The West Australian has published another small-sample Patterson Market Research-Westpoll survey (401 respondents) to follow on the poll of June 12, which had the federal Coalition with a gaping two-party lead in WA of 62-38. The newer poll paints a much rosier picture for Labor, who are up 8 per cent on the primary vote to 36 per cent and have narrowed the two-party deficit to 54.5-45.5. This would mean a 1.2 per cent swing to the Coalition, which would only threaten Labor in Hasluck and leave them well clear in their other three seats. In contrast to every other poll since the leadership change, this one shows Labor’s gains coming at the expense of the Coalition, who are down seven points on the primary vote to 49 per cent. The Greens are steady on 9 per cent, but the result in the earlier poll did not square with last week’s Newspoll quarterly geographic breakdown which had it at 16 per cent. The Nielsen survey of late last week included a sub-sample of 100 Western Australian voters, which had the Coalition on 50 per cent, Labor on 42 per cent and the Greens on 5 per cent.
UPDATE: Roy Morgan throws a curve ball: a phone poll of 600 respondents conducted between Friday and Monday which has the Coalition leading 51.5-48.5 on two-party, and 45.5 per cent to 38.5 per cent on the primary vote (with the Greens on 9 per cent). It should be stressed that this is a phone poll as distinct from the weekend face-to-face surveys Morgan usually publishes on Fridays, which are the most Labor-leaning in the business. The results of this poll and the one from Friday should thus not be compared, though the Morgan press release does just that. The last Morgan phone poll was conducted May 26-67, and had Labor at 37.5 per cent on primary, the Coalition on 43 per cent and the Greens on 11.5 per cent, with two-party on 50-50. The margin of error on the poll is about 4 per cent. For those confused by this apparently aberrant result, Possum offers the clarification that “exogenous shocks have a large random component to the resultant impulse response function”.
UPDATE 2: Julia Gillard’s atheism having emerged as an issue, I thought I’d crunch some Australian Election Study survey data on church attendance and voting behaviour, as there have been suggestions Labor will suffer the loss of Christian voters attracted by Kevin Rudd. Defining church attenders as those who go at least once a year and everyone else as non-attenders, 2007 was unusual out of elections going back to 1993 for the narrow gap between the Coalition church attender vote and the total Coalition vote – 2.6 per cent, whereas in other years it had ranged from 5.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent. However, the Labor vote was unexceptional: 1.0 per cent lower for church-attenders than the Labor vote overall, in keeping with an overall range from 3.9 per cent lower to 0.3 per cent higher.
[You seem to be willfully disregarding, or are unaware of the previously published Westpoll that only 2 weeks had the TPP at 62% to 38% to the Coalition – it may have escaped your notice, but the ALP replaced their leader last week, and the latest Westpoll shows a large swing back to the ALP.]
Was that poll result ever believable?
[That is no longer the situation, so on all the evidence currently available to us, the Coalition will struggle to even hold the line on their current Parliamentary representation, let alone win enough seats to form a Government.]
For what it’s worth I agree it’s highly unlikely that the Opposition will come close to winning the election. I just don’t agree we can draw conclusions based on a single poll by a questionable polling organisation, based on a small sample of a single state.
triton,
It’s about policy and reform. Power for it’s own sake is pointless. A bit like the Liberals really.
Why vote Liberal Lite when you can get the real thing?
Also, what if the power brokers are wrong?
Let’s see if Scott Morrison is good at anything else, other than playing dog whistle politics, before we annoint him as Abbott’s successor. 😀
[BTW read Possum’s analysis and you’ll see Labor was in an election winnig position before Gillard, so the tosh about ‘collapse in public standing” doesn’t bear scrutiny.]
I have read it, and that’s not what Possum said.
[I’ll get over it when the faction hacks and other self aggrandisers stop bashing Rudd.]
They have stopped. There’s no point in bashing a corpse. The party is now focussed on winning the election, as you should be. You live close to McEwen, a vital seat. Go and do some doorknocking and you’ll find that Labor voters overwhelmingly support the change.
Greensborough Growler
[I’ll get over it when the faction hacks and other self aggrandisers stop bashing Rudd.]
That is not only how you & I feel but many out there in the public. They are doing Gillard no favours by continually trying to paint Rudd as some monsterous ogre who terrified everyone. The public can smell a rat and if they don’t want that odour to linger they better shut up.
