Nielsen: 59-41 to Coalition

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the latest Nielsen survey has robbed a Morgan phone poll conducted a fortnight ago of its distinction as the only poll showing the Coalition’s lead reaching the heights of 59-41. Nielsen has the Labor primary vote at just 27 per cent – “the lowest level ever for a major party in the poll’s history of almost four decades” – with the Coalition at 49 per cent. No result has been provided for the Greens at this stage. Last month’s Nielsen poll had the Coalition lead at 56-44, with primary votes of 31 per cent for Labor, 47 per cent for the Coalition and 12 per cent for the Greens. More detail presumably to follow.

UPDATE: In anticipation of a Morgan face-to-face poll which didn’t arrive, I prepared a chart earlier today showing how both Morgan face-to-face and Essential had converged upon the Newspoll trend over the last year or two after traditionally having been more favourable to Labor. I did this by producing quarterly averages for each agency’s polling going back to the start of 2009. I didn’t bother to include Nielsen as it reports far less frequently and is thus more prone to variability. But Nielsen’s habits relative to other pollsters would seem to have become a live issue as of half an hour ago, so now I have. And as you can see, Nielsen seems to have gone very sour for Labor of late: whereas the other pollsters have been broadly consistent around 54-46, the last three Nielsen results have been 56-44, 56-44 again and now 59-41. “Morgan (RA)” and “Morgan (PE)” refer to their respondent-allocated and previous-election methods of allocating minor party/independent preferences, which tells a story of its own.

UPDATE 2: GhostWhoVotes reports the poll has a dizzying 60 per cent now favouring Kevin Rudd for Labor leader against just 31 per cent for Julia Gillard. We are also informed the Greens primary vote is on 12 per cent, up two from last time.

UPDATE 3: It now emerges that Tony Abbott is equal with Julia Gillard as preferred prime minister on 46 per cent, the first time Abbott has achieved this. Julia Gillard’s approval rating is down six to 37 per cent and her disapproval up seven to 59 per cent, while Tony Abbott is up one on approval to 46 per cent and steady on disapproval at 50 per cent. These all entail remarkably low undecided results: perhaps this is a feature of Nielsen I’ve just never noticed before.

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.

3,857 comments on “Nielsen: 59-41 to Coalition”

Comments Page 4 of 78
1 … 3 4 5 … 78

  3. [Agree with your sentiments. This week has been a difficult one. The govt have to hold their nerve. Unlike me. I am a nervous wreck at the moment. I feel a little desperate. Perhaps Rudd and Gillard should be seen together hugging or something!! Sorry, I am making no sense, but I am losing all perspective!!!]

    Except that it’d look phoney and not genuine!
    Really the wrong approach!

  4. William’s chart has given some hope. Seems Neilsen’s methodology may have deteriorated while others have improved. Perhaps they are sticking to weightings that don’t adequately take account of the movement away from fixed line phones while the others are improving their techniques to take this into account.

  5. No 135

    It’s not a matter of “selling”. The public didn’t need to be sold on the merits of animal welfare.

    The point is that they’ve neutralised free political capital because they’ve bungled the policy response. Common sense tells you that if you’re going to institute an immediate export ban, you need to have compensation measures in place to ensure that the people affected are placated while the problem is sorted out.

    Indonesia is our biggest live export market so any ban will have widespread effects.

  6. 136 victoria
    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:20 pm | Permalink
    [vitalise

    Agree with your sentiments. This week has been a difficult one. The govt have to hold their nerve. Unlike me. I am a nervous wreck at the moment. I feel a little desperate. Perhaps Rudd and Gillard should be seen together hugging or something!! Sorry, I am making no sense, but I am losing all perspective!!!]

    Chin up, vic

    It’s the media winning the vote.

  7. my say

    chill

    this most definitely out of kilter with the trend

    i expect a wash thru for amonth or so, then back to 48/52 territory

    relax

    we have 2 and a bit years to go

    🙂

  8. [ajm

    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:23 pm | Permalink

    William’s chart has given some hope. Seems Neilsen’s methodology may have deteriorated while others have improved. Perhaps they are sticking to weightings that don’t adequately take account of the movement away from fixed line phones while the others are improving their techniques to take this into account.
    ]

    Neilsen usually in their full rsults metro – non metro and demographic breakdowns – they will be interesting to see.

  10. Glen,

    “The Honourable the Prime Minister Sir Tony Abbott (circa 2014)”

    Don’t scare me, there is still a couple of years left before the next election!

  12. [‘Prime Minister Abbott; Deputy Prime Minister Truss’]

    No one can predict the future. Expect the unexpected. It would surely be disappointing it happens. But sometimes you’ve got to let people make mistakes so they learn from them.

    Y’know, like when you say to your kids, don’t two jump on the trampoline at the same time, someone’s gonna get hurt. They do it anyway, then BUMP! they knock their heads together … and learn a painful lesson that serves them in good stead. Unfortunately, in the domain of adults and politics, some lessons have to be learned repeatedly, periodically. Voting for conservatives being one of them.

  15. Victoria,
    It is a sign of the conservative forces discomfort with their current situation and their terror of the looming power-shift with the new Senate that a Neilson poll like this brings on a rush of right-wing orgasms.

    Don’t worry; they will soon go flat.

