The opinion poll bonanza rolls on, with a Newspoll survey in The Australian focusing on the key seats of Lindsay in western Sydney and Dawson in northern Queensland, both presumed trouble spots for Labor. The Lindsay poll is everything Labor might have feared, showing the Liberals with a 51-49 lead after a 7 per cent swing. However, the Dawson result is much better news for Labor, showing an even two-party split and a swing to the Liberal National Party of 2.4 per cent. The poll was conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, before the Kevin Rudd intervention. Primary votes are 45 per cent Liberal to 41 per cent Labor in Lindsay, and 44 per cent LNP to 42 per cent Labor in Dawson. It seems we’ll have to wait for the hard copy to find out the sample size.
For those of you who have just joined us, note the previous two posts covering poll results which have emerged over the past evening.
UPDATE: Full results here. The samples turn out to be 600 per electorate, producing margins of error of 4 per cent. Both leaders’ approval ratings are evenly split between approve and disapprove in both electorates – in a poll conducted in Lindsay in the final days of Kevin Rudd’s leadership, the result was 33 per cent approve, 61 per cent disapprove. Julia Gillard leads Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister 49-34 in Dawson and 46-41 in Lindsay. Labor’s support is softer than the Coalition’s in Lindsay, but basically the same in Dawson.
UPDATE 2: Courtesy of Possum, full results from Nielsen, who are helpfully maintaining their three-poll state-by-state averages.
[ I feel so depressed about our future that I think I shall go for a walk.]
Great idea Hamster. 😛
I’d be interested in the 1998 polling as well. Labor got more of the vote and still lost. Seem to remember though that Howard was expected to win by polling day.
The Poor Chooks aren’t happy campers:
[Well regarded political bloggers include Mumble, also known as Peter Brent, a psephologist recently picked up by The Australian. Blogger Possum Comitatus (real name Scott Steel) is one of Crikey’s most popular contributors, while ABC psephologist Antony Green, already something of a cult figure, maintains a popular ABC blog.
And if you ever need a seat-by-seat breakdown of which party claimed which district in the 2005 Liberian election (it could happen), there is Psephos, maintained by Labor employee Adam Carr, which bills itself as the “largest, most comprehensive and most up-to-date archive of electoral information in the world, with election statistics from 176 countries”.]
From the article BH linked to.
Congrats to Grog as well for his work. It’s had an obvious impact out there!
Possum’s
” rel=”nofollow”>phone poll trend, which I consider the definitive guide to the state of play, now has Labor below 50%.
Sky has Gillard and Rudd now meeting at a secret location.
William
you should demand satisfaction from james massola!!!
To ignore you is to slight you
I’ll gladly stand as your second
🙂
MW
[So the Labor supporters can cheer Crean’s holding the course (what I call spin), the Liberal supporters can cheer on O’Dwyer’s vigorous and effective campaigning, and I feel so depressed about our future that I think I shall go for a walk.]
Thanks for your one of your intermittent and predictable attempts to ignite another Labor/Greens flame war on PB.
However, I’ll continue to have cordial conversations with the Greens HTV Card people at pre-polling centre this year. Last election, as they were more than enough Labor helpers, I often filled in for the Green Folk when they needed a refreshment or loo break. Our two parties have conducted a truce which, according to Antony Green, almost can’t fail to deliver your party balance of power in the Senate. Green preferences in marginal seats like Gilmore are extremely important for Labor.
And Their ABC aren’t Happy little vegemites:
[Gillard, Rudd shut media out of meeting http://bit.ly/daZ8Sg half a minute ago via bitly ]
As opposed to the open invitations they have to Phony Tony’s meetings with Pell. Hypocrites.
He ain’t all bad, Gusface.
[Possum’s phone poll trend, which I consider the definitive guide to the state of play, now has Labor below 50%.]
That\’s irrelevant. What matters is whether or not Labor can win Lindsay.
[Sky has Gillard and Rudd now meeting at a secret location.]
Just got home, phew.
I can’t believe this is still going on, if the above is true I hope it’s because Julia is going to tell him to f…. off.
Let’s go over it again shall we, Rudd was dumped because the party’s internal polling showed a looming disaster.
Julia, please, you can do it by yourself, dump the ball and chain, please …, I can vote for you but never for Crudd.
I’m afraid that all of this Rudd shennanigans is a massive turnoff for the average voter.
And the media why they wern’t allowed free access:
Julia presser at 1.30
ruawake@217
Expect pissed off media to whinge about restriced access etc.
BTW Thanks William for releasing me 🙂
Why the hell shouldn’t the media be shut out of Rudd/Gillard’s meeting? Are the media now expecting to be present every time they think they can get some ratings? It’s a private meeting. That has to be one of the most ridiculous complaints I’ve seen.