Strange isn’t Greensborough
The party whinged about Rudd’s style not being aggressive enough and yet he is someone to be feared.
Yeah right!
Even though WA is Labor’s worst State re: polling.
It was laughable for the Libs to think Labor’s PV was 26%.
Now it is 55-45%. A more apt figure. Which still puts Hasluck into play and the retention of all Lib marginals. If that is what occurs on election day. I will be one happy man.
ltep,
Mumbles gives the Westpoll a “Mickey”
http://mumble.com.au/?p=2706
GG # 81 I don’t actually care what the caucus thought of him personally. It was the public who thought he was an arrogant prig
Psephos,
I agree that Rudd worked his a–e off at Copenhagen. He did a cracking job which is why I was surprised at his demeanour after the event.
But in our domestic policy, we continue to play business as usual. By having the highest emissions per capita and yet make no efforts to reduce them, it sets a poor benchmark for other countries to act.
The ALP have been a one-trick pony on climate change. An ETS or nothing. Now we have the nothing.
Very funny GG 🙂
If you hold your mouse above the Mickey it says ‘If it’s Pattersons, it gets a Mickey!’.
It is interesting watching the degrees to which the various Labor supporters on PB generally either:
1. Support GiIllard and demonise Rudd because they support the party wherever it goes; whatever it does; OR
2. Support Rudd against the backroom Judases who sacked a leader whom they argue could have won the election despite the dreadful primary vote.
The degree of blindness among most of them to the need for leadership and action before the knifing of Rudd astounded me. Here we are on a psephological blog perennially watching polls, and yet so many of the ALP loyalists were able to deny to the end the slide in the poll trend right down into the low 30s for the PV starting after the ETS was dumped. They even continued supporting the ‘clearing the decks’ policy that caused the crisis.
The problem for Rudd was that there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to re-assert himself. He had dumped the ETS and the Henry review (apart from the ill-advised one element which he pushed for the wrong reasons) and there was no obvious way back for Rudd without more backflips. He could not dump the mining tax because he would have appeared even weaker, if that was possible. So what could he have done before the election to claw back primary votes?
So, he is knifed and the party gets a bounce just before election time. All good? Only in the short term. The inherent problem for the party that remains unfixed is the leadership lacuna that Gillard helped to engineer. Those green votes that have flowed back to Labor since her ascension will be watching what happensd with the ETS/carbon price. Brown was offering to support the Garnaut position ($23 ton) today so it could be taken to the election by the government.
It could be very dangerous for Gillard to spurn that ongoing offer in the absence of a lot more than a few relatively ineffectual alternative energy projects. Leadership is still at the base of the problem, and Gillard will need to do enough to prevent the voters shifting their perception of Rudd as a weak leader to the party as a whole. If she does nothing as it now looks (‘first build consensus” is the new euphemism for ‘dump’) she may get through the next election, but what then?
GG:
[It’s about policy and reform. Power for it’s own sake is pointless.]
Labor has many policies, but you must be in power to implement them.
[Also, what if the power brokers are wrong?]
Then Labor will lose, but what if they would have been wrong had they left Rudd in place? You make the best assessment you can and go with that.
Psephos,
Oh, that wasn’t that Labor Graeme Richardson in the Oz today?
I’ve already conceeded that short term it will be a winner provided Gillard gets to the polls quickly and she will probably deliver the hiding the Libs so richly deserve.
However, long term I have doubts. I believe this whole exercise is about churning through the leadership group more quickly than normal process would permit. It could be about accelerating the leadership ambitions of Shorten and Burke.
Always back the horse called Self Interest. You know it’s running
[They are doing Gillard no favours by continually trying to paint Rudd as some monstrous ogre who terrified everyone. The public can smell a rat and if they don’t want that odour to linger they better shut up.]
The public want to know why Rudd was axed, and they’re being told why. By the end of this week that will ancient history and everyone will move on to Gillard v Abbott. So should you.
[The party whinged about Rudd’s style not being aggressive enough and yet he is someone to be feared.]
That’s not why Rudd was axed. He was axed because the great majority of Caucus were sick to the back teeth with him and his staff, and so when his polls fell, he had no friends. Labor is a Caucus party, not a monarchist party, and Rudd never learned that.
