Morgan: 56.5-43.5 to Labor

Morgan has published its first face-to-face poll conducted on Julia Gillard’s watch, other recent efforts having been phone polls. This one combines polling conducted over the last two weekends, and it shows Labor’s two-party lead up from 53-47 in the last poll under Rudd to 56.5-43.5. Those of you who have already looked at the Morgan press release might be surprised to learn this, as the headline figure is 55-45. This is because Morgan has apparently decided to switch from the “preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2007 election” measure to “preferences distributed by how electors say they will vote”, and as has been widely noted this is less favourable for Labor. The Morgan headline’s statement that Labor has picked up a 6 per cent swing is based on comparison with last week’s anomalous phone poll result. Interestingly, the poll reports the opening of a huge gender gap, with Labor leading 60.5-39.5 among women and trailing 50.5-49.5 among men. The primary vote has Labor up 4.5 per cent on the last poll under Rudd, with the Coalition down three points to 38 per cent and the Greens down two to 10.5 per cent. Curiously, the sample was only 299 for the first of the two weekends, immediately after the leadership change, which explains the lack of a face-to-face result last week. The more recent weekend’s sample was a more normal 879.

A bit of federal news:

• South Australian Labor Senator Annette Hurley, who had the top position on the Senate ticket for the coming election, has instead announced she will retire. Her Right faction must now decide who will replace her as candidate for one of the two unloseable positions, the other of which is held by Left faction incumbent Anne McEwen. Another incumbent, Dana Wortley of the Left, is expected to remain in third place (UPDATE: I am informed Wortley is now in the Right, which has mostly absorbed the “Duncan Left” sub-faction of which she formed part).

Denis Atkins of the Courier-Mail last week quoted a “senior Queensland LNP campaign official”. Herbert and Petrie in particular are nominated as seats Labor is now likely to win.

• Andrew Wilkie will be making yet another bid for parliament, this time as an independent in Denison. He narrowly failed to win one of the five Denison seats at the March state election, polling 8.4 per cent of the vote.

New South Wales news:

• State Greens upper house MP Sylvia Hale has failed to win her preselection bid for the inner-city seat of Marrickville, which the party is expected to win at the election in March. They have instead nominated the candidate from the 2007 election, Marrickville deputy mayor Fiona Byrne. The NSW Greens have also been struggling with the revelation of Lee Rhiannon, currently in the state upper house and endorsed to run in the Senate at the coming federal election, has used state parliamentary resources on her federal campaign. Bob Brown has called on her to resign her upper house seat sooner rather than later, but she is insisting she will resign when the election is called.

• The Wentworth Courier has published a list of Vaucluse Liberal preselection hopefuls which includes former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Anthony Orkin, together with previously noted “PR professional Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra mayor Andrew Petrie, Woollahra councillor Peter Cavanagh, restaurateur Peter Doyle”.

• The Daily Telegraph reports on nightmarish opinion polling for the NSW Labor government.

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.

1,408 comments on “Morgan: 56.5-43.5 to Labor”

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  1. And Pebbles at 1192, those soldiers who have fought and returned alive, should be honoured and respected, not like the Vietnam situation.

  2. Michelle Rowatt
    Even that is not as straight forward as you seem to think. Apart from the morality, Allied mass terror bombing aimed at destroying whole cities and the mostly women, children and slave labourers who inhabited them by 1945, may or may not have ‘worked’ from a military point of view.
    OTOH, the bombing that targetted Germany’s energy supplies was highly effective. Civilians who were killed as ‘collateral’ in the energy bombing campaign are another moral issue altogether. To be honest, and with the benefit of knowing what happened, if I had to make that decision, I would have said, ‘Do it.’

  3. I can’t criticise Brown for doing what I did during the Vietnam War.

    Did you have the long hair and tie dye shirts? Please say you did… 😉

    Unfortunately I am too young to have protested Vietnam, so I’ll have to leave that one to the history books and the people who were alive and aware at the time for judgment.

  4. [The Federal Opposition says …

    FFS! Not again! Their ABC is still bent over backwards, takes in with one hand, passes out with the other.]

    cuppa

    swmbo noticed the grimace when news is good for labor and smile/smirk when the news is bad

    Their ABC are barely concealing their conceit and duplicitous conduct

  5. Psephos

    The West is indeed faced with a quandry. The problem is that putting Western militaries in muslim lands, rather than being a solution, feeds the problem – thought to be, somewhat vaguely, ‘terrorism’.

