GhostWhoVotes reports the first carbon tax Newspoll has Labor receiving roughly the expected hit on voting intention, with a double dose for Julia Gillard personally. Labor’s vote has dived six points to 30 per cent, with the Coalition up four to 45 per cent and – intriguingly – the Greens up two to 15 per cent. The Coalition two-party lead of 54-46 compares with 50-50 a fortnight ago. An even bigger sting for Julia Gillard comes with a finding that Kevin Rudd leads her as best person to lead the ALP 44 per cent to 37 per cent, and a 23-point reversal in her net approval rating: approval down 11 points to 39 per cent, disapproval up 12 to 51 per cent. Funnily enough, these are exactly the same as the figures for Tony Abbott, who is respectively up one and up two. After a strong showing a fortnight ago, Gillard has lost eight points on preferred prime minister to 45 per cent and Abbott is up five to 36 per cent. For all that, a substantial 42 per cent profess themselves in favour of a price on carbon, with 53 per cent opposed – although the figures are respectively down five and up four on November. Full tables here.
UPDATE: James J points out in comments that this is Labor’s worst primary vote in Newspoll history. The previous record of 31 per cent came in August 1993, shortly after a Labor government broke a pre-election promise on tax. However, this was in an age when there was no Greens scooping up 15 per cent of the vote and feeding three-quarters of it back as preferences.
UPDATE 2: While I’m here, I’ll repost what I said about today’s Essential Research poll, which got buried a few posts back. The first Essential result taken almost entirely after the carbon tax announcement has the Coalition opening up a 53-47 lead. Considering Labor went from 51-49 ahead to 52-48 behind on the basis of last week’s polling, half of which constituted the current result, that’s slightly better than they might have feared. The Coalition is up two points on the primary vote to 47 per cent, Labor is down one to 36 per cent and the Greens are steady on 10 per cent.
Further questions on the carbon tax aren’t great for Labor, but they’re perhaps at the higher end of market expectations with 35 per cent supporting the government’s announcement and 48 per cent opposed. Fifty-nine per cent agreed the Prime Minister had broken an election promise and should have waited until after the election, while 27 per cent chose the alternative response praising her for showing strong leadership on the issue. Nonetheless, 47 per cent support action on climate change as soon as possible, against only 24 per cent who believe it can wait a few years and 19 per cent who believe action is unnecessary (a figure you should keep in mind the next time someone tries to sell you talk radio as a barometer of public opinion). There is a question on who should and shouldn’t receive compensation, but I’d doubt most respondents were able to make much of it.
Tellingly, a question on Tony Abbott’s performance shows the electorate very evenly divided: 41 per cent are ready to praise him for keeping the government accountable but 43 per cent believe he is merely obstructionist, with Labor-voting and Coalition-voting respondents representing a mirror image of each other. Twenty-seven per cent believe independents and Greens holding the balance of power has been good for Australia against 41 per cent bad, but I have my doubts about the utility of this: partisans of both side would prefer that their own party be in majority government, so it would have been good to have seen how respondents felt about minority government in comparison with majority government by the party they oppose.
I am not nervous.
This is the lowest ALP primary in Newspoll history.
Why would the PM deliver the 2011 budget and not the treasurer, talking through Bob Katter’s hat?
[Labor’s vote has dived six points to 30 per cent, with the Coalition up four and – intriguingly – the Greens up two to 15 per cent.]
And there in lies the rub
why did greens go up but labor went down
massaging a poll requires brains not brass
ltd news is staffed by cretins
🙁
I am ecstatic. It’s up from now on.
It’s the truism pf politics – get all the bad news out there during the first year of your term.
The nervous one are the Undies. they are GORN with early election. they will now hangon to Labor with their dear life.
Just pointing this out, again.
To speak of polls. How strange.
I thought that this too was really weird. And completely puzzling.
“How the West can end Gaddafi’s slaughter” The Age Geoffrey Robertson March 7, 2011
Poll: Does the international community have a duty to intervene in Libya to stop the killing of civilians?
1. Please select an answer. Yes
2. No
Yes 78%
No 22%
Despite that overwhelming Yes, do it, on line vote, the say, 30 or more comments I read seemed absolutely antagonistic to Geoffrey Robertson.
Doesn’t seem to fit.
Really, there is no great mystery about the Greens going up – they have not backflipped.
He won’t need a cabinet and will be a one man government. Shorten is just that good. Just ask him.
BTW Latika Bark has been busy tonight dreaming up twitter hashtags for the inevitable leadership challenge
#spillbill
[
I am ecstatic. It’s up from now on.
