Nielsen: 52-48 to Coalition

Courtesy of the always reliable GhostWhoVotes, we are informed of a bombshell Nielsen poll which puts the Coalition at an election-winning 52-48 lead, from primary votes of 45 per cent for the Coalition, 36 per cent for Labor and 12 per cent for the Greens. More to follow.

UPDATE: Michelle Grattan reports “the gender gap on voting intention has disappeared, with primary and two-party-preferred votes now little different” – which frankly doesn’t seem likely. Julia Gillard’s approval rating is down five points to 51 per cent and her disapproval up six to 39 per cent, while Tony Abbott is up six points on approval to 49 per cent and disapproval down six to 45 per cent. Gillard’s lead on preferred prime minister has narrowed from 55-34 to 49-41. The poll was conducted from Tuesday to Thursday from a sample of 1356.

UPDATE 2: Possum has full demographic tables here. Not that it should offer Labor too much comfort, but the size of their slump among women (58-42 to 49-51) and in NSW (59-41 to 42-58) looks overcooked.

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.

2,047 comments on “Nielsen: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  1. One of the reasons I’m so hostile to this notion that the media should just publish everything and let god sort it out is that I think what passed for normal journalistic practice in days gone by no longer applies – and in particular that journalists did run a fairly strict public interest ruler over their stories before publishing that no longer applies.

    As an example – Bob Hawke. Journalists were aware of his various affairs while he was PM but didn’t report them as they were not considered to be in the public interest. I honestly don’t think that would be true anymore, and the whole notion that ‘if we don’t publish someone else will’ that prevails now means another Bob Hawke would be cut down by the media today.

    If our genuine leaders of yesteryear would no longer be able to survive in the political/media world of today, what hope do we have of getting real leaders now?

  2. The only evidence I can think of It’s Time, is the relative strength of One Nation in Queensland. But then they also had members in NSW and WA.

  3. TSOP

    [Kate Ellis
    Amanda Rishworth
    Nick Champion
    Steve Georganis
    Penny Wong…

    …just to name a few of SA’s great Federal Laborites…]

    But no room for such luminaries as The Godfather Don Farrell. Tsk tsk. You must be in the left or you will need to bow to the Don on bended knees and kiss his ring.

  4. Gus – obviously not mate, because Labor is winning all 3 of those issues at the moment and are battling to get their message out.

  5. [ltep

    to take a gamble on someone new. Whether the gamble pays off is anyone’s guess.]

    As much as the rusted on like to pretend otherwise, this time around it is simple a case of, he didn’t like the factions and the factions didn’t like him. Now the factions have a big problem, they can’t turn him into Latham mark2 without pissing off a lot of voters.

  6. [No, it is more amazing than that.. I.. I.. can’t believe it.. Christopher Pyne has given birth to a litter of six!]

    Pyne now has four children. I think he’s trying to prove a point. He’ll go on having them until you people stop spreading nasty rumours about him.

  7. [But no room for such luminaries as The Godfather Don Farrell. Tsk tsk. You must be in the left or you will need to bow to the Don on bended knees and kiss his ring.]

    Don is apparently not that bad of a man once you get to know him. I have never met him myself.

    I amend the list to include SA’s “boss”, Don Farrell 🙂

  8. Gusface,

    [Scorps
    back in 2007 you were,at times, a rallying point

    kev’s knifing hurt for sure
    but allowing abbott to get in would be tantamount to surrender
    you are better than that
    you know it and so do I
    to the barricades mon ami ]

    It probably wasn’t such a good idea to skip over my posts as I have “never” said I intend to vote for the dark side. I never have even in Local Government elections and never even for the Greens.

    I expressed displeasure at Rudd’s demise as did a lot of other people who still are. I haven’t made any personal comments in this regard since about the second day after, but certainly relayed opinions of voters in the three Labor seats and Hinkler which are in my immediate vicinity.

    Those concerns have been supported by quite a number of media pieces, so aren’t just something I personally made up or had any agenda in propagating.

    Maybe you should read me a bit more carefully and get a pleasant surprise! Frank, who was my harshest critic early has no problem having discussion with me here or on Facebook, so I can’t be all bad.

    Even Psephos isn’t quite as critical of me at the moment but would probably not need much of an excuse to be so, as Centre’s comment showed! 😉

  9. Drake

    Yeah, some cogent points there and the same kind of argument you’d hear from a rusted on Lib supporter (which I am not).

    Libs drone on about ‘the Pink Batts’ (which they should drop in QLD because we didn’t get them up here.. what we got was poorly installed FOIL which killed people). However, I have the greatest respect for Peter Garrett and thought he was treated appallingly. Kev waited 10 days to rescue him in the media. Calling him a first class minister in Parliament and then giving him the skewer. Poor form.

    The BER is of FAR more concern. Firstly, the waste was endemic, secondly, avoidable, finally dismissed as ‘an opportunity to learn from’ (comment from PM herself). This is expensive ministerial training in anyone’s language. It also did not help a key line of Labor about funding private schools. Her program showed that direct investment into independent (particularly independent, low-fee private education) yielded over 500% more efficient delivery of building programs. It’s a great argument to keep supporting choice, which gives the Libs a leg up!

    No, I think one would need to be fairly rosy to paint this as a competent, let alone a ‘good’ government, unless ‘good’ as used in educational terms could be warranted as a C grade, which is what I and many Australians would have to give it.