    There is a devil’s dilemma here. A negotiated, face-saving loss in Afghanistan, after untold losses of treasure and lives is the alternative in the balance. This is the alternative, not a ‘victory’.

  6. I think we learnt the lesson with vietnam, blame the politicians but never blame the soldiers.

    Absolutely. As the old World War I idiom goes:

    “If we had put King George and the Kaiser into the trenches, the war would have been over in half an hour!”

  7. Pebbles,

    Maybe King George and the Kaiser should have just got together at Christmas and had a good old family barney!

    On the other hand, that might led to war earlier.

  8. whereas the MSM treats the Labor achievement as “meh”

    That’s also because some of them (the older ones) are bitter old Laborites who have a misty eyed view of past Labor governments and think that modern Labor’s achievements don’t hold a candle to the “good ol’ days” of Gough or Hawke/Keating.

    I swear out of control nostalgia is Labor’s worst enemy.

    Interestingly, it’s one of the Coalition’s biggest assets.

  9. Gusface
    We can’t be accused of being conspiratorial theorists on the media bias.
    Coalition strategist weeks ago, said in a piece in the SMH that they were delighted that the media were right behind Tony and savaging the ALP relentlessly. Then you have Dr.Hewson accusing the media of setting itself up as the fourth estate.

  10. [A negotiated, face-saving loss in Afghanistan, after untold losses of treasure and lives is the alternative in the balance. This is the alternative, not a ‘victory’.]

    That’s what everyone said about Iraq three years ago, but the much despised Bush launched his surge, which did indeed create a tolerably stable situation in Iraq and allow the withdrawal of most of the US and allied forces without allowing the Baathists or al-Quaeda into power.

  11. [Coalition strategist weeks ago, said in a piece in the SMH that they were delighted that the media were right behind Tony and savaging the ALP relentlessly. ]

    Can we have a link to this article?

  12. Maybe King George and the Kaiser should have just got together at Christmas and had a good old family barney!

    Maybe that’s what was behind the Christmas truce! 🙂

    Seriously, WWI was a completely pointless exercise. As far as unnecessary wars go, that one takes the cake! Especially exacerbated by the amount of casualties it incurred!

  13. Shame the Dees couldnt have played like today back in 2000 ah well.

    A win is a win and 11th on the ladder aint half bad at all 😀

    Hmmm Gillard is going to be in hot water if she wont name her Ministers lol oh dear if the MSM smell blood on this she’ll have no option but to tell the public.

  14. Did I hear that Julia Gillard wanted to meet Bob Brown but he was too busy?

    It’s possible. He is a busy man. I wouldn’t fault him for being too busy to receive her. However, if he is using his schedule just as a pretense to avoid her, then we have a problem.

  15. [Seriously, WWI was a completely pointless exercise.

    Hear Hear!]

    Disappointing to see you swallowing this piece of left-wing propaganda, Glen. You should know better. And you call yourself a Churchillian!

  16. I simply couldn’t understand why JF felt the need to announce he was departing the ministry. What sense did that make? Tanner easy to understand as he won’t run.

    I say Rudd to defence so that he can examine the department in detail till they hurt like hell.

  17. to quote Adam Carr:

    “The Second Reich, while nowhere near as bad as the Third, was pretty bad and certainly worth fighting to stop.”

    Adam: Why this nostalgia for a Central Powers victory?
    Is it the “lost world” and “guys in feathered hats” factor?

  18. [Hmmm Gillard is going to be in hot water if she wont name her Ministers lol oh dear if the MSM smell blood on this she’ll have no option but to tell the public.]
    As long as Tone tells us all of his crew will stay in their positions I will be happy. That should scare the shite out of people.

  19. Well PB’s I have just acquired a most excellent piece of political memorabilia,
    One Carl Zeiss microscope that belonged to Donald Alastair Cameron, Member for Oxley and health minister in the Menzies cabinet.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Alastair_Cameron

    It was apparently property of a Japanese physician captured in PNG at the end of WW2 and is still in it’s wooden box and in perfect working order.