]
Finns
A song for you 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeyOnNple4M
I am going out on a limb here but could the leakage to the greens be because of the supposed Labor Senators anti same sex marriage BS that went on after the Carbon Tax announcement?
Well, it’s hard to believe Labor can do any worse in the next year or two. But anything’s possible.
Maybe we should declare war, preferably on some Muslim country.
On the optimistic side…….Labor needs to get the New South Wales election slaughter out of the way – after that, they might be able to reverse this.
But Gillard/Swan/Combet will need to do the selling job of a lifetime, something at which the Gillard government up until now hasn’t excelled at.
Her two biggest problems remain going back on her word before the election, and the fact that she was instrumental in dumping a policy last year that she’s now advocating.
As detestable as Abbott is, you can’t blame him for honing in on that.
Federal Labor is stuck with Julia as leader, for better or worse – changing to Shorten or Combet would just hasten their passage into opposition.
Well, I’m off for the night – will see who is in government tomorrow.
Space kidder, from the previous thread
[So Mr Squiggle as much as you would like it this poll aint an election and things are not going to change until the election in 2013 and maybe not even then!]
Many people on this blog try to read the future play, is this your best effort in light of a 4 point swing inside as many weeks?
Catch up at your own pace, we’ll be there on election day
I think JG has signed her own political death warrant, and will probably take Combet down with her
Finns
[I am ecstatic. It’s up from now on.
It’s the truism pf politics – get all the bad news out there during the first year of your term.]
It’s always darkest before the dawn?
TT
[Maybe we should declare war, preferably on some Muslim country.]
Preferably a very small one with no armed forces. Certainly it would have to have a few rubber ducks as a navy as we don’t seem to have many functional ships. Brunei seems to fit the bill
I’m looking forward to Andrew Bolt’s inevitable declaration that Gillard is gone. He was basically saying that today based on Essential. In fact, his head may explode from pure joy before he gets a chance to post about Newspoll 😀
Since the Coalition has been arguing that Bob Brown is the real prime minister, perhaps the Greens are accruing the advantages of incumbency.
What Finns @ 5 said.
Go Jools, stick to your guns.
I wonder how the Libs survived through all those polls that had Labor at or above 60% TPP. It wasn’t that long ago. How things can change…
[Catch up at your own pace, we’ll be there on election day]
live from the moon?
Mr Squiggle,
You keep dreaming sunshine. Bottom line JG is the PM. Fact. She is the PM because TA can’t negotiate for shit. Live with that fact for the next two years. You and your mate Phoney can stamp your feet, tell your lies, act like racist bigots and generally try to destablise government but guess what – the Coalition is still the OPPOSITION.
Ony appropriate for the party of ‘No’.
[It’s always darkest before the dawn?]
Diog,
[While I’m far away from you my baby
I know it’s hard for you my baby
Because it’s hard for me my baby
And the darkest hour is just before dawn ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mymqkuwXcSU
:kiss:
Space Kidette (previous thread),
[But one thing it has driven home is the media support of the coalition needs to be reigned in and I am going to take every opportunity to write, complain, correct every misleading statement by the media.]
Good to hear because that’s what we need. May I suggest a couple of lines of complaint to pursue with Their ABC?
1) Ru posted this earlier:
[I almost forgot, early this morning 3.30 Qld time, Trevor Chappell had a chat with the producer of the ABC24 brekkie show.
Her first comment was “It was good to see Julia meet with Kim on the first day of her HOLIDAY in the US” 🙁 ]
2) They ran a headline today:
Abbott finds sympathetic audience in Adelaide
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/07/3157152.htm
And the reason he got a “sympathetic audience”? The forum was full of Liberals!! Adelaide Now:
[…the attendees had been invited by the office of Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham]
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/take-part-in-the-news-abbotts-adelaide-community-forum/story-e6frea83-1226016941909
Any excuse to put up a pro-RAbbott/pro-Lieberal headline.
[Since the Coalition has been arguing that Bob Brown is the real prime minister, perhaps the Greens are accruing the advantages of incumbency.]
careful, frank might hear you
😉
They dumped the mining tax on the electorate. Catastrophic. Then the carbon tax. Disastrous.
They never learn.
Terminal in the ‘beauty contest’ is not a good sign less than 12 months in. It perhaps does not help that NSW is about to go to the polls. The NSW focus in the media alone could be enough to account for the negative sentiment, though some daresay would be quite understandably annoyed about the magnitude of the election promise broken on the Carbon Tax
In a rare environment like a hung parliament, Julia is caught between a rock and a hard place. A person with more principles and less pragmatism couldn’t have their party in power now. It needed some serious horse-trading, particularly when no standard measure of public opinion (Primary/TPP/seats) granted the government a second term. In this sense it honestly had no mandate for any policy (I would also argue that in a preferential system at least 50.x% of the primary vote is required for ANY electoral mandate).
