, who were desperate to get her placed as a secular figure head. Yet again, Washington meddled well beyond its competency and virtually condemned Bhutto to a violent end. Bhutto could only ever have been a fig-leaf for Washington, as real power has always resided in one place in Pakistan’s history, but they preferred that to openly backing Musharraf’s never ending dictatorship for any longer.

    When the General sacked the judiciary I really thought the game was up and Bush’s people would have to drop him like a hot potato, but no, they just plowed ahead with their ‘marriage of convenience’ idea, despite it being pretty clear that the General was not for marrying.

    Another dead Pakistani politician, another hideously violent crime, and another page turned in the never ending saga of blood and greed that flows across this part of the sub continent.

  31. Happy New Year Bludgers!
    did my big appreciation blurb on previous thread, so suffice to say that it has been great having this site during the election and (apart from the cricket, which I hate almost as much as John Winston himself), it is great still blogging along.
    Enjoy the evening knowing that the old regime is dead and buried and 2008 can only be better than the past 11 dire years.
    Best wishes to you all – (even you, Glen.)

  32. Omodei will have real trouble getting elected to a seat in 2009, following the 1v1v changes. The Libs have their leaders in country seats, which makes their focus necessarily more parochial, and less appealing to the city folk. Buswell looks and sounds OK on TV, but what the Libs need is POLICIES. They have to wake up and smell the CO2 and think really hard about how relevant their core beliefs are going to be when their coastal developments are sliding into the Indian Ocean.

  33. Neutrally, Rann could lose in 2010 because of the issues mentioned.

    If you are in a state government, you have to get public transport right, especially in the time of high petrol prices. Building a useless tram where there are buses that go down there, having no public transport system say from West Lakes-City and none whatever so ever from the non Noarlunga parts of the South, that alone is a recipe for disaster. I am potentially going to Flinders Uni to study in the new year, and to travel to there on most routes is a 40-kilometre round trip through unrelated parts of town. (Those who live in Adelaide would know what i meant.)

  34. I know this is a specifically Australian site, William, but is there any chance that we could have a US presidential primaries thread?

  35. Ah yes, the vagaries of the Adelaide public transport system. I haven’t been there since the 90s but back then it did seem strange that every bus route had TWO numbers -one travelling one way and one the other. The trains were falling to pieces, ancient diesel rattlers. Have they electrified their metro railway system yet?

    Public transport has always been a big winner for Labor in the West. Labor reopened the line to Fremantle which the (finally!) late Charlie Court had closed; Carmen Lawrence oversaw the construction of a new northern railway route and the electrification of the whole metro passenger system; now Allanah McTiernan has finally delivered the southern line all the way to Mandurah, which is one of the country’s fastest-growing regional cities.

    Actually, public transport development wasn’t a winner for Carmen, but Labor has ‘owned’ the issue for decades.

  38. [36 The Mandurah Line opened last week, goes uber-fast too 130km/h.]

    Plus travel on Day one was completely free systemwide as well 🙂

  39. Happy New Year Bludgers, although I won’t be seeing it until some hours after most of you, due to the earth being round and all that.

    I agree that the state Liberal parties all look pretty hopeless right now, but as someone noted above, that can change rapidly. If the voters decide they want to chuck one or all of the state Labor governments, they will do so. I disagree with whoever said Ted Baillieu is a moron. He is IMHO the best of the state Lib leaders, and now that Costello has gone he might be allowed to take on Labor without being white-anted by his own party all the time. Maybe.

    It is interesting to look at the dynamics of the last four federal changes of government (1975, 1983, 1996, 2007). In each case a failing government was surviving because the opposition was seen to be even worse. But when the failed opposition leader (Snedden, Hayden, Downer, Beazley) was dropped in favour of someone the voters decided was competent and “safe.” (Fraser, Hawke, Howard, Rudd), the polls turned almost at once, and nothing the incumbent government could so was able to turn them back. This is the scenario that might pose a threat to the state Labor governments. Certainly in NSW, WA and Tas they ought on their records to be vulnerable. The trick for the Libs is of course to find acceptable leaders. NSW and Vic may have done so. I don’t know much about the SA guy. Qld, WA and Tas are still pretty hopeless.

  40. Adam, I don’t think Baillieu is a moron, but if he’s the best of the state Lib leaders god help the libs (and why should she?). He’s a hooray-Henry who will always struggle to engage with ordinary punters, AND he is surrounded by a dearth of talent in the Liberal ranks, AND the odious Croger is still around causing trouble, meddling, whispering with the Costello-forces…. I don’t like his chances.

  42. Adam @ 139 [ now that Costello has gone] I’m still not convinced he is really leaving and won’t be until he resigns and cashes the first humungous super cheque.

  43. Next year we will be all Labor in 08.

    “WE ARE UNIONISTS, WE’RE GONNA GET YOU”

    Sorry. Typing under the influence. After 7 XXXX’s

  44. Adam, are you a Victorian? You must be kidding re Baillieu. He maybe the best of a bad bunch in Victoria but he is a hopeless media performer. Brumby will win the next election I believe and Big Ted will give it way.

  47. Gary, I think you’re right. I predict that Big Ted will go to the election, lose to Brumby, and bow out. He’s a rich boy and doesn’t have much desire to be a politician (as I read him).

  48. Back to WA for a moment – while Ozymandias is right about the WA Libs sticking with country leaders, this doesn’t mean they can’t win. While it is a uniform 4% needed to win, I can see a nasty swing in the northern suburbs taking out a few seats with the rest picked up on more moderate swings in places like Riverton, the now-expanded Albany, maybe even Fred Reibling, if Mining & Pastoral swing even with the new boundaries.

    However, I personally think they face an uphill battle with too many of their MP’s still fighting old battles. I note the Nats have stayed afloat and even moved ahead a bit (noting how they came close to putting even old Tuckey under pressure!) under Grylls, so maybe the key for the Libs will be to modernise their policy book! I remember hearing about Peter Foss between election and finally retiring, freed from Cabinet & party room restrictions suddenly getting a conscience and making a few really good points about policy (especially in relation to indigenous issues). Pity the rest can’t get some of that too…

  49. Happy New Year to all Bludgers; yes, while you are all debauching yourselves as the midnight hour approaches, I’m stuck here working night shift. At least I’ll get holiday penalty loading after midnight, and thanks to the change of government, that isn’t going to be threatened anytime soon! Oh yeah, and thank God for action on global warming, apology to indigenous people, reviewing the Super Hornet contract, rhubarb, rhubarb, …

    Thanks to William for his treasure trove of electoral knowledge, and MOST posters for an entertaining and informative year. I wouldn’t say that you have psephology sexy, but time and time again this blog has been an antidote to the palpitations that accompanied every negative headline or press beat-up. I hope I was able to contribute in my modest, spasmodic way.

    I also hope more people discover forums like this over the coming years, causing further conniptions to the pompous blowhards of the MSM. Not necessarily a clearer path to the Truth, but at least greater enlightenment beckons.

  50. Happy New Year to all those Poll Bludger’s with daylight saving and the same to all those yet to see one minute past midnight.

    Still lurking and reading all your posts.

    And a special “Happy New Year” to you William who provide so many of us with an outlet for our collective political expression. Well done!

    2008 is going to be an interesting year and I think Kevin 07/08 is going to give the Libs one hell of a big headache, especially the State Branches if he gets a sound working consensus going with the Labor Premiers and turns around some of the problems caused by a lack of Federal funding under Howard.

    Some of these State polling figures could start turning southwards for the Libs.

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