Morgan phone poll: 54-46 to Coalition

For the third week in a row Roy Morgan has published results from a small-sample phone poll, which have had appropriately erratic results. All three have had the Coalition in front: by 56-44 on March 8-10, 51-49 on March 16-17 and now 54-46 on March 22-24 (as always, the caveat must be added that I am using the “preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2010 election” figure, rather than “preferences distributed by how electors say they will vote” as highlighted by Morgan). The latest result has Labor’s primary vote down only a point to 34.5 per cent – not so different from Newspoll – but lower results for the non-major parties have pushed the Coalition from 42.5 per cent to 47 per cent. The Greens are down two to 10 per cent. The poll had a sample of 542 and a margin of error of a bit under 4.5 per cent.

Respondents were also asked the rather odd question of who out of Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull “would best represent Australia internationally”. Kevin Rudd led on 35 per cent, with Gillard on 21 per cent, Abbott on 19 per cent and Turnbull on 17 per cent. Curiously, the “good” poll for Labor last week had much fewer respondents thinking they would win the next election (30.5 per cent to 57 per cent for the Coalition) compared with the two worse results on either side (37-54 and 37-52.5).

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.

1,454 comments on “Morgan phone poll: 54-46 to Coalition”

Comments Page 28 of 30
1 … 27 28 29 30

  1. Thinking about the indies, they will never switch to Abbott. He has antagonized them far too much, all the bridges have been burned.
    A moderate liberal would have a much better chance of getting them to switch.
    I can imagine someone like Turnbull offering them everything they need to perhaps one day switch – keep the NBN, spending on rural health etc.
    Abbott has no chance. Turnbull just maybe…and certainly a better chance than Abbott.
    Not saying its going to happen though, in fact i would be very surprised if it did.

  2. Bob Hawke on ABC radio just now asking us to consider the morals
    of the person who claimed that he said Gillard will be replaced
    by Combet soon.

    So that would be Ju-LIE Bishop.

  3. What’s hawkie saying about Bishop’s morals? I don’t like her but I didn’t know there was an issue with her morals, as Hawkie seems to be saying.

  4. [A lot of us here (including me) spent years voting Labor in state and federal elections, not out of any real liking for that party, but in the forlorn hope of at least making both seats marginal enough to get a government to take a bit of interest. When Oakeshott turned independent we got that attention. For a bit of insight do some research into the saga of Port Macquarie Base Hospital and the Coalition’s disastrous attempt to privatise it. No government would have dared come up with such an idea for a city Liberal electorate, but as a safe National seat we were fair game for a doomed experiment. Oakeshott won us back the hospital and in siding with Labor gained Federal funding for desperately needed improvements. The O’Farrell government, acting on orders, will now try to derail Oakeshott by crying poor and refusing to honour the Keneally government’s funding committments for the hospital. This, they hope, will paint Oakeshott as someone who breaks promises and has no power to get anything done.

    Speculation about him changing sides is part of their derailment plans. The Coalition don’t and never did want him on side, they want him gone. Oakeshott knew last August that should he opt for Abbott the Mad Monk would go to an immediate election and the big guns would all be aimed at Oakeshott. Why would he change, when he knows that still applies?

    If Labor wants to stay in office and keep Oakeshott on side they’ll steamroll over O’Farrell and make an immediate start on those hospital buildings. Oakeshott may well decide enough is enough and opt for a pleasant life as a country lawyer rather than try for another term. His family would love him to take that path. I know Oakeshott and I know one thing he won’t be doing. He won’t be turning to Abbott.]

    victoria – I’ve been busy the past few days but I second those comments from leone and I bet Oakeshott County does as well.

    No matter what Abbott says Oakeshott will still stay true to his 17 minutes speech for which I heartily applaud him. Every minute told us exactly why he chose his path. He would have known what was going to be thrown at him.

    The Nationals up here are ‘dirty’ – nothing means anything to them if they don’t have power. I deal with them 12 months of the year in different things. After 30 years here they still find tactics and ways which amaze me. Leone and OC will have found the same thing.

    Thanks for posting that. Oakeshott is a very decent guy and his family are. as the song goes ‘ truly special, truly truly special, special in the most delightful ways’.

    And our guy lost by heaps on SAturday but let’s hope there are no more Port Macquarie Hospital debacles. It was a monumental one which the Liberals seem to have airbrushed from history.

  6. Victoria

    Who is the Labor MP speaking now. He is also very good.

    Said a National MP was in favour of wireless, but he doesn’t want the towers.

    They should really hammer this about the number of towers required for their silly wireless policy.

  9. Victoria 1230
    [Therefore, as an independent he made the best decision for his electorate. Exactly the point “What part of independent don’t the media understand”?]

