Morgan: 63-37

No FuelWatch effect from Morgan either: indeed, their face-to-face poll conducted last weekend shows Labor’s lead up to 63-37 from 61-39 the previous week. Labor’s primary vote is down slightly from 53 per cent to 52.5 per cent, but the Coalition’s has fallen further – from 34 per cent to 31.5 per cent, their worst result since mid-March.

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.

738 comments on “Morgan: 63-37”

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  1. The voters polled by Morgan are either (a) masochistic, (b) feel sorry for Rudd and his government over their incompetence and vacillation or (c) come from a blood-red ALP seat.

    But I’m probably getting ahead of myself here. This is a Morgan poll after-all.

  2. Don’t like what you see A-C? I’m betting the Newspoll disappointed you too. What a lovely set of numbers.

  3. Laughing my frigging arse off! When will the MSM ever learn, they are so out of touch with the general populace!

  4. A.C. Roy Morgan is a coalition sympathiser so i would say he’s probably skewed his questions to help them as much as possible.
    regardless it’s a good poll for Rudd,even though the shaky world economy would have a lot of people a bit jumpy.

  5. Here’s my kick too. Shananigans & Milne are SO out of step with relevant journalism that they should feed him through a hole in a door. Nice try GIRLS but the Australian public can see past your hysterical bull shit. Why don’t you two go get a job at the BULLETIN.

  6. We can see that Ray Morgan is a coalition sympathiser by his very words “the government needs to wake up.” What kind of talk is that? He reports it as if the government is way behind in the polls and not the opposition.

  7. Gary Morgan says:

    “The latest results from the Morgan Poll show Australian electors are not interested in debates about petrol prices — they are more interested in solutions to Australia’s economic problems.
    “The Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Rating has dropped for the sixth month in a row to a 17 year low of only 90.7. The last time Consumer Confidence in Australia was this low was during the recession that then Prime Minister Paul Keating said “we had to have!”
    “The Rudd Government needs to “wake up” to the economic difficulties facing Australians and avoid repeating those mistakes or we will have a “recession we don’t have to have!.”

    Translation:
    I’m a F’ing idiot who can’t even look at my own dodgy poll and see what it’s telling me, let alone a GDP or balance of trade table. I’m not even smart enough to shut the F up when I’ve got nothing to say.

    A pretty stark example of the skill set difference between collecting data and interpreting it.
    I’m guessing Mr Morgan is mortgaged to the hilt, is hanging on for dear life, and doesn’t like the look of the ANZ interest rate projections/predictions.

  8. Even if Morgan is a little out as they consistently favour Labor by a liitle bit, this is 63-37 with primary vote for Labor almost the same! Perhaps people can see through to the hopelessness and incompetence of the Opposition despite the help of MSM. Perhaps people are p—d off with Nelson AND the media.

    Nice set of numbers to confirm Newspoll and a most satisfying result.

  9. I don’t see why the shaky world economy will hurt Labor. First, this soon into their term it is obvious that the financial risks were created before Rudd and Swan took control, so they can’t be blamed for it. Second it will underpinn the correctness of not being overgenerous in the budget and prefering to fight inflation by saving some money for a rainy day. The rainy day could be next year.

    Last but not least, who would want to have a coalition government and Workchoices, when there is a risk you might lose your job? Thanks to Julie Bishop and her senate cronies only being dragged into voting through the industrial relations changes kicking and screaming, it has exposed that there are a lot of coalition politicians who still believe in the philosophy of Workchoices. That won’t be forgotten for a while, and will damn them during any election held while times are tough.

  10. Maybe by “Honeymoon” they mean Labor’s first decade in office? (Or the coalitions first decade in opposition? They are still adjusting to the role change…)

  11. I don’t think The Australian will be reporting the results of this poll. I remember they reported a Morgan Poll once and guess which party it was tending to favour? I think it may have been not long before the last election. It was certainly last year sometime.

  12. 14 Socrates – agreed. The Libs will be tarnished with Workchoices for sometime to come. They still seem to be defending it. There words will come back to haunt them next election.

  13. “The Rudd Government needs to “wake up” to the economic difficulties facing Australians and avoid repeating those mistakes or we will have a “recession we don’t have to have!.”

    Why does Morgan insist on providing editorialising, commentary? Other pollsters don’t do it, let alone with moralising tone.

    As a known Liberal sympathiser, his interpretations must be open to questions of bias.

    Better to close one’s mouth and be suspected an idiot, than to open it and remove all doubt.

  14. 17 onimod – we all know the poll is silly but we’re comparing it with the last silly poll and there has been no loss of votes for Labor. It’s not the raw figures that’s important here, it’s the comparison to previous polls.

  15. I kept telling friends during the last election campaign that is was lot more than people wanting to get rid of Howard. They actually like PM Rudd and his policies, a lot of which are starting to be implemented.

  16. You’ll be struggling to find any reference to this Morgan poll in any of the MSM this weekend.

    Ominod 17 – 136:12. Scary, huh?

