The keenly awaited monthly Nielsen poll of 1400 respondents has Labor’s two-party lead down just slightly to 56-44 from 57-43 a month ago. Likewise, Labor’s primary vote is down a point to 45 per cent and the Coalition’s is up one to 38 per cent. Kevin Rudd’s approval rating is down three points to 68 per cent and his disapproval is up five to 28 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull’s approval is up two points to 37 per cent, and his disapproval is steady on 53 per cent. Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed marginally from 69-23 to 68-22. Michelle Grattan provides further details on responses to asylum seeker policies:
As the effort to persuade the 78 Sri Lankans on the Oceanic Viking to disembark in Indonesia continues, 47 per cent of Australians disapprove of how the Prime Minister is handling the asylum-seeker issue; 45 per cent approve … Nearly two-thirds of Coalition voters disapproved, compared with one-third of Labor voters and just over half the Greens supporters … just 13 per cent thought the Government’s asylum-seeker policy was too harsh; 37 per cent said it was about right. Only 6 per cent of Coalition voters and 14 per cent of ALP voters said the policies were too hard. Labor voters were more than twice as likely to rate the policies too soft as too harsh. Nearly four in 10 Greens voters said they were too harsh.
UPDATE: The Australian offers results from that follow-up Newspoll we’ve been hearing about, but at this stage at least there are no figures on voting intention. It instead focuses on attitudes to asylum seeker policy, with results that largely echo those of last week’s Essential Research survey: 53 per cent disapprove of the government’s handling of the issue against 31 per cent approve, but only 22 per cent believe the Coalition would do a better job against 21 per cent for Labor. Forty-six per cent believe the government’s response has been too soft against 16 per cent too hard.
UPDATE 2: Essential Research: 59-41, i.e. unchanged on the last few weeks. However, Rudd’s approval ratings have taken a hit. Further questions on interest rates and yet another one on whether the government’s asylum seeker policies are tough, weak or just right.
[Maybe News Ltd got cold feet about releasing the voting intention figures and just decided to release the figures on peoples attitudes towards the Government’s handling of the AS issue!]
and will be faithfully broadcast by their ABC Radio news as at 1am WST (4am in the East).
The Liberals and their media have exhausted every avenue except one, becoming a credible alternative govt with reasonable policy and rational and reasonable opposition.
Sanjeev Kuhendrarajah (alias “Alex”) claims he is not a people smuggler, but does admit to having a string of convictions in Canada for gang-related violence and to being deported from Canada as a result. He now, however, claims to be a reformed person and was just trying to get to Australia to clear things up.
So now we know he was a crook, and was heading for Australia. What we don’t know is whether this undoubtedly talented man (you could say “charismatic rogue”) is actually reformed, and whether it matters to the local wallopers on Xmas Island.
He seems to be someone who gets into trouble a lot, a real rabble rouser. He picked the wrong guy to upset, in Rudd, who I think might not care less what his personal problems are. We cannot be held responsible for every hothead who wants to come here, especially when they occupy a ship, threaten violence, and cause a national political shitstorm. He has to learn his lesson sometime. This might be it.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/finally-the-real-alex-steps-forward/story-e6frg6n6-1225795570337
[The Liberals and their media have exhausted every avenue except one, becoming a credible alternative govt with reasonable policy and rational and reasonable opposition.]
Crikey, TP! If they haven’t been able to do that in Queensland or Victoria in over ten years, you could be waiting some time yet before “that” happens with the Federal Libs and especially with the Nats in revolt! 😉
[Crikey, TP! If they haven’t been able to do that in Queensland or Victoria in over ten years, you could be waiting some time yet before “that” happens with the Federal Libs and especially with the Nats in revolt! ;-)]
Or they’re hoping to “do a Colin”, and accidently” scrape in on the coat tails of an arrogant Govt and leader ala Carpenter 🙂
Bed for me. I’ll leave you West Aussies to it!
Shannahan and Milne will be working furiously trying to make something good out of this for Rupert!
Night all. 😉
Peter Hartcher puts it succinctly:
[And the trend? In contrast to last week’s Newspoll, there are now four polls – today’s Herald poll, two Morgan polls and an Essential Media online poll – all indicating that “Rudd remains a strong lead”.]
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pm-can-save-his-voice-next-time–that-poll-slide-was-a-rough-un-20091108-i3ij.html
That’s a whole omelette over their faces at News. And now, with their reluctance to publish voting figures (inconceiveable they didn’t ask the questions), it looks like they’re hiding from the truth, or at least massaging it with the bad news for Rudd first before they let out the good.
