Newspoll: 55-45 to Coalition

The latest fortnightly Newspoll sees Labor’s 51-49 lead last time obliterated by a six-point shift to the Coalition, with Labor’s primary vote down four points to 32 per cent, the Coalition up five to 45 per cent and the Greens steady on 12 per cent. Large amounts of tosh were written about the Labor lead last fortnight, even though a lack of corroborating evidence from other polls made it clear enough the result was an aberration. No doubt there will further over-analysis of this correction – probably over-correction, with the New South Wales state election perhaps injecting a bit of static into proceedings. On the primary vote, Labor is down four points to 32 per cent, the Coalition up five to 45 per cent and the Greens steady on 12 per cent. Julia Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 50-31 to 46-37.

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.

3,941 comments on “Newspoll: 55-45 to Coalition”

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  1. victoria @137,

    Agreed. And the polls will not get much better until the detail is out there. And once the detials are out and about no real guarentee.

    So I think we will just have to hold on for the ride.

  4. http://www.smh.com.au/national/amanda-lampe-set-to-become-alp-national-secretary-20110405-1czgj.html

    Julia Gillard’s former chief of staff, Amanda Lampe, is the frontrunner to become the next ALP national secretary.

    Ms Lampe will be the candidate put forward by the Right faction at this Friday’s ALP national executive. The Right has the majority on the executive and it is understood Ms Lampe has the backing of both Ms Gillard and the deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan.
    Advertisement: Story continues below

    Her elevation is likely to be controversial.

    Ms Lampe stood down as Ms Gillard’s chief of staff in late January, citing family pressures. Ms Gillard was also under pressure to make changes to her office following growing internal criticism.

    The office had been blamed for some of the more significant election campaign blunders such as the citizens’ assembly policy.

  5. I’d be tying the Carbon Tax to the urgency to something to reduce emissions too, right now. Thanks to the current reportage, most people seem to have the idea this is a ’boutique’ issue, that we still have a choice between giving up a bit of our money and feeling a bit hotter in summer. Or worse, that the government is forcing us to give up our hard-earned cash in order to cave in to some greenies.

    That’s the feeling out there.

  7. bluegreen:
    I think it’s interesting that the WA Nats are talking about supporting a carbon price and recognise humanity’s role in climate change right when they have had a very long, hot, dry period… right when over here in the eastern states suddenly more and more people are questioning humanity’s involvement and scepticism is riding high after we’ve had a year of cooler, wetter weather.

    We’re a reactionary lot aren’t we.

  9. victoria
    Would the Greens now grow a brain and accept an ETS?

    The Greens support an ETS, they just don’t support an ETS that gives stacks of money back to the big polluters for no gain, which was the sticking point wrt the CPRS.

  12. Dio:

    It’s all a bit convenient really, isn’t it. I wouldn’t mind if I thought Lampe had an ounce of talent or vision.

  15. [confessions
    Posted Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 9:22 am | Permalink

    blue-green:

    Did you watch qanda last night? JBishop appears to have had a competency make-over.]

    No. Missed it. What did she get up to. Was she mean and nasty Julie or sunshine and light Julie?

  16. a few observations

    Abbot’s disapproval rating is starting to settle above 50% – which confirms the common sense view that he is un-electable.

    Greens at 12% and Others at 12% with 6% refused/don’t know is a full 30% of primaries looking for a second preference

    just on the 2009 version of the ETS subject to KR’s backflip, the final rejected version was so compromised by the agreement with the Turnbull and rent seeking compensation that the final bills (a package of 11) was approaching the Tax Act in complexity and internal contradiction. therefore, unexplainable and un-sellable to joe public.

    One good thing from how things have evolved is that the (hopefully) simplified version will be able to be sold more easily.

  17. Q and A was the one of the more interesting episodes. Some random thoughts:

    (a) Kevin Rudd was disarmingly honest and created an inference that the Prime Minister was anti ETS at least for a time. I thought part of the justification for a Carbon Tax was as a precursor to a full blown ETS;
    (b) Julie Bishop could outstare a metronome but she seemed to attract some support (along with a few boos);
    (c) American diplomats speak nicely and can sell well;
    (d) Robert Manne was kind of self reflective and doubtful particularly about ALP’s asylum seekers policy and bereft of any alternative;
    (e) Louise Adler thought she was on the program to ask questions of Kevin Rudd which was a bit draining. Suggestions of tokenism re Australian Forces in Afgahnistan should have been supported by something substantial on her part rather than being merely postulated.

  20. Victoria,

    Because the MSM are telling us that the economy is stuffed / ruined / down the toilet / .