[Possum’s phone poll trend, which I consider the definitive guide to the state of play, now has Labor below 50%].
William – it might be the definitive guide, but don’t you think some of these silly polls taken all in one day/night
are likely to make less definitive?
Diddums Media:
Honestly, the ALP campaign team cant take a trick: the Liberals are receiving big donations from Philip Morris, and are clearly linked to the anti-govt campaign on plain packaging – but what story comes out?
This: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/labor-link-to-ads-opposing-tobacco-logo-ban-20100806-11omi.html
This is Lib campaign HQ doing what HQs are supposed to do. Where’s the counter?
Id have Roxon talking about the Libs big tobacco links at every turn.
[However, I’ll continue to have cordial conversations with the Greens HTV Card people at pre-polling centre this year. Last election, as they were more than enough Labor helpers, I often filled in for the Green Folk when they needed a refreshment or loo break. Our two parties have conducted a truce which, according to Antony Green,]
Atticus – I have done this for years past and so have my fellow HTVers. There is no animosity because we are serve a common cause – keep the Coalition from getting elected and doing nothing much – as always!
MWH seems to be a very disgruntled Green and should just ‘go play on the freeway’.
[Posted Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 10:08 am | Permalink
A ray of light from Hugh Mackay:]
i pray Hugh is sticking by his last article thats its julia of course
Possum isn’t infallible. He’s good, even great, but not infallible. His poll trends last election fell apart in the last week. A week out he called it a much bigger win for Labor than it turned out to be. As Poss himself might remind youse, polls are no substitute for the real thing. Trends, yes. Accurate predictions, even this close, no.
This isn’t me being snarky, or snide. It’s just me suggesting that comparing Newspoll, Morgan Phone, Morgan F2F, Nielsen, Galaxy and Essential all taken on different days with slightly different questions, during the volatility of a campaign, is like comparing oranges, grapefruit, lemons, mandarins, limes and citrons* and trying to make something more cogent of it than it warrants.
Just sayin’…
(* For lovers of the irresistable Naxos liquer)
[]I’m afraid that all of this Rudd shennanigans is a massive turnoff for the average voter.]
Evidence please.
Plenty of that around if you let the scales fall from your eyes.
Hug Mackay’s analysis is a country mile ahead of any of the travelling circus. He is dead right about the polls – they will revert to what they were at the beginning of the campaign. Mid campaign polling simply reflects the days too-ing and fro-ing.
[75 Frank Calabrese
Posted Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 9:17 am | Permalink
From Kochie:
david koch kochie_online
All these polls are doing my head in. They’re getting way out of hand. So I just go back to the most reliable. Labor $1.54 Coalition $2.46 2 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone ]
very wise
Sky reporting that Gillard refusing to meet with president of Naru …. WTF
cheers
Gary
Speaking to various (ie. 10) different friends who have little interest in politics, who voted Labor in 2007, but probably voting Coalition this time around because “Labor aren’t unified and aren’t concentrating on their job”.
[Gino’s and watching the “Passegata” ?
38, ta very much.
Well you will be 39 in 2 months]
you are the same age as my daughter i want ask the next question
way back the talk about queensland and the figures does that indicate we would hold those seats we have
It’s the caretaker period.
And, just on the politics, why should she meet with the head of government of a tinpot country that is openly conspiring with her political opponents to embarrass the government?
OMG media ‘shut out’ of Rudd-Gillard meeting!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/07/2976400.htm
What do they think this is, the Big Brother house?
Of course there’s no media there, dimwits.
Abbott is right when he says the Rudd-Gillard thing is like a soap opera. It’s not a good look.
Darn – only the national polls go into my trend lines. All the seat by seat polling – (35 seats since the beginning of July for those interested) is excluded from them.
All national polls by quality pollsters contain usable information – so even if there were, say, 3 polls taken on a night where each poll only had a sample size of 500 (MoE ~ 4.4%), they all add information of relatively known certainty (the mean poll result and the standard deviation of the result derived from the sample size of the poll).
The trend tempts to look through the noise generated by any given (actually all given polls) to see what the the true underlying movement of public opinion is over any given arbitrary time.
my say@232
Yes he is Single (I think) and are you trying to play:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F48yOkcQWe0
For what it’s worth I may as well lay this on you, a non political person at work today, a bit of a dufus admittedly and only about 25 as far as I know, commented for the first time that I have ever heard him. He dumbstruck me when there was some mild political banter going on when he said he wasn’t going to vote for Rudd this time.