These people have a habit of running campaigns based on inaccuracies (Grech was another) and then running away when they’re caught out. Not a good look.
I dont think people think Rudd too soft on this, they just dont know what the policy is. Rudd should have with his hard but soft mantra also reminding just what those policies are. Rudd is guilty of giving an incomplete message.
[And here’s an interesting theory on which to finish. At least one federal minister thinks Rudd is snookered on the Oceanic Viking not least because as soon as he acts, either by forcing the boat’s sorry cargo on to Indonesian soil or allowing the Sri Lankans into Australia, the Labor caucus will split, much as Turnbull’s party room has on the ETS.
If that were to happen the “one swallow” Newspoll might pre-sage for Labor not the onset of summer but an unseasonal winter of discontent.]
milne should learn grammar and also that pre-sage is when there were no sages,bit like news ltd really.
perhaps he was thinking of presage which means ahead of the times,something news ltd is not.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/one-step-ahead-of-the-polls/story-e6frg75x-1225795552934
Newspoll confirms Age/Nielsen Poll…. Rudd government are soft touches on illegal boatpeople!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/voters-say-rudd-is-doing-a-bad-job-on-asylum-seekers/story-e6frg6n6-1225795580041
Democracy says you should do what a majority of the people want, not do what the most vocal minority of bleeding hearts want you to do.
We really need to have a referendum on this issue and put it to rest for once and for all. As far as i’m concerned the 2001 federal election WAS a mandate on this issue, but clearly for some they still don’t get the message. A national referendum would finally put the issue to rest.
SNIP: See article 2 of comment moderation guidelines – The Management.
“Good example was howie losing his seat, eh TTH.”
Yep I voted for Labor last election. A majority, including myself were dead against Workchoices.
A majority, including myself voted for the coalition back in 2001. We were dead against illegal immigration and people jumping the queue by boat.
Both elections the people got want they want. Let that be a lesson on what happens when you go against what a majority of the voting public want, whether that be a stupid leftwing project or rightwing project.
The bleeding hearts can keep screaming from the hills how the “majority are wrong” but I’ll tell them something… the majority are never wrong, and if you ignore them, condescend them and push your own wacky agenda you will pay at the ballot box.
The majority have no view as to would handle the issue better, and that is a fact.
Yeah, seems they have been locked up in one of Australia’s many prisons in Malaysia and Indonesia.
I reckon we owe them a life now because we sure are not allowed to have them locked up again.
It is disgraceful that pollsters use vulnerable people in this way and they should all hang their heads in shame because the refugee convention is still in the migration act.
Rudd and co. lied to us big time, now the chickens are coming home to roost but not because they have been soft.
Because they have been worse than Howard in many respects while pretending to be decent.
Even now while 300,000 people are in concentration camps in Malaysia that moron Smith is rushing off to “stop asylum seekers” something he has not a skerrick of legal right to do.
They are snivelling, shrivelled little cowards acting like rogue agents from some tin pot dictatorship.
And truth, you are a brainless thug mate, full stop. All of the boat people you claim you didn’t want here are now citizens so you got suckered didn’t you?
Bushfire, he was a child. Many children make mistakes. Get over it and read the whole story. It is pretty sad actually.
And as predicted, Their ABC is spinning Neilson as bad for Rudd.
[Kevin Rudd’s popularity in the polls continues to slide amid the Oceanic Viking saga.
The latest Nielsen poll released today in Fairfax newspapers shows the prime minister’s disapproval rating rose five points to 28 per cent.
His approval rating dipped to 68 per cent from 71 per cent.
But Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has failed to make any inroads, as Labor still boasts a 12-point lead in two-party preferred results.
Labor has dropped 1 per cent to lead 56 to 44.
Mr Turnbull, who is battling to get consensus among his colleagues over the Coalition’s stance on climate change, has seen his approval rating climb two points to 37 per cent.
His disapproval rating was 53 per cent.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/09/2736630.htm
Ah yes our dishonest abc. Spinning it for rupes and the libs per usuaj
I note that a little over 2 years ago in the Newspoll taken immediately before the election:
-Preferred PM was Howard 44…Rudd 47
The current 52:48 Newspoll has Rudd 63 ….Turnbull 19
-Approval of PM Howard was, in Nov 2007, ….. 51 with disapproval ..45
The current newspoll has Rudd PM ….59:32
-Approval of Leader/Opp Rudd in ’07 was 63:26
Currently Turnbull is 32:51.