  17. You can tell the pressure is getting to Nelson as he screeches and screams more and more each day in Parliament. The positive for the Liberals is they have plenty of time before the next election to change leaders and get some ideas, preferably not ones as stupid as their 5c petrol excise one.

  18. 20 Gary
    I know, I know, …it’s Friday.

    The silliness I refer to is the previous two weeks of MSM commentary and the LP front bench prancing about as though they’ve achieved something.
    In my sporting existence ,I’d be saying nothing in reply, while pointing to the scoreboard, but if the LP wants to live by, and die by, the polls then so be it.

    It’s the policy, stoopid!!!!!

  19. Morgan demeans his polls by providing this stupid commentary, which appears to be just his opinion, rather than any reflection of qualitative polling.

    I agree with several others that:

    There was more to the last election than getting rid of Howard.

    The Coalition’s support for Workchoices will help Labor if times get harder.

    The whole FuelWatch debate didn’t help the Coalition. I actually think most people understand that cutting excise won’t make much of a difference to petrol prices, and will damage the surplus. The Government has managed to get the message across that a good surplus is a hedge against rising interest rates (though, in fact, the economics of it aren’t that simple).

    The punters like the fact that Rudd is keeping all his promises, irrespective of what the promises are.

    As Onimod points if, if this latest poll is a true reflection of voters’s current state of mind, Labor is every chance to win the Gippsland by-election. And if that happens, fans in Liberal Party offices will be coated with excrement.

  20. Does anyone know how long before the Gippsland by-election and when the decision on Fran Bailey’s seat is? It will be fascinating to compare the Gippsland results to the November election result in the same seat. Whether Labor win Gippsland or not any swing to it in a real election will be hard for the “honeymoon” camp to explain away.

  21. Did anyone see Julie Bishop on Q&A last night? For a while there she seemed OK and then she couldn’t stop herself from reverting to type.

  22. Yeah I’d be very interested to hear what people ‘on the gound’ or in the know are hearing about Gippsland. I’d think it’d be a hard ask to win but would be interested to know if there’s something to suggest otherwise. You would’ve imagined there would’ve been some token Budget measure that would benefit Gippsland thrown in.

  23. LTEP
    I’m actually very glad they didn’t throw in token measures for Gippsland. They still might not win the seat anyway and it would taint Rudd with a distinctly Howardesque look. Besides, I don’t think they need to win Gippsland to do well. Traditionally, by-elections swing against governments (Antony can tell us how much.) so any swing in Labor’s favour compared to November will still be a good result. And it would certainly make Fran Bailey sweat, as her margin is wafer thin.

  24. I think a wafer’s probably too thick to describe Ms Bailey’s margin.

    Yes it’s good that they didn’t throw any measures in specifically for Gippsland. Certainly encouraging after the years of eye-rollingly obvious pork barreling. I expect we’ll see some of that in the future though unfortunately.

  25. That’s because you’re used to the previous Government’s way of operating, LTEP. At least, I like to think this one will be different.

  26. From Tim Dunlop’s site. Very interesting.

    {It was announced today that Mersey Hospital is to be returned to the State Government to run.

    What I found amusing about it though was this quote from the article
    ”From our perspective, this appears to be the end of a very unfortunate use of the people of the north-west for political gain,” he said.

    “There has been too much politics and not enough strategic thinking.”

    by the Tasmanian Opposition spokesperson for health!

    Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, wonder who he had in mind when he said that. }

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23820660-29277,00.html

    http://blogs.news.com.au/news/blogocracy/index.php/news/comments/weekend_talkback44/

  27. Queensland National Vaughan Johnson, showing the sensitive side of his nature.

    {SOCIETY would be better off if pedophiles committed suicide before they abused children, an MP said today.

    Queensland National Vaughan Johnson, who has four young granddaughters, told State Parliament that he had been sickened after 41 Queenslands, including teachers, were arrested on Thursday in one of the nation’s biggest pedophile busts.}

    It also looks as though Commissioner Keelty jumped the gun a bit in making public the raids on the pedophile network. Allowed plenty of time for suspects to destroy hard drives, CD’s etc and make the job of further prosecutions slightly difficult by not having any evidence of criminality found in their possession.

    Yeah. Good one Keelty. Almost as incompetent as the Haneef case or was there a good reason for the announcement in maybe to allow more of his mob to escape the net.

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23819546-2,00.html

  28. What does Gaz mean by this:
    “The Rudd Government needs to “wake up” to the economic difficulties facing Australians and avoid repeating those mistakes or we will have a “recession we don’t have to have!.”
    Shouldn’t he be saying that to the people he polls?