So predictable. Now this.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/gillard-backs-partner-tim-mathiesons-job-as-estate-agent-for-firm-with-israel-ties/story-e6freuyi-1225885615313
[Dutton might be bright]
And he might not be bright
Dutton might be out of a job this August.
[Let’s see if Scott Morrison is good at anything else, other than playing dog whistle politics, before we annoint him as Abbott’s successor.]
It’s probably all he has to be good at. Asylum seekers are Abbott’s top priority. Three times I’ve heard him say that the government must do three things; “stop the boats” was first on the list on each occasion. I certainly hope we don’t deserve such a person as prime minister.
[The ALP have been a one-trick pony on climate change. An ETS or nothing. Now we have the nothing.]
Untrue. We are spending billions on renewables. We just insulated a million homes ffs. And that reminds me – not supporting Garrett and surrendering on the HIS was a big negative for Rudd in Caucus. Loyalty goes two ways.
itep @ 100
When the ‘single poll,’ as you call it, lines up with many other published polls, then we can draw some pretty safe conclusions, and if the most recent Westpoll can be deemed credible, why not the one before? Just because the previous result is now different from the most recent one does not make either one any more, or less reliable than the limit of error inherent in sample size.
I would also not say that Patterson Market Research are a ‘questionable polling organisation’ – on what basis do you make that judgement?
Also, a relatively small sample (in this case 400) is still a valid survey size, given that the ‘universe’ of respondents in WA, with a total population of 2.2 million is in fact larger (in the context of, and when compared to the 1,100 to 1,400 sample sizes done for the major national polls) than the national universe with a total national population of 22 million.
‘Small’ is not necessarily equivalent to ‘wrong.’
GG, I’ve said what I have to say to you, and to other Labor people here. I’ll say it one more time: get over it, we have an election to fight.
Psephos,
“Loyalty goes two ways”.
More sanctimonious humbug! Buy yourself a mirror!
jenauthor
If Dutton survives & someone in his close family & friends circle prayed to Mary McKillop, his survival will be her next miracle. Note that his seat was still listed as a Labor gain when ALP polling indicated how dire the polling in marginal was.
When little old GenBlue folk, who probably haven’t voted ALP since Chifley tried to nationalise banks, sit on shopping centre benches or food courts or Sizzlers and trash the sitting Liberal member, s/he’s toast. And Dutton’s electorate is full of Retirement Villages.
Glen
Aside from commentary on her Habsburg looks, what is your/Liberals’ assessment of Kelly O Dwyer’s performance so far (and for that matter, Paul Fletcher’s) as new blood in the party?
Idiom of the day:
[sick to the back teeth with him]
I didn’t think that read right, and it isn’t. I’ve mixed two metaphors. The correct expression is “fed up to the back teeth.” One is fed up to the back teeth WITH someone, or one is sick OF someone.
It is nonsense to suggest Rudd would have lost. Gee how many times would they have dumped Howard?
Even if going into an election they were near 50/50 once they got to the business end of a campaign incumbency meant an increase in margin for Rudd Labor (especially as the Libs lack an attractive alternative) and of course Rudd ran a superior campaign to Howard with far superior performance, against the likes of Abbott Liberals Rudd’s performance would gather in higher numbers.
The transition of Rudd to Gillard is three legged table.
Leg one = Let Rudd has teh bad polls OK
Leg two = Boo! let Rudd be ogre monster super scary to union heavies, seasoned politicians.
Leg three = truth, please hide work of corporates, factions, certain senior ministers in ‘buying’ the replacement of Rudd
After success please note always that Rudd was too tough scary difficult for seasoned politicians, party hacks, union and corporate heavies, and refused to drink tea with them each Sunday. Please rewrite history of he bad and rinse repeat – refer Keating if cant remember.
[More sanctimonious humbug! Buy yourself a mirror!]
Um, I’m not the leader of the party GG. (Just as well for you.)
If you have both the OO and Graeme Richardson singing the same tune you better believe the channel should be changed ASAP.
Will be interesting to see if Gillard Labor has any deals with the murdoch media. It will be evident soon enough given their history since 2006.
[Sloppy predicts Julia will call the election this weekend]
For what it’s worth, I’m tipping the election will be announced on the weekend of 24/25 July, with election day on 28 August.
Anyone else want to have a go?
#125
The issue wasn’t that Rudd would lose the election. Don’t believe a word of that.