Its a worry.
[Yep I voted for Labor last election. A majority, including myself were dead against Workchoices. ]
Oh yeah, you’re a real swinging voter. Please. Give it up.
TheTruthHurts @ # 32
“You actually have to fix it and DO something for the problem to go away.”
What is this “something” you want done?
The Government went to the last election with a policy regarding asylum seekers (boat people) that it has now implemented.
Remember that some of the options that were taken to the voters and approved by them at the last election included
1) the abolition of TPV
2) the warehousing asylum seekers all over the Pacific
3) the cessation of detaining people for longs periods of time while their status is being determined.
The Government has also said that it will live up to its legal responsibilities regarding the rescuing of people in trouble at sea.
So what are your “something’s” that must be done or is it just rhetoric without any substance or thought behind it.
Cuppa@34:
[After this, will it continue to be, or does it still deserve to be, held up as the definitive poll, the one which sets the news agenda for the cycle? Seems Newspoll has taken a bigger hit to its credibility than Mr Rudd has taken.]
Cuppa, it’s not like a brand of motor car. The early Ford Falcons used to have the front wheel fold back on itself, Rileys were wont to have one half of the split bonnet suddenly rise in the air as you were tootling along, and the aluminium bodied Singers always cracked at the boot corners.
Polls, given due diligence, are likely to be similar to each other.
All the pollsters hire the best people they can get, and check six ways come Sunday that they have the figures right.
Now and then, a rogue comes along. Newspoll are no doubt very embarrassed about the whole thing, and must have copped heaps from their rivals in the other polls about it.
Next week, it could be some other pollster’s turn to have red faces all round.
Rudd and his Govt are still on numbers that any previous PM or Govt would die for.
With all the dog whistlings that have been going on by the shock jocks & MSM, you have to expect some skin off, otherwise it’s unreal. Rudd is on the way to neutralise this issue, if so, the other side aint got nothing left.
Geez, wathcing the ABC moring show… the way they spun the poll numbers… bloody hell. I switched back to Sunrise to get more intelligent commentary…
Toothfairy, I’m fascinated by your logic.
Towards the end of the last thread, you were saying that climate change was no longer a vote changing issue, because it had gone on too long, people’s attention spans were short, and they were bored with it.
On the other hand, according to you, AS is still as much an issue as it was in 2001.
Ho Hum!
now as i have been saying the Oceanic Viking issue is more about a preception that the was Govement doing nothing rather than the Government doing wrong! therefore i am not surprised by this poll result.
If we look closely at Possum’s trend graph the little black dots move around a fair bit and there is a trend a way from the Govenment but a trend that one would expect while voters come to grips with the ETS debate that is the main political game in town.
As earlier written these poll numbers are impressive and previously Governments would kill to have them.
Fran (of Their ABC), the polls are NOT all over the place. they are very consistent except one rogue Newspoll. Get it?
Waheed Aly was a voice of reason tho, Grog. His summary seemed to make a couple of smiles disappear.
Our early local radio this am was – Rudd is a dictator and caucus will be revolting against him shortly. He’ll be stabbed in the back soon. The polls (!!) show he is falling fast and then it went on to the World Govt. thing.
When a caller said wtte that Mr Howard should keep out of it and not give interviews the shockjock said that it wasn’t Mr Howard’s fault. It was the journalist who chased Mr Howard along the street for a comment. Not a word about the interview with Murdoch press. Strange that.
How disquieting to wake up this morning to the news that Labour was struggling at 56/44 and Rudd was languishing at 68%.
Don, it seems they had TWO rogue polls in a row: the outlandishly high 59er, then the 52.
The odds against two such outliers in succession must be astronomical.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2009/11/09/nielsen-56-44/comment-page-2/#comment-349405
Gawd save me! Tony Abbott has just told Fran Kelly that he knows he has some faults but he’d be a lot worse without religion.
And Joe Hockey starts his run at the leadership tonight with speech about religion. Interesting weeks ahead.
BH @ 81
Do these two have some psychological disorder?
Cuppa@80:
[Don, it seems they had TWO rogue polls in a row: the outlandishly high 59er, then the 52.
The odds against two such outliers in succession must be astronomical.]
Not if they happen. I’m not being facetious.
If you predict, ahead of time, that there will be a 59, then a 52, then the odds of that happening are astronomical.