  29. Further to the earlier point about bad economic times helping Labor….

    Don’t forget Keating’s win in 1993. For many reasons, Hewson should have won, but the voters couldn’t stomach his economic policies – a GST, deregulation of IR, big cuts to public sector employment, throwing the unemployed off the dole, etc. The “cure” was worse than the complaint. Hewson could have won the elction simply by getting every unemployed person to vote for him – yet most probably voted for Keating. An Opposition can’t blame the government for worsening economic times, and then promise to belt the victims.
    Workchoices is a prime example of this. There’s no doubt the Coalition wanted to introduce WorkChoices in good economic times (when it wasn’t necessary, but wouldn’t really hurt), so that it could be used as a sledgehammer on the workforce when the economy turned bad and employers found the going tough. It will be a long time before people forget this, particularly as they can remember other Coalition teams like Kennett and Hewson taking the same line.

    If the Coalition started to really show it cared about the mentally ill, the disabled, the unemployed, the poor, it might make some headway. But it’s still going to take a long time to erode the goodwill labor currently has in the electorate.

  30. The word ‘honeymoon’ refers to the sweetness of first love but also its brevity (‘moon’ used to mean ‘month’, so the honey of first love might be sweet for a month; the other possibility is that first love wanes like the moon). Either way, the Ruddster’s honeymoon should have been over by December (or January or February at the latest) but 6 months is getting beyond a honeymoon. Clearly the MSM should invent another word. Another possible derivation for the ‘honey’ part is that newly-weds apparently used to drink mead every day for the first month, possibly for the sake of fertility. Cup of mead, anyone?

    http://blog.oup.com/2008/03/honeymoon/

  31. Only 8 more sitting days until the Fibs no longer have control of the Senate. People assume that Labor need the Greens, FF and Nick X. but don’t forget about the Nats.

    My gut feeling is despite Qld, they will decide to be a single party in opposition Federally.

    Don’t expect them to vote with the Fibs all the time. Truss will not want his legacy to be the death of his party.

  32. Labor would be crazy to not beat the lousy Liberals around the head with SerfChoices for years to come. It is the gift that will keep giving. (Thanks Johnny, ya top chap).

    It will be (well, it should be) be to Labor as “the recession we had to have” is to the Liberals.

    But with one difference: SerfChoices was deliberate and calculated. It was imposed in the full knowledge that people would be hurt. The recession was a global one, hence almost completely beyond the control of Paul Keating and/or his government.

    Better yet, as Antonio said, the worse the economic conditions are/become, the more mileage to be made for Labor by talk of the Liberals doing the same again to people, or even worse, should they be re-elected.

  33. Scorpio 36

    If that is true about Keelty jumping the gun, quite apart from political bias (Haneef etc) wouldn’t it threaten his job simply in terms of his performance as a police officer. After all Haneef was a stuff up too – the DPP said so.On this topic, two questions;
    – was Keelty definitely the person who announced the operation, or a political figure?
    – did other named police figures say it was a stuff up, or was that only the view of journalists and/or unnamed sources?

  34. The Queensland Government says state police are puzzled that their federal counterparts went public yesterday with details of an internet paedophile operation.

    Forty Queenslanders were arrested yesterday, but authorities say inquiries and arrests will continue for another couple of weeks.

    Police Minister Judy Spence says she is sure the Australian Federal Police had their reasons for announcing the operation.

    “I think many Queensland police are puzzled at the decision of the AFP to go public with this case yesterday, but we’re certainly not here to criticise the AFP,” she said.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/06/2267497.htm?section=justin

  35. {- was Keelty definitely the person who announced the operation, or a political figure?}

    Yeah, Keelty was quoted in a number of reports as announcing the bust.

    {did other named police figures say it was a stuff up}

    Yeah, the QLD Police Commissioner was less than impressed. See the article I linked previously.

    {Mr Atkinson denied he was critical of the AFP’s decision yesterday to make public the operation, but he said he did not know why the AFP released the information.

    “I really don’t want to be critical of the federal police – that really would tarnish what was overall a worthwhile activity,” Mr Atkinson said.

    “I hope that the operation hasn’t been compromised.

    “Whenever anything becomes public now there is always that risk (of compromise) … but we hope that won’t happen.” }

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23819546-2,00.html

  36. Gippsland: Labor has promised to go ahead with projects promised by the previous federal government before the election, so they obviously think they’ve got a chance of winning the seat, but I agree it’s a tall order.

  37. There is no conspiracy theory with the AFP and the kid pron stuff. These creeps were in a network – they knew where to find the stuff on a hacked server.

    The fact that so many had been busted would have been known to the rest in minutes.

    Nothing to see here – move on. 🙂

  38. BK Says:
    “Did anyone see Julie Bishop on Q&A last night? ”

    No way, watching horror movies that time of night gives me nightmares!

  39. vera

    I was wondering why my budgie had turned to stone overnight. It can only have been Mesmerelda. Luckily I had an old stone to flesh potion left over from an old Dungeons and Dragons session. 🙂

  40. BK Says:
    “Did anyone see Julie Bishop on Q&A last night? ”

    Oh I didn’t realise *Return of Chuckys granny* was on

    bummer

  41. Much like the newspoll, doesn’t show much change.

    It’s unfortunate that Morgan doesn’t poll for PPM though. We might be able to confirm whether or not the drop in Rudd’s PPM detected in the last Newspoll was real, or just static.

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