Nevertheless, this meant that Julia had to capitulate to demands from Independents and Greens, with policies, no doubt, that would not sit nicely with either constituents nor the party to obtain power.
Why this? Why now? It could be poor political management of releases as some have suggested. Though it could also be what Psychologists call the ‘door in the face’ approach. Release ALL the horse trading policies that people will respond to with vitriol and controversy: Carbon Tax, Gay Marriage, Euthanasia, Territory Rights at once and get it over with.
This does three things:
1. Throws it into a single poll cycle which, if it improves, can be written off as a rogue
2. Shows the political figures really behind the policy the low level of underlying support from the people of Australia
3. Allows wriggle-room to a compromised position, with the excuse: We have listened to the people and responded accordingly. The minors have had their shot, the government is responsive and listening and the dumb policies don’t fly.
If any of these policies were ALP principle in this government, they would have been released gradually over the electoral cycle and been debated thoroughly. As it is they will not be debated thoroughly and are floating on the wake of a horror fortnight of NSW campaigning. The motza balls are out there and a month from now we will have some great news and a lifted poll. I’d expect positive announcements any day now from the Feds.. a truckload of them. 🙂
Shouldn’t Bob Brown be included in preferred PM and approval questions? 😛
Cuppa,
Done.
[Since the Coalition has been arguing that Bob Brown is the real prime minister, perhaps the Greens are accruing the advantages of incumbency.]
bilbo, are trying to be funny?
[I think JG has signed her own political death warrant, and will probably take Combet down with her]
We’ll see about that. It aint over yet. 2 and a half years to go.
mith
its actch matzos balls
just saying
[25
Gusface
Posted Monday, March 7, 2011 at 11:31 pm | Permalink
Since the Coalition has been arguing that Bob Brown is the real prime minister, perhaps the Greens are accruing the advantages of incumbency.
careful, frank might hear you
]
Mary,
Haven’t you got a 60 Minutes story from last night to raise that blood pressure of yours ? 🙂
A few people shiteing bricks here. Too early to pack death. It isn’t the end of the world as we know it.
get em Frank, get them!
I’m not a psephologist and will probably get shot down in flames, but that question on the Carbon Tax…..
“Under the federal government’s plan to put a price on carbon, the price of energy sources, such as petrol, electricity and gas, may become more expensive. Would you personally be in favour or against paying more for energy sources, such as petrol, electricity and gas, if it would help to slow global warming?”
….seems to me to be feeding into the rampant and un-restrained fear-mongering, which has been orchestrated by the Rabbott and his shock-jock mates.
To introduce it in the context of a Newspoll will surely have skewed the result away from Labor………am I missing something?
Awesome!
The Greens are eating Labor alive.
[31
Gary
Posted Monday, March 7, 2011 at 11:34 pm | Permalink
I think JG has signed her own political death warrant, and will probably take Combet down with her
We’ll see about that. It aint over yet. 2 and a half years to go.
]
The Fibs here shouldn’t fali into the trap us Laborites did re polling during the first 2 yrs of a Rudd Giovt 🙂
If you do, it will end in tears – just ask Evan 14 snd TP 🙂
jas
its atch sikk em frank
HTH
ps
STFU works real well
If the Greens are eating Labor alive and thereby ensuring a Liberal landslide, how does that help the Greens?
Next session of parliament we’ll have two hundred tory ballet dances, a gaggle of line dancers, a few break dancers, and a couple of Scottish dancers and the next poll will be a world beater.
The Finnigans@30
And was Bob Brown among the choices in the poll for preferred Labor leader? 😀
Frank,
There is nothing as pretty as Mary in the morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTex0BxVEbs
As far as I’m concerned, this poll delivers a real slap in the face for the Greens and their policies.
The truly funny thing is that the Green supporters here just can’t accept it.
Welome to the real league!
[Awesome!
The Greens are eating Labor alive.]
Well look who’s turned up thinking the next election is theirs, John of Melbourne.
I wonder how the indepents will see this?
They’re proping up a failing government.
Do Labor dare replace Julila?
If only the Greens had supported the original ETS more than 12 months ago!
Bob Brown gets no gold star from me, he’s as much a politician as Labor & Liberal MPs.
Same old same old then
Gary, I have something to write about now 😀
but perhaps not as smart as some.