There’s a big difference.
If you predict that you will cast six dice and they will all come up showing six, the odds against that happening are astronomical, one chance in 46656. Just the same as them coming up as 3 for the first, 2 for the second, 4 for the third, 2 for the fourth, 1 for the fifth, and 5 for the sixth, also a chance of one in 46656.
But if, on a particular throw, they come up that way, then it’s no big deal.
If you predict you are going to throw a six, there is one chance in six of that happening The odds of getting a six the next time are still one in six. If that comes up, the chance of the next one coming up a six is still one chance in six, and so on.
That’s why gambling is usually a tax on the mathematically illiterate – unless the fix is in!
And on the other side of the coin – if outliers are going to occur, then they’re going to go both ways. It would be far more unlikely to consistently have outliers which only went in one direction.
Having two in the same small time frame, however, might mean that there’s something slightly out in your methodology.
bob aside, my impression over the years is that newspoll produces obvious outliers more often than the others do.
zoomster,
Probably because they poll more regularly. The statistics say that 1 in 20 will be outliers.
Wasn’t the Neilsen poll just before the election considered an outlier?
BK – I’ve oftened wondered about Tony Abbott because he seems to enjoy his maliciousness.
Joe, I think is just a big bloke who wants everyone to love him but he’s got a lot of ‘foot and mouth’ disease.
BH
If you want to see Abbott at his malicious best have a look at the Intelligence Squared debate on voluntary euthanasia http://media.smh.com.au/news-video/iq2-debates/we-should-legalise-euthanasia-371389.html?
Thanks BK – have to go out now but will look at that when I get back.
I’ve always thought the church had a huge win when abbott left the priesthood.
Same same with ulhmann.
I’m now erring on the side of outlier, though as I said, 59% 2PP was overcooked, and I suspect the true result was only around 2% off 52%, at 54%.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26323557-5005962,00.html
[KEVIN Rudd has been asked to allow Labor MPs a free parliamentary vote on gay marriage.
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young is hoping her Bill to allow marriage regardless of sex, sexuality and gender will be debated by parliament in the new year.
“I’m calling for the prime minister to … grant his members a conscience vote so we can get a true reflection of how the Australian community is feeling,” she said on ABC television.]
Won’t happen. Rudd Labor’s social and moral conservatism runs deep.
The only reason Rudd is getting poorish numbers on being soft on AS is because the OV is still sitting in Indonesia which is frustrating Australians who think he should fix it somehow. Once that is sorted, it really will be business as usual.
The rampant dog-whistling from the Libs hasn’t worked, possibly because the issue has lost it’s impact, or because it’s hard to dog-whistle from Opposition, or maybe because the SL are not Muslims.
Maybe now Rupes will leave Oz alone and slink back to Old glory where he can really manipulate the media.
I still enjoy Ag’s HOR pendulum 101 to labor. This result should place Winston Smith(1984) aka MT into his own room 101.
Diogs,
Might even agree with you there. The current AS situation has not been resolved. As soon as it is then, normal transmission will be returned.
“Oh yeah, you’re a real swinging voter. Please. Give it up.”
Why is that so hard to believe?
Lots of Australians are not rusted on. In fact those are the ones that change election results.
I compare the latest issue to Workchoices when Crean was leader of the opposition party. A highly unpopular policy, yet one the opposition is unable to take advantage of due to the laclustre leader(in this case Turnbull).
Yet the policy remains unpopular now and into the future and a potential headache for the Labor Party if the opposition gets it’s crap together.
“Remember that some of the options that were taken to the voters and approved by them at the last election included
1) the abolition of TPV
2) the warehousing asylum seekers all over the Pacific
3) the cessation of detaining people for longs periods of time while their status is being determined.”
Rudd said he would “turn back the boats” 1 day before the election.
Has he kept his promise, and how many boats has he turned back now? No one really knew where Labor stood on boatpeople in 2007 and the issue was a dead one as the Libs had already fixed the flood in 2001.
I compare it to a tap. The Labor Government and bleeding hearts saw a tap that wasn’t leaking and said “We need to fix that!”. So they fiddled around with it, and played around with the tap, and then it started leaking… so they player around a bit more and now it’s stuck on full open and Labor don’t know how to fix it. Now they are scratching their heads and blaming everyone but themselves for the broken tap.
[The rampant dog-whistling from the Libs hasn’t worked, possibly because the issue has lost it’s impact, or because it’s hard to dog-whistle from Opposition, or maybe because the SL are not Muslims.]