    They seem to have the same mental void as the coalition parties – possibly from spending too much time listening to them.

    Basically it is simply: But this seat would normally be coalition if you weren’t here. Therefore you should be voting as the coalition would wish.

    It ignores the fact that they are there BECAUSE of discontent with the coalition.

  13. Can’t see why some people think Rob Oakeshott is “flaky”…..solidly behind the Govts. NBN….speaking now, he sounds as strongly supportive of the Govt. as the day he signed the agreement with Labor….

    Chance of him changing sides before the next election = 0

  14. markjs

    I believe people have the impression he is flaky more by his facial expressions rather than the content of his words (if you know what I mean?). I don’t agree with it mind you. Just an observation.

  15. Did you hear him mention that he might support an amendment by the member for Cowper.

    If this gets voted through, do the senate have to come back again?

  16. You people are obviously not from NSW. Gladys is not liked by people outside her electorate — everytime she is seen on TV she comes across like Pyne — whiny.

    Jen, agree. Saturday night was the very first time I have ever heard gladys do anything BUT whine. She is known in our household as a “WaaWaa”.

    With all the nsw coalition’s inexperience plus so many new members, it will not take long for serious mistakes, scandals etc to emerge.

    Thats even before david clarke and his ultra right wing religious nutters, the so called *exclusive brethren* come out of the woodwork.

    We’ll see how gladys handles things when the boot is on the other foot.

  17. [Bob Hawke on ABC radio just now asking us to consider the morals
    of the person]
    Bob Hawke preaching about morals
    Well I never! 😉

  20. [Windsor has just said that under an Abbot led govt, the issues facing Regional Australia wouldn’t get much of a look in.]

    Kisses and hugs to Tony Windsor. He knows what’s what in Abbott land.

  26. [Rob Oakeshott is actually currently speaking in the HOR]

    victoria – I am busy finishing stuff on the computer so I’ve missed the debates on telly this morning.

    Can you tell me his input in a few words please?

    I want to catch up on back pages too but it’s going to take some time. Some really good comments I’ve read so far.

  27. The following article for last week’s New Scientist headlined ‘How not to change a climate skeptic’s mind’ got me to thinking about how to get a hierarchical-individualist to present the case so 4 to 5% of those stating they would currently vote the coalition would switch to the Govt.

    Got any suggestions of a suitable person?

    [HOW do you get your point across over an issue as contentious as climate change? As a hearing in the US Congress last week showed, the evidence alone is not enough.

    At issue was the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans in the House and Senate are backing bills that would strip the EPA of that right, which is based on findings that rising carbon dioxide levels pose a threat to health and the environment.

    At the hearing, House Democrats hoped to counter these moves by calling a cast of climatologists to explain the weight of scientific evidence for climate change. A meeting of minds it was not. The effort seemed only to harden Republican scepticism.

    For Dan Kahan of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, the result was predictable. He has previously shown that simply explaining the science behind contentious issues drives the two sides further apart. But Kahan’s work also suggests how warring parties can move towards consensus.

    Kahan grades people on two scales of cultural belief: individualists versus communitarians, based on the different importance people attach to the public good when balanced against individual rights; and hierarchists versus egalitarians, based on their views on the stratification of society. Republicans are more likely to be hierarchical-individualist, while Democrats are more often egalitarian-communitarian.

    People’s views on contentious scientific issues tend to reflect their position on these scales. For example, egalitarian-communitarians tend to accept the evidence that climate change is a threat, while hierarchical-individualists reject it.

    Yet people’s views do change if the right person is offering the evidence. Kahan investigated attitudes for and against giving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to schoolgirls to prevent cervical cancer – another divisive issue. After he presented people with both sides of the argument, he found that 70 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians thought it was safe, compared with 56 per cent of hierarchical-individualists.

    When the “pro” argument was presented as coming from an expert painted as being in the egalitarian-communitarian camp, and the “anti” view came from a hierarchical-individualist, the split widened to 71 versus 47 per cent. But strikingly, swapping the experts around caused a big shift: 61 per cent of hierarchical-individualists then rated the vaccine as safe, compared to 58 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians. In short, evidence from someone you identify with sways your view.

    In practice, it is hard to find experts who will give “unexpected” testimony. But when the evidence was presented by experts with a variety of backgrounds, views were not so starkly polarised, with 65 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians and 54 per cent of hierarchical-individualists agreeing that the vaccine is safe.

    So who might be best placed to change Republicans’ minds over the EPA bill? Maybe specialists from the insurance industry, which is factoring climate change into its calculations, the military, or religious environmentalists.

