Newspoll marginals poll: NSW, Queensland, Victoria

Newspoll has targeted 17 marginal seats in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, with results that are heartening for Labor: a manageable 1.3 per cent swing in NSW, a surviveable 3.4 per cent in Queensland and, remarkably, a 6.2 per cent swing in their favour in Victoria. We are told of a 4.6 per cent drop in the Labor primary vote in the six NSW seats, an 8.1 per cent drop in the eight Queensland seats and a 1 per cent increase in three Victorian seats. The Coalition are respectively up two to 47 per cent and 1.7 per cent in Queensland, but down 5.3 per cent in Victoria.

UPDATE: PDF here. The seats covered were Bennelong, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, Macarthur, Macquarie and Robertson in New South Wales, Brisbane, Dawson, Dickson, Flynn, Forde, Herbert, Leichhardt and Longman in Queensland, and Dunkley, La Trobe and McEwen in Victoria.

Note also this evening’s Galaxy marginals poll and Nielsen national poll covered in the previous post.

Other matters of note:

• Stephen Lunn of The Australian reports that Antony Green, Newspoll’s Martin O’Shannessy and Bob Brown’s chief-of-staff Ben Oquist all agree that Greens preferences will run 80-20 to Labor as usual. This is contrary to much talk around the place from such as Dennis Shanahan, who spoke of Labor two-party results bloated by “heroic assumptions“ about Greens preferences. The Nielsen poll released earlier this evening gave Labor 86 per cent of respondent-allocated Greens preferences.

• An article on the Liberal campaign by Simon Canning and Patricia Karvelas of The Australian is interesting both for its content, and in providing the first hint of pre-emptive recriminations in the Liberal camp. “Senior Coalition frontbenchers” have complained the Liberal camapign director, Brian Loughnane, had “left Tony Abbott vulnerable with an overly safe advertising campaign”. John Singleton is quoted in the article saying it had been “the worst campaign the Liberal Party has ever run”. Many of the specific criticisms proffered ring false to these ears, but it has indeed been notable that Liberal advertising has failed to target “Kevin Rudd’s execution and re-emergence, and the constant distraction provided by former leader Mark Latham”.

• Michael Kroger in The Australian optimistically rates the week a “draw”, and appears to believe the decisive seats so far as a Labor majority is concerned will be Bass, Corangamite, Forde and Solomon. He also offers that “a Labor loss in the seat of Melbourne now seems likely”.

• Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail notes the Australian Electoral Commission’s statistics on postal vote applications show Labor has lodged three times as many as the Liberal National Party in a “a clutch of key Queensland marginal seats”. Labor is said to have learned its lesson after being slow off the mark with its postal vote campaign at last year’s state election.

• The Age reports the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party is likely to disendorse its candidate for Lingiari, Leo Abbott, for failing to inform the party he had breached a domestic violence order.

• GetUp! have had another win, this time in their challenge against the Australian Electoral Commission’s refusal to admit enrolment applications signed with a digital pen and submitted through their website. One observer who declined to join in the congratulations was Possum, who argued it would strengthen the “potential fraud” argument the Howard government used to justify its franchise-curtailment measures in 2006.

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.

1,072 comments on “Newspoll marginals poll: NSW, Queensland, Victoria”

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  3. Holy motherloving deities on Mount Olympus! I could live with that result.

    We will take a slight hit in QLD, like it or not (QLD, has almost always favoured the Coalition) if we can minimalise our hurt in NSW we should be fine!

  5. transferred from the old thread…

    Gusface@447,

    I am sorry, but you really ought not to try to make a pile of sh1t smell any nicer…
    The so-called GSEACPS was nothing but a shameless cover for Imperial Japan to run over and rape all other nations in this sphere. Common prosperity really stood for prosperity and control for Japan and f&*k all others. Psephos is right, an estimated 20 million Chinese lost their lives under the bayonets and machine-guns of the Japanese Army (not to mention Korea, Singapore, etc). If this is anyone’s definition of prosperity then someone needs to have his/her brain MRIed. No one needed any encouragement to be more assertive, least of all from an army with the purpose of conquer and pillage.

  10. squiggle went –

    Not really, all they did was revert to type, spent a truck load of money just when it needed to be spent.

    Thats what this election is about to decide. The vote will now include many more people that your *mate* howard tried to stop from having their vote. Shame thy name is liberal.

    now the crisis has past, do we really need a government that can’t help itself but throw cash at the electorate?

    ala your *mate* howard with the mineral boom pt 1, with a treasurer who couldn’t reign him in!

    its no wonder they’ve been popular

    And you lot are green with envy and bitter and twisted as usual – well get used to it sunshine.