    Say it enough and everyone believes it.

  23. [So she had to resign a couple of months ago for family reasons but she’s going for National Secretary now?]
    It is the meritocracy Dio. There is no greater source of merit than being in the Labor Right faction.

  24. [The Greens support an ETS, they just don’t support an ETS that gives stacks of money back to the big polluters for no gain, which was the sticking point wrt the CPRS.]

    Couldn’t the ETS have been tweaked later on? Might it have been better to at least get an ETS into law and ongoing operation, then, later, when the public understood that the sky wasn’t about to fall in from having an emissions trading scheme, tweak it/ramp it up to be more effective? Instead, Greens Senators went and stood alongside Coalition deniers such as Bernardi and Abetz, voting for no emissions trading at all.

  26. retiredleftie@76 said:

    [It would not matter if JC was leading the labor party at the moment the poles would be bad. Julia is the victim of uncle rupes a bucket of shite a day and no one in australia could withstand this constant attack by MSM and carry good poll numbers.Its all about kill the labor govt and kill the NBN. No greater threat ever existed to rupes empire in this country than the NBN. Stay solid with Julia until the the new senate takes over in july and then watch the fun and games.]

    Absolutely spot on the money. The NBN poses an existential threat to Murdoch’s empire.

  27. [It is the meritocracy Dio. There is no greater source of merit than being in the Labor Right faction.]

    And this move proves everything we know and feel about this self-selcted group of overlords to be true.

    They may as well have made Joe Tripodi party Secretary and be done with it.

  28. [Might it have been better to at least get an ETS into law and ongoing operation]

    the eventual CPRS was the BER/Pink Batts on steroids. a litany of expensive failure with no demonstrable benefit to climate change was in the offing

    in this instance, the Greens got it right

  30. [He’s far too hysterical for an allegedly serious political show like Insiders.]

    I found his appearance on Sunday quite odd. For about the first 20 minutes he was being a real jerk, particularly with Lenore Taylor, who is 100 times a better and more responsible journalist than he is, but later seemed to become contrite, and even thanked ABC viewers at the end. Maybe he realized what a buffoon he’d been earlier.

    [There are things he’d like to do? Beyond bike riding and iron man comps? And saying, “I’m the Prime Minister”? First I’ve heard of it.]

    I have no doubt that he would implement right-wing policies across the board if he could, e.g., give us WorkChoices Mk II, reduce welfare payments, abolish Medicare, reduce taxes for companies and high-income earners, drastically cut government spending, etc.

  32. [There are things he’d like to do? Beyond bike riding and iron man comps? And saying, “I’m the Prime Minister”? First I’ve heard of it.

    I have no doubt that he would implement right-wing policies across the board if he could, e.g., give us WorkChoices Mk II, reduce welfare payments, abolish Medicare, reduce taxes for companies and high-income earners, drastically cut government spending, etc.]

    As sure as the sun rises in the East that’s what he’d do.

  34. retiredleftie @ 76 said;

    [Its all about kill the labor govt and kill the NBN. No greater threat ever existed to Rupes empire in this country than the NBN. Stay solid with Julia until the the new senate takes over in july and then watch the fun and games.]

    Got it in one. This is exactly what is going down.

    The NBN offers a ‘Rupe-free’ alternative to Australia, and by extension if it works here, the world. Mordor has not spent his life buying up as much media as he has just so his power can be undermined.

    But you are right – stick with the Govt until July 1 – then it is a different ball game.

    In the meantime watch LimitedNews and the RAbbot get more extreme and more wound up.

  35. Morning PBs

    Haven’t posted for a while. Been busy at work.

    Like George, I think that these constant polls are the death of good government. The right wing media has this wonderful tool they can use to generate endless doubt and fear – their two greatest weapons against progressive leadership. And a debt riddled populace that should be enjoying economic sunshine but have trapped themselves into ridiculous mortgages, credit card debt, unnecessary private health and education bills so that any hiccup threatens their sense of entitlement.

    This poll is as meaningless as the last one and yet so many good souls waste precious life minutes on endless flogging of dead horses and pushing of preferred barrows.

    The Labor Party is taking on some very, very powerful vested interests in the current climate and will be attacked without mercy because of it. It has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with who is the leader or how they “sell” their message. We should be rallying to support them but instead we fall for the same old tricks used to subvert and undermine that Menzies used.

  37. Socrates @ 172;

    [It is the meritocracy Dio. There is no greater source of merit than being in the Labor Right faction.]