    Kahan accepts that it would be naive to think that climate sceptics will suddenly abandon their position. But he says: “We want to create an environment in which people, regardless of their values, are giving considered attention to the information.”]

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928043.300-how-not-to-change-a-climate-sceptics-mind.html

  28. blue green
    Poor Hazel is in a bad way with Alzheimers
    No I’m not her (I still remember stuff)

    blue green
    Poor Hazel is in a bad way with Alzheimers
    No I’m not her (I still remember stuff)

    👿

  31. [If the Shooters Party has a BOP vote in the senate, Howard’s gun control laws will be under threat of being wound back in NSW.]
    Can’t see the Libs doing anything to hurt a Howie legacy. labor and Libs would vote together on that one think

  38. [Yes, a good start. Any names spring to mind?]

    Someone like a Tim Costello is the obvious person. Social justice and environment but calm, considered and good communicator.

    There would be others.

  41. [jenauthor

    BOF wants the Feds to give them money for different rail link, not the amount promised for Epping? I think it was.]

    Speaking of my own back yard, the bloody NW Rail Link tunnel goes 30 metres to the west of my house, a mere 27 metres under the surface.

    Further, they’re going to demolish 2 hectares of virgin bushland a couple of hundred metres from said house to build an ugly, concrete ventilation blockhouse. Construction will take 42 months and totally wreck the amenity of our suburb, Beecroft.

    And this is before the rail line even gets to its first stop up the line from Epping.

    There’s perfectly good motorway (the M2) and perfectly good golf course (Pennant Hills) they could put the tunnel under, at a minimum depth of 50 metres, without rocking 275 homes worth hundreds of millions of dollars almost off their foundations with tunneling work as the big worm goes under, or nearby… but they say this will add too much to the cost of the project.

    Their savings, our cost.

    Community concerns, alternative plans by international railway engineers, environmental objections etc. were all dismissed as “amateurish” by the government infrastructure corporation. A final scope of works that was written over the previous 5 months, and due to be released on October 31st, 2008, was never released because the project was deferred on that day instead. FOI requests to get a copy of the report were rejected on the basis of “cabinet confidentiality”.

    Now the buggers are going to build it again. And the idiots in this area voted for them, in a landslide, patting themselves on the back as they did so, not realising that they’d just wiped millions off their house values and sentenced themselves to 3 years of hammering, shaking, rumbling, tip trucks, loss of bushland and general chaos in the area (even the access roads have to be built, as there are none) and an eternity after that of trains every 60 seconds passing underneath… and we don’t even get the benefit of a new station on the line.

    All so the bogans in Rouse Hill will vote for whoever builds it.

    We live in Cloud Cuckoo Land, we really do. The first anyone knew about any of this was in 2005.

    A pox on both their houses. They’re railway mad.

  42. grantplant @ 1377

    So the people who attend the Climate Commission meetings go there with attitudes already set in stone. The insurance industry is a good idea – they have been preparing for some time.

  44. BH

    I just saw your post asking about Oakeshott. He was very positive and happy with the amendments made to the NBN. He said that they improved the NBN considerably for Australian consumers and he was very appreciative of all the work that Senator X did in this regard. He made the comment that it is in the interests of all MP to work in the Parliament for the common good. He understands there is political point scoring for the benefit of the ballot box, but would love some co-operation in parliament for the good of the Australian people.

  47. [Construction will take 42 months and totally wreck the amenity of our suburb, Beecroft.]

    Commiserations BB – Beecroft is a beautiful suburb for those who haven’t seen it. Beautiful trees. lovely gardens. Some lovely older homes among the new ones. I shopped there a lot when I lived in Sydney.

  48. Looks like Gillard wants to be buddies with O’Farrell

    [Mr O’Farrell, who over the weekend drove the Liberal/National Coalition to a massive victory over the NSW Labor Government, wants that project deferred to pay for other rail lines.

    “I will be happy to speak to Mr O’Farrell about those policies and plans,” she said.

    “I understand that Mr O’Farrell has a set of policies and plans for transport in NSW and I’ll be happy to speak to Mr O’Farrell about those policies and plans.”

    She said the federal Government was “a government with a big reform agenda and a major set of investments in each area” such as transport and health.]

    http://www.news.com.au/national/gillard-seeks-to-avoid-major-clash-with-nsw-government-and-barry-ofarrell/story-e6frfkvr-1226029280448#ixzz1HrWUrxP7

  50. Yes Tim Costello is a good idea.

    I wonder who the ‘Head Honcho’ of the Australian Insurers Association (or whatever the industry body is called) is? I’ve often thought the insurance industry would be well worth getting an opinion from on AGW/CC.

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 28 of 30
1 … 27 28 29 30