  13. I think the poll is dificult to read in QLD. I can’t see the individual seat numbers and they appear to be guessing the polls effect by averaging across marginal seats. That doesnt tell us anything about individual seats.

    For instance i know, and the betting markets know that we have tanked in Leichardt. It is that bad that i think the swing to LNP in this seat will be greater than 6%. That has to effect the other marginals if you clump them all together.

    William will we get to know the polling results in individual seats?

  14. robot

    see my reply

    ps my paternal side is military all the way back to balaclava

    maybe even earlier

    I dont support SEACPS, but merely mentioned it as a tool that local self rule movements embraced

    As I said awhile back Kokoda was and is the most defining battle of modern,nay all,military history

    apols if you misinterpreted my post

  15. western sydney was notionally liberal anyway, being howard’s battlers. was only due to some shenanigans that a number of seats went to labor. now they’ve reverting to form!

    would it be better for labor to concede some ground and strengthen the grip they have or should labor extend itself, even over-extend, and try to maintain hold of theese western sydney seats..?

  18. [Pebbles,

    First we take Manhatten, and then we take Berlin……….]

    Now you’re getting into my Leonard Cohen. I should stop listening to music whilst on here…

  20. I just read Honest Johns portrayal of Abbott on the Oz online.
    This part made me laugh the loudest;

    [His critics are marshalling their arguments. One of these is the absurd claim that Abbott is inexperienced.]
    No John, no one questions his experience. Many of us question his competence.
    Enjoy August 21 John, say hello to Janet.

  22. I know you like a read Gus.

    I made my TV debut on one of those old roachy current affairs show. Day by day I think it was. Knee-high to a grasshopper at the time, our karate club was kicked out of the church we were renting. According to the churchys, we were practising zen budhism.

    Way to sell a brand to a new generation, intolerant churchys.

    I am also fairly close to someone who paid a deposit to a private anglican school in australian dollars, only to be refunded in indo rupia just after the asian crash. They weren’t happy with her living arrangements. Way to take advantage of events.

    Way to sell a brand to a new generation, stoogy churchys.

    Not many young people go to church. Gee, I wonder why?

  26. Am I reading that PDF correctly? On a seat-by-seat basis, it was found that Bennelong would fall but Robertson wouldn’t – do I have that right?

  28. Last chance folk. Herbert in QLD is running against the trend and swinging to the ALP according to the Newspoll PDF in post 12. Thanks William. The seat is already notionaly ALP after the redistribution.

    I feel vindicated and a whole lot wealthier. I have to scratch my palm.

    Last chance to double your money on a easy pick.

  34. Robot zhu xi! Welcome to our humble discussion of East Asian history mixed in with unworthy opinion poll prognostications. Truly may it be observed that the peoples of South East Asia thought western colonialism was bad, but after four years of the cruel and bloody despotism of the Sons of Nippon, they were glad to welcome the silly old British imperialists back with gins and tonic at the ready! As for the long-suffering people of All Under Heaven, they were even prepared to welcome the invading hordes of Muscovy as preferable to the Nipponese yoke, although they soon came to regret their presence nearly as much.

  35. [Looking forward to watching Abbott’s body language at the next presser – I wish to see the turd squirm.]

    Don’t hold your breath. The leader is usually the last to know – especially when they are a puppet 😉

  40. If we have another good week we will continue to pull back in QLD. Dawson is difficult but I havent given up. Abbot and Robb know this is their last chance. They will go for the big play. It won’t work.

  41. Gusface

    [I dont support SEACPS, but merely mentioned it as a tool that local self rule movements embraced]

    Which is exactly what the nationalists did in Indonesia after the war. They said Japan had given them independence and they didn’t want the Dutch back. And after all, how did the Dutch get THEIR colonies (or the British, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans etc)

  42. Psephos,

    Check out Fran’s link @ 6.

    Panic is setting in with the Libs and the “If only they’d listended” choir has started.

  45. does anyone think the Victorian swing of 6% seems a bit overdone?

    I mean, I live in Victoria, and 6% just doens’t seem plausable

  47. Good ol’ Victoria forever!!!!

    At the bottom of the pdf it says 3351 were interviewed across the 17 seats; this comes out to almost 200 per seat, so the MoE on an individual seat would be high, around 7%.

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