And yet Psephos, Abbott’s disapproval rating was higher.
(Referring here to one of your posts defending Rudds axing due to his high disappproval rating).
Basically Rudd was axed because he was an arsehole of the highest order by the sound of it. (I would use the C word in less polite company).
[I would also not say that Patterson Market Research are a ‘questionable polling organisation’ – on what basis do you make that judgement?]
Years of observing their polls? The fact that Mumble puts up Westpoll results along with a picture of Mickey Mouse and the words “If its Pattersons, it gets a Mickey!”?
[Also, a relatively small sample (in this case 400) is still a valid survey size, given that the ‘universe’ of respondents in WA, with a total population of 2.2 million is in fact larger (in the context of, and when compared to the 1,100 to 1,400 sample sizes done for the major national polls) than the national universe with a total national population of 22 million.]
I’m not an expert… but I thought I’d read that the population differential between the national and state samples didn’t make such a difference that the small sample used would make a marked difference?
[‘Small’ is not necessarily equivalent to ‘wrong.’]
Well no… but it can lead you to question the reliability of individual results.
Dee 114
There will be more of that nonsense coming.
Darn 128 – I called an election for 21st August on Gillard’s first evening as PM.
[It is nonsense to suggest Rudd would have lost.]
Well, no it isn’t. Since Possum is the oracle of the day, I’ll quote him again: “As we can see, once we account for the expected variation of the swings and polling uncertainty, the ALP was indeed in very real danger of losing an election were one held over the last three months and the result was compatible with the complete polling aggregates.”
[Gee how many times would they have dumped Howard?]
The Liberal Party is not a Caucus party. Leadership in the ALP is based on the support of Caucus, and Rudd never learned, or even tried to learn, to manage Caucus.
Laocoon
[Aside from commentary on her Habsburg looks, what is your/Liberals’ assessment of Kelly O Dwyer’s performance so far (and for that matter, Paul Fletcher’s) as new blood in the party?]
I am no party hack/insider so I know as much as you. Very little.
Still whilst they may be doing nothing as far as I know I would have both on the shadow front bench after the election as there is so much garbage on ours currently it aint funny.
Fast track Josh Frydenberg and Sarah Henderson (when they are in Parliament) and promote to senior Shadow Cabinet porfolios (Bruce Billson and Michael Keenan).
Of course this would be a good move for us Libs so it wont happen.
[The inherent problem for the party that remains unfixed is the leadership lacuna that Gillard helped to engineer.]
Indeed. So keen were they to knife Rudd at the first poll opportunity they didn’t consider the risk they were taking if Gillard lost, unthinkable consequences. Or if winning she gets stuck with a GFC2 (most probable now) and the party needs a popular alternative in two years. Too late they burnt off one popular and capable PM leaving no circuit breaker. They also assume that the Libs will never get their act together, a dangerous assumption.
If Labor was a factional hack he would be there now with the team singing his praises even if he were Ivan Milat.
It appears to me that there may be some problem with getting enough enthusiastic ALP party members in the campaign who are mightily alienated by the method of Rudd’s removal. This will especially be so because the change had nothing to do with policy renewal, but is merely a personality change to ‘Anybody But Rudd’. That is the sole element the party is relying on to win the election – The Julia Bounce. Rather cynical, and could end up being a dead cat bounce, in the absence of genuine leadership on the key issues.
Psephos, the ALP lost its nerve and dumped a leader because of petty personality clashes.
By the sounds of it, Rudd didn’t have a chance in hell of re-connecting with the public and explaining his poliocies because his MPs were too busy engineering his downfall. Why didn’t the senior members of the cabinet, en masse, march up to Rudd and give him at least a chance to change tack.
Ta Glen.
You have already pencilled in Corangamite? mmmmm
[Sarah Henderson (when they are in Parliament)]
[Of course this would be a good move for us Libs so it wont happen.]
Glen
I honestly feel for you. It must be very difficult to hold your obviously long held views and be represented by this current pack.
The view of their future could, in the near term, be even worse that that of the present.
Psephos
“And that reminds me – not supporting Garrett and surrendering on the HIS was a big negative for Rudd in Caucus. Loyalty goes two ways.”