I sensed something bizarre so I asked him, did he know Rudd was no longer the leader or maybe he voted in Griffith. Of course he didn’t even know who his local member was, but he was genuinely confused about the leadership of the Labor Party, turned out he was hearing almost as much about Rudd as about Julia.
Gospel or I hope to die, thought you’d like to know! Remember most people are not like the bloggers here and aware of major or political issues.
As far as I know this guy’s main ambition is to get down to the local club after work and drink and play the pokies.
can i ask if there is any one here who ACTU contacts after my experience yesterday i think the thing to do with the marginals is the a ACTU AND WORKCHOICES
i could not beleive the feed back from these young guys THESE YOUNG ONES 18/28
WILL SAVE US FROM TONE IN THE MARGINALS IF YOU TALK TO THEM ABOUT
WORKCOICES SO IF WE HAVE AN FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD
AREA MANAGER ON SITE. just go to your local actu and ask for stickers and brochures.
Poss
You’ve got
Labor 68
Lib 78
Ind 3
on the phone Pollytrend.
Is that the first time Labor has been behind including Rudd’s time?
[Plenty of that around if you let the scales fall from your eyes.]
You mean such as the polls showing Labor holding its own in WA? Or those showing Labor doing well in TAS and Vic? And those showing Labor holding in NSW. So the real problem is Qld and where does Kev come from?
Still, even if it is a negative what would be far worse would be another leak. This just may prevent that from happening.
[Speaking to various (ie. 10) different friends who have little interest in politics, who voted Labor in 2007, but probably voting Coalition this time around because “Labor aren’t unified and aren’t concentrating on their job”.]
So Rudd working with Gillard isn’t showing them unified? Huh?
remember i lot of these boys and girls where at school studing in o7 and do not know much about work choices
THIS WAS THE THING THAT REALLY CAME HOME TO ME.
THE DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THERE LIVES COULD CHANGE OVER NIGHT.
Ah GARY I SEE YOUR POST ABOVE I THINK YOU SEEM TO HAVE THE CONTACT IN THE PARTY CAN YOU TELL SOME ONE URGENTLY WHAT I HAVE FOUND ON THE GROUND MUST BE THE SAME EVERY WHERE ESPECIALLY THE MARGINALS.
Bushfire went:
[Possum isn’t infallible. He’s good, even great, but not infallible. His poll trends last election fell apart in the last week.]
Very true and I learned a good lesson – don’t use a single pollster! (which is what I did last year, using Newspoll vote estimates only).
If I go back and run the trend methodology I’m doing now over the 2007 polls, I get a result more accurate than any single pollster got as their final poll. A little bit of that is luck, with Nielsen’s 57 final poll dragging the final trend estimate up by 0.2 points. But 0.2 points is something the nerd in me can probably live with 😛
Ultimately though, that is what we would also expect to occur. The combined result of more pollsters should theoretically always be more accurate than less.
The lesson – more information is always better!
Dio – they’ve been behind a couple of times.
[238 Frank Calabrese
Posted Saturday]
frank u are a mind reader but my daughter would kill me. she hates it when i say any thing to her.
Frank now i have got your attention will you tell every one in the party about the amazing response i had to workchoices some of these young ones did not understand it will come back.
Some seem to but its the 19 year old have no idea
[Why the hell shouldn’t the media be shut out of Rudd/Gillard’s meeting? Are the media now expecting to be present every time they think they can get some ratings? It’s a private meeting. That has to be one of the most ridiculous complaints I’ve seen.]
You’re right, Dio, but the little darlings are hurt. They’ve had to sit on their bus and twiddle their thumbs altho they could be writing nasty articles about Julia and Kevin while they wait.
The media consider they are so important now that they should be running the campaign for Labor.
The media consider that Abbott’s campaign is so perfect that they don’t need to ask why he runs and leaves when the questions start to get hard nor why he hides away so much. His policies are so perfect that there is no need for most of them to even consider they may be wrong for us or that some of them will never be implemented.
I reckon a better campaign would be where the pollies talk directly to people and the people twitter or facebook what they think. Leave the media out of it altogether and let them look somewhere else to earn a living.
[If I go back and run the trend methodology I’m doing now over the 2007 polls, I get a result more accurate than any single pollster got as their final poll. A little bit of that is luck, with Nielsen’s 57 final poll dragging the final trend estimate up by 0.2 points. But 0.2 points is something the nerd in me can probably live with]
Poss run it over the 2004 election and see what you end up with. Newspoll had Labor in front by a fair margin for most of that campaign. Don’t know about the others.
[they will revert to what they were at the beginning of the campaign. ]
Weren’t they in the vicinity of 55-45 to ALP? I’m not convinced that will be the result on election day.