    Tragic I know but what a score! 🙂

  20. I simply couldn’t understand why JF felt the need to announce he was departing the ministry.

    To make it known that the current cabinet make up is most certainly just a caretaker cabinet, and a real reshuffle will commence after the election.

    Senators have more legislative clout than MHR. One’s political career can still be influential in the Senate, without being a minister. Whereas most MHRs are trying to make their way to the front, or pulling the strings thereof.

  21. [I simply couldn’t understand why JF felt the need to announce he was departing the ministry.]

    Because he is the ultimate Mr Straight Bat, and he thought it was the right thing to do.

  22. [Hmmm Gillard is going to be in hot water if she wont name her Ministers lol oh dear if the MSM smell blood on this she’ll have no option but to tell the public.
    ]

    haven’t heard that one glen ?

    my oh here is delighted re the demons so good to see jimmy looking well

  23. [I simply couldn’t understand why JF felt the need to announce he was departing ]

    may be he is going to France and not Julia.

  24. Couple of things. JG was in Mackay last Sunday and BB in Townsville, he told us JG had asked for a meeting but Bob was due to head oiff somewhere else, …Attack ads starting to pop-up on Channel 7 , bad sepia tone picture of To ny with an accusation of huge slashes (yes, with scalpel) in the health budget and a promise of cuts, with that great bif scalpel of GP Super clinics….quite effective for those in Kath & Kim land.

  25. Whats the opinion re debtes are they on for sure.
    do you know I cannot remember much about them last time i remember abbott
    turning up late.
    And then there was one with Howard and MR. Rudd?

    was there others?

  26. Psephos

    [Coalition strategist weeks ago, said in a piece in the SMH that they were delighted that the media were right behind Tony and savaging the ALP relentlessly. ]
    I have just combed through my favourites & I can’t find it but it definately was in the SMH & it would have been about six, possibly seven weeks ago. It does exist, my OH couldn’t believe his eyes. An admission by a senior Coalition strategist that the media is behind Tony all the way.
    Will keep looking. As soon as I find it I will post the link.

  27. [The not-for profit advocacy organisation GetUp is recruiting thousands of volunteers to inspire one million unenrolled Australians to vote in the federal election.]

    Good luck to them. I hope they do well.

  28. BB in Townsville

    Hope he didn’t bump into our favourite bludger.

    Speaking of which, can you unban him now, William? Pretty please! I miss him. It never got boring here with him around! 😀

  29. Straight bat maybe but I imaging Gillard asked him to stay mum

    Don’t think so. John wouldn’t have done it if he thinks it would’ve hurt Julia, politically.

    It actually served the gov well. The media were too hung up on Faulkner’s announcement, and the innuendo around it, they weren’t trying to dig up dirt against the government, like they normally do on a quiet day.

  30. Pebbles

    Following your logic you’d think Gillard would ask a minister to resign each week between now and when the election is called

  31. Now that Glen has defected and GP has disappeared, we have no Liberals here at all apart from occasional visits from dovif. (Unless Mr Squiggle is an actual Liberal.)

  32. If it wasn’t for Joel Fitzgibbon being a careless dork Faulkner would have slipped into back benchville without any scrutiny, it was always what he intended to do.

  33. Following your logic you’d think Gillard would ask a minister to resign each week between now and when the election is called

    That’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum argument.

    Following your logic, repeating the same singular action, just because of a slightly positive side effect, is how you be successful. You’re not Tony Abbott are you? 😆

  34. Kersebleptes 1248

    I very much say it tongue in cheek. I know if he is reinstated, after just a couple of his posts the novelty will be gone and I will be back to wishing he’d F–k off! 😉

  35. ManundaGreen@1233

    Couple of things. JG was in Mackay last Sunday and BB in Townsville, he told us JG had asked for a meeting but Bob was due to head oiff somewhere else, …Attack ads starting to pop-up on Channel 7 , bad sepia tone picture of To ny with an accusation of huge slashes (yes, with scalpel) in the health budget and a promise of cuts, with that great bif scalpel of GP Super clinics….quite effective for those in Kath & Kim land.

    And here is the ad in question:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCKCTR5YAIk 

  36. The sad thing about Afganistan is if the Americans had focused on it rather than running off to Iraq, One can only ponder how difference the place might look.

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