Yes, and even as an outsider (someone who doesn’t particualrly support Labor, but hopes they do better than the Libs) I thought this was a particularly bizarre thing to do. He seemed completely unable to defend the Government when it was under attack, he seemed to just let them come at him and the Govt. That’s why the opposition gained traction on that and Asylum seekers. Gillard at least put up fight with the BER, so there isn’t a strong narrative that it was a failure – possibly she could do more though.
The labor oldtimers from the Hawke/Keating era all hated Rudd. One comment I heard regularly was that if he went under a tram and Gillard took over noone would remember him in a week.
In office he progressively pissed off everybody – in caucus, the public, the Chinese – it just went on and on.
As a government, they did some good things and stuffed up quite a few. The things they stuffed were invariably down to the poor style of managing – highly centralised, non-consultative, informed by naive politicos who understood only the short term news cycle.
The labor party always thought he was jerk. Getting rid of him was inevitable. The heavies did it because this was the best time. He helped through his ncreasing isolation and paranoia.
The good will be interred with his bones. There will be no come back. As Toohey said on the Insiders ” He is peculiarly unsuited to be a Minister.” Move on.
BTW I’ll be interested to see if Gillard increases support for women in the older half of the GenBlue demographic. Longer lifespans mean that women should dominate it, and many of that demog, who served during WW II in a wide gamut of jobs which, even today, are male-dominated (QE II is a fully qualified truck mechanic; apparently a good one) never forgave governments “thanking” them for their sterling war service with a pat on the head & an expectation that they’d take up/ retire to suburban housewifery and “give the boys their jobs back”.
Liberals’ support for women’s election to council & parliamentary positions won their vote in an era when the ALP was socially conservative RW (Leftie women often preferred the Communist Party). McMahon’s mess and some drift to Whitlam were balanced by Fraser’s endorsement (& passing) of AntiDiscrimination legislation (c1978). Many weren’t happy (often volubly so) about Liberals’ shift to the conservative right & faiure to copy Labor’s successful moves to increase female representation.
But, if Julia wins, I can name quite a few of those ex-servicewomen & “auxiliaries” (all but one Liberal) who’ll be swigging sparkly & behaving as if it’s VP Day all over again.
[It appears to me that there may be some problem with getting enough enthusiastic ALP party members in the campaign who are mightily alienated by the method of Rudd’s removal.]
You obviously know less than nothing about the Labor Party.
*lunchtime*
[Well, no it isn’t. Since Possum is the oracle of the day, I’ll quote him again: “As we can see, once we account for the expected variation of the swings and polling uncertainty, the ALP was indeed in very real danger of losing an election were one held over the last three months and the result was compatible with the complete polling aggregates.”]
…And there was a very real danger of labor winning the next election.
I call bullshit on this Psephos. You guys (the Feeney/Shorten/Arbib crowd) were gagging to nail Rudd but you couldn’t whilst he was riding high in the polls. First opportunity you get, first softening of the polls and bang, he’s gone. As TP suggested Howard wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes if he was axed after similar poll results.
Why cant you guys just admit it – you hated Rudd because he was different, because he wasn’t a true labor man, because he ignored caucus and the factions.
This “the polls were tanking” is just revisionist BS, at worst they were 50/50 and slowly turning around for Rudd. Resolve the RSPT issues, which according to the media Rudd was close to achieving, would have provided another boost for Rudd.
Btw, i have nothing against you personally but as you seem to be the resident “company man” of the coup camp i am thus directing this to you.
[BTW I’ll be interested to see if Gillard increases support for women in the older half of the GenBlue demographic. ]
My mother belongs to that demographic and she thinks Julia is just wonderful. She won’t actually change her vote, but there may well be others who do.
I can’t believe we’re still arguimg the rights and wrongs of Rudd’s downfall. It’s happened. Time to go forward. Either vote for Gillard or Abbott or neither. Each person needs to make up their mind.
Vale “Daffy” Bowers – the great, great SMH press gallery journalist of the 70’s and 80’s (and contemporary of Grattan, Oakes, Kelly). He was a class above those that fill pages today. I pray he rests in peace, and has found his missing socks.
[I can’t believe we’re still arguimg the rights and wrongs of Rudd’s downfall. It’s happened. Time to go forward. Either vote for Gillard or Abbott or neither. Each person needs to make up their mind.]
Some people seem to be suggesting Rudd was bigger than the party. The bitterness is astounding.