    So, not content with having thoroughly f*&ked the NSW ALP this bunch of ‘stand-for-nothings’ now want to do the same to Federal Labor too?

    Can’t anyone arrange for Arbib & Co to be ‘run over by the metaphorical bus’? 😉

  38. Tell me they aren’t seriously considering Gillard’s former dud chief of staff?
    This lot go from one stuff up to another………:D

  39. You anti-Rudd people will hate this: he’s now got almost 1 million Twitter followers, and almost all the comments on facebook this morning are positive, in regards to Q&A last night. 🙂

  40. It would have been so much easier for Labor to tax electricity generators based on carbon produced (wind, hydro etc no tax). Distribute the tax collected to the wholesale purchasers based on the total electricity purchased regardless of source.

  41. [You anti-Rudd people will hate this: he’s now got almost 1 million Twitter followers, and almost all the comments on facebook this morning are positive, in regards to Q&A last night.]
    Keep up the good fight evan. Rudd will still be FM for the next 2 and a half years and JG PM. Get used to it.

  42. [You anti-Rudd people]
    List the anti Rudd people here evan. This really is a figment of your imagination. No-one other than some Libs are anti Rudd here.

  43. Gweneth,

    I respect your opinion, and agree about the vested interests. However, there is one key element here. Voters go to the election, not vested interests. Vested interests have sold the message this government is stuffed (not a message I agree with, btw) and the electorate have bought into that message.

    When they go to that election, they don’t give a damn about the vested interests all they will know in their minds is that the govt is stuffed and cast their vote accordingly.

    Now I do not want to ever see a coalition govt and I certainly could not countenance Abbott is PM. But like it or not, if the voters don’t start getting a more positive message soon, they could spend billions on a nine week advertising campaign and it will do nothing because the punters will believe the government (despite the real truth) is totally stuffed and vote accordingly.

  44. PBers

    It is one poll, but there is a trend in which ALP is behind at the moment. I haven’t read the poll. Were there any supplementary questions regarding the Carbon Tax. If so, it wouldn’t surprise me the ALP got these figures, particularly with the screaming headline of $864 per annum cost, and all those pensioners unsure of it and there being no detail as yet of the compensation. Hence 55/45 is entirely predictable. What doesn’t make sense is that the Coalition can have such a lead while Abbott’s figures are so bad. Is there a precedent for this? Eg, was ALP ever ahead by this much mid term with a leader that clearly stunk in the electorate?

    I maintain the view that after July 1, new Senate, compensation model out there, business on side (which they are starting to be), ALP’s figures will improve. JG will have done the hard yards, NBN will be on the board; and Abbott will look like The Grinch.

    As for all this stuff about JG conspired to have Kevin dump the ETS etc. I think people are making too much of this. Any cool head at that time would have said the ETS should go on the backburner for political reasons until Abbott and the unrepresentative swill were out of the way. I like Kevin, but I think there were many more reasons behind his loss of support in the electorate and in the party room.

  46. The only people damaging Rudd on this site, Evan, are people like yourself who seek every opportunity, real or imagined , to portray Rudd as being anti Labor and anti Gillard.

  47. Bolt’s farewell to Insiders on Sunday, and Rinehart taking a stake in TEN now start to make sense.

    http://bit.ly/gbZyTb

    [Sources said a keen advocate of the show was Ten board member and Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, who is a fan of Bolt’s work. Ms Rinehart took a 10 per cent stake in the network late last year.

    Bolt is also admired by another of Ten’s major shareholders, James Packer, who approached the columnist at the Alan Jones 25th tribute dinner in Sydney’s Darling Harbour Convention Centre in November last year and told him he was fantastic.

    Ms Rinehart has also been heard to complain about the alleged left-wing bias of Ten’s popular 7PM Project, and to say the network needs a right-wing Fox News-style show in its line-up.]

  49. [The only people damaging Rudd on this site, Evan, are people like yourself who seek every opportunity, real or imagined , to portray Rudd as being anti Labor and anti Gillard.]
    Couldn’t have put it better myself. Rudd is neither anti Labor or anti JG. If he was he would have walked by now and done a Latham.

  50. evan14: who exactly are these “anti-Rudd” people to whom you refer?

    I’ve seen plenty of Labor voters on here who still love the guy but acknowledge there were issues with his leadership style that led to a crisis of confidence amongst the caucus. They supported him when he was leader; once caucus made their decision they supported Gillard as leader. That’s what party loyalists do.

    And good luck to them, I say. If there is one thing the Labor Party needs at the moment, it is people who will stick with them through thick and thin. Fair weather friends, they have enough of.

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