It’s because the Liberals no longer have a hardline conservative holding the reigns of power saying “we’ll decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. The MT Liberals won’t release any policies until after the election, they’re only prepared to criticise. Australians will respond to the former but not the latter.
Back in Turnbull’s Nixonian HQ…
[UPROAR within the Liberal Party over a YouTube video depicting the federal backbencher Alex Hawke as Adolf Hitler claimed a second staff member’s scalp yesterday as the party’s state president, Nick Campbell, warned of ”decisive disciplinary action” against those responsible.]
blah blah…
[Mr Turnbull added: ”I have made it clear to my staff for many years that they are not to be involved in so-called factional activities within the party.”]
So, a staffer gets fired, not becasue of inappropriate behaviour. No, because involved in “so-called” (concocted?? :-)) factional activities. The spirit of Grech lives on.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/second-liberal-figure-quits-over-hitler-youtube-clip-20091108-i3ju.html
BTW, is anyone keeping a running tally of the % of Rudd’s staff who leaves vs Turnbull”s? At least the former from over-work, than the latter’s inappropriate work.
Zooomster@84:
[And on the other side of the coin – if outliers are going to occur, then they’re going to go both ways. It would be far more unlikely to consistently have outliers which only went in one direction.
Having two in the same small time frame, however, might mean that there’s something slightly out in your methodology.]
It would be just as unlikely to consistently have outliers which cancel each other out – one high, one low, one high, one low and so on. You are, by chance, sometimes going to get outliers in the same direction for two or three in a row.
And it is going to happen, sometimes, that you will get outliers, or rogue polls, in the same small time frame.
Pollsters work their butts off to avoid outliers because of sloppy work, but mathematically they are sure to happen occasionally.
The only way to avoid outliers is to take a census, or in this case run an election.
Milne produces some interesting stuff from Labor’s focus groups. This was one of them:
[Labor’s focus groups have reflected the fact that the global downturn sideswiped Australia rather than hitting it head on. Interestingly then they saw the downturn as driven in large part by media pessimism.]
The Murdoch media and ABC wanted to hang the GFC on Rudd so badly they:
* Mocked him for attending international conferences on the GFC (he should have been back home addressing petrol prices for grannies in Taragos)
* Promoted the idea of inevitable recession. When the figures didn’t show this, they invented new definitions e.g. “technical recession” as in “we technically dodged a recession, but we’re in one anyway.”
* Almost knocked each other out of the way to be gloomier than the last bloke (Stephen Long, this means YOU). Only Alan Cohler publicly recanted his gloom and doom talk.
* Continually talked about what rotten things might be happening next time, whenever good figures came out: the “Big But”
* When it became apparent there was no recession, said we were never going to have one anyway and that the Stimpac was unnecessary and wasteful (the “Y2K Syndrome”)
* They then implicitly contradicted themselves and said that Howard had saved us from the Recession We Never Had, not Rudd.
* Further contradicted themselves by running the line that avoiding recession was the easy part, managing the recovery (The “Rudd Recession” had become “The Recession We Never Had”) would be the biggest “test”.
Ever hopeful, his precious recesiion we did/didn’t have turned to dust, Milne nevertheless goes on to predict misery for Rudd.
[While having your opponents demoralised might be reassuring, for Rudd there is no question that all eyes will be still be on the next set of published polls to see if Newspoll was a rogue result.
…
At least one federal minister thinks Rudd is snookered on the Oceanic Viking not least because as soon as he acts, either by forcing the boat’s sorry cargo on to Indonesian soil or allowing the Sri Lankans into Australia, the Labor caucus will split, much as Turnbull’s party room has on the ETS.
If that were to happen the “one swallow” Newspoll might pre-sage for Labor not the onset of summer but an unseasonal winter of discontent.]
Well, those polls are out, Labor is re-established in their lead, a Labor split as bad as the Coalition split is unlikely and Turnbull has nothing to look forward to except Barnarby Joyce and his bunch of crazies making things impossible for him.
Clearly the honeymoon is over.
GG
Rudd has had the same AS policy for two years now and it hasn’t been an issue. The OV is the only reason it’s blown up.
He should have just taken them to Xmas Island and no-one would have noticed. Still, this makes it harder for the Libs to cry wolf again. Bolt is spewing that the numbers aren’t worse for Rudd on the latest polls, and those are artificially inflated by the OV.
As you say, normal transmission will be resumed soon.