  10. Am I correct that the state by state breakdowns for Nielsen today had Labor ahead in VIC and tied in QLD?
    So, how do they come up with 52-48 for the Libs?
    Is NSW a complete shocker for the ALP?

  11. Jackol@1794

    Ummm, JV, are you disputing that there is a recognised ‘public interest’ in cabinet confidentiality as a concept?

    My point as stated was that unless there is a moral or legal reason not to publish then of course it can be published. Conventions of cabinet solidarity are an issue for the leaker, not the journalist, unless there is some moral legal reason within the material leaked that dictates non- publication. The presumption should always be for publication. We don’t do censorship here. Ergo, Oakes and Hartcher are free to publish what they have.
    ————————-
    Psephos

    Wog-baiting? You have had a long day in the field.

  12. I’m not rusted on fredn. I don’t even vote for Labor (well I voted for Mike Kelly in 2007). Unfortunately for Rudd, Labor is a factional party. He knew he needed to curry favour with certain people which explains why he promoted Mark Arbib so quickly, placed Don Farrell into a Whips role etc.

  13. [Is NSW a complete shocker for the ALP?]

    It was, but it was probably at least a little overcooked. It went from 59/41 to the ALP last week to 58/42 to the Coalition this week. The small samples make the individual results meaningless though.

  14. To Speak of Pebbles: I rather like Shorten too, his committment to the disabled is very admirable.
    But I have little time for Bitar, Arbib and Farrell………and Swan is way down my hit parade too.

  15. Scorps

    well than get out there and kick butt

    FFS

    I have travelled at my own expense twice to truthy town to help the cause

    albeit surreptiously

    DO YOU WANT ABBOTT OR NOT

    if no

    GET WITH THE PROGRAM

    STAT!

  16. JV cabinet confidentiality is a public interest convention that applies as much to journalists as it does to those in cabinet who might leak. It benefits us all for our decision makers to be able to deliberate without a potential media/PR circus.

    Therefore there -is- a moral issue. That’s what we’ve been talking about. Do keep up.

  17. Mick, are you one of those ‘the stimulus didn’t create a single job’ people? You don’t find the fact that without the BER and other stimulus measures unemployment in the building and construction industry would reached 15% to be important at all?

  18. Good example of the benefits of the BER: the new trades training centre at a school in the Bennelong electorate, where my mother teaches. 🙂

  19. BER: 24,000 projects, 240 complaints.

    My experience of the private sector is that this would generally be highly successful.

    Never has so much unsubstantiated bullshit been generated by so many about so little.

  20. What people like Mick and the Liberals try and do, gloryconsequence, is to tell you that protecting your mates’ job was a waste of money. Labor doesn’t believe this to be the case you can be assured.

  21. It’s time

    Overcharging for buildings contracted throughout NSW was endemic, in the sense that it was a product of working through the established system. You could show this with a simple t-test that the pricing models in state and private contracts across the state are drawn from two different populations. This is not to say that all contracts were so, or even that as many as half of them were over-priced, but it is fair to say that building for building, those built for the NSW state government schools were significantly more expensive.

    What we are seeing in QLD, it should be said, is nothing like the blow-outs and rip offs from NSW but a clear difference with Independent Low-Fee schools, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Lutheran schools. Such schools get 6-7 times the floor area for similar buildings constructed in NSW.

    This was Julia’s own portfolio. It speaks to trust with the public purse to the average punter and rings like a gong, whether you like it or not.

  22. There we go again.

    The ‘simple t-test’ depends on an assumptions about the outputs being comparable.

    The standards for the public and private schools were different.

    That said, the majority of the complaints came from NSW.

  23. [pseph

    the council has decided to award you the robes of jedi master

    may the force be you

    max respect]

    Bah! Something something something dark side. Something something something complete!

  24. Centrebet odds for Bennelong:
    Maxine 1.34
    John Alexander 3.00

    🙂

    I told ya, Alexander won’t appeal to the Chinese & Koreans in the electorate.

  25. I’m sure people have ad jobs saved from the BER and other stimulus packages! My query is whether it is moral or practical for us to have spent so much (the 240 cases represent a lot of avoidable waste and the vast majority of projects are not even started yet, so how can you possibly know the full extent of the damage??).

    Here’s the point: Other Australians are essentially paying the mortgages of the people that benefitted, including a hell of a lot of building contractors.

    How did the point also get missed that stimulus money almost exclusively went to protect unionised jobs?

    at 17% of the workforce, money went into construction, education, hospitals, all worthy causes (who could argue that), but ALL well-represented in terms of unions and ALL bread and butter support for the ALP. Is this a coincidence???

    Fortunately for the ALP, journos and citizens have given little airtime to this but there were many, many ways to stimulate the economy far more simply, cheaply and broadly, but if you have to do it, why not shore up votes, hey? 😉

  26. Jackol@1878

    JV cabinet confidentiality is a public interest convention that applies as much to journalists as it does to those in cabinet who might leak. It benefits us all for our decision makers to be able to deliberate without a potential media/PR circus.

    Therefore there -is- a moral issue. That’s what we’ve been talking about. Do keep up.

    Nice twirl of censorious fairy floss but the simple position is that there was no national or ‘public interest’ constraint on reporting the machinations behind the Rudd knifing; no national or ‘public interest’ constraint on reporting the leak on Gillard’s true views on pensions and leave; no national or ‘public interest’ constraints in reporting the leak that Gillard sent her experienced (21 years) AFP guy to meetings.

    When in doubt go with freedom of information, not censorship.

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