  16. [Generic Person

    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:24 pm | Permalink

    No 135

    It’s not a matter of “selling”. The public didn’t need to be sold on the merits of animal welfare.

    The point is that they’ve neutralised free political capital because they’ve bungled the policy response. Common sense tells you that if you’re going to institute an immediate export ban, you need to have compensation measures in place to ensure that the people affected are placated while the problem is sorted out.

    Indonesia is our biggest live export market so any ban will have widespread effects.
    ]

    You fiorgot the racist overtones on your radio station of choice 2GB – who on the night of the Four Corners Broadcast were calling for a full ban based on indonesia and terrorism and Islam.

  17. [Apple Blossom
    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 9:55 pm | Permalink
    The results doesn’t sound great. I am not feeling too optimistic she or labor will be reelected.]

    27 months to go

  19. is that the wilderness i see up ahead?

    i mean.. really… i’m almost speechless…

    as far the “long game” (patent pending) goes, its seems more the wrong. they need to go and find people with experience and start bloody tapping it!

  20. No 162

    Yeah right. Australians experienced more than a decade of unprecedented prosperity between 1996 and 2007. They are now regretting electing a government whose every policy response is a new tax.

  21. [GP at this rate the ALP couldn’t sell the cure for cancer!]

    You know, it’d just be spun as Labor putting brave oncologists and other medical staff out of a job.

  25. Glen,

    I reckon if the cure was to bury Liberals with their heads in the ground and bums in the air, Labor could sell a new bicycle rack initiative.

  26. [Agree with your sentiments. This week has been a difficult one. The govt have to hold their nerve. Unlike me. I am a nervous wreck at the moment. I feel a little desperate. Perhaps Rudd and Gillard should be seen together hugging or something!! Sorry, I am making no sense, but I am losing all perspective!!!]

    Victoria, the only poll that counts is the poll on election day, all other polls are just noise. The only Party that has an interest in going to an election in the immediate time frame is the Liberal Party. Labor, the Independents and the Greens certainly do not. They just have to stay focussed on the main game which is working their way through the policies and let what happens in two years take care of itself.

  28. GP

    Sad to say, we agree.

    Cf political mishandling over the past little while, I would add to the live cattle ban, Ms Roxon’s panhandling of Big Tobacco, the premature announcement of the running sore that is the Malaysian solution and the ongoing deaths in a lost and unpopular war.

    The perfectly sensible, and long over-due, emphasis on buying off the shelf capability, which will save billions, has been lost in the miasma.

    They are own goals. The policy merits are swamped by political mishandling.

    This is the obverse of the Opposition’s situation. Their political handling is superb; their polices are crap.

  32. Boer. I agree. The ALP need new strategies for managing their policy development process and their communications. What they are currently doing isn’t working. The policies are mainly sound, but its all in the deliver… or lack of.

    frustrating times. made worse by the dimwit posing as the alternative.

  34. Boerwar

    We have lost four soldiers in the past month. This has made the war more unpopular than ever. Wonder if the govt is losing support for this reason?

  37. [That is so premature, you will be arriving before you have even left.]

    True but at least allow me that…after all those 60/40 to Labor and people putting those into the calculator. I want my fun 😀

  38. well i am not looking here till essential on monday after noon.

    [vp
    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:23 pm | Permalink
    my say,

    I believe Julia stays was part of the deal.]

    i blame rudd for this alwasy sulking around, but then may be not
    i was thinking to night this pollution tax is taking to dam long, we should just be governing like howard and do nothing. when you do nothing people like you.

    but then when the rest of the world and they nearly have get a pollution tax the mob will say why where we so late getting this.
    dam people make me sick. what hell is going on in this coutry.

    o well julias footy won i was sure that was an omen may be not.

    27 months to go is the only happy thought at the moment

    but really to be serious, it was when the pollution tax was taking ( ets) last time around thepolls went south, people think we are doing nothing becauce they dont any things but this dam pollution tax dam the thing just let earth burn like the toreis would lets dont care about the world just do nothing. well had my rant
    but its seems this what the morons in this country want do nothings.

  39. This poll is generous to the Coalition of course, but it shows the trend is away from Labor. To make matters a little worse the Government has had a bad week so that will just reinforce Labor as being hopeless in the public’s mind.

    Has anybody really wonder why it is Labor has struggled in the polls this past 12 months no matter what?

    The chronic acute problem Labor and its leader has is all to do with legitimacy.

    The ousting of Rudd was the first significant negative but the failure to then win a clear election victory reinforces the sense that Gillard Labor is not wholly legitimate.

    I think this well has been well and truly poisoned now and nothing short of a change and shuffle in the hope of creating something that is new and gives the air of legitimacy will help them. The dilema will be of when to make the changes. It shouldn’t be too early, but if you leave too long Gillard could still be adding poison to the well.

    What a terrible mess. If people could have been patient, waited their turn, made the most of each of their resources, use them up before discarding them, they would now have more options. Except they wouldn’t be in this pickle.

  40. No 178

    The problem with the ALP in the last three years is that they’ve basically sucked all the positivity, authority and strength from public policy. Wherever you turn there’s a new tax, new burden, new levy, new debt, new deficit or new ban on the horizon. Add to that minority government and a prime minister as hapless as her verbose predecessor and we have today’s Nielson poll result.

  43. So I guess that the general consensus, from the point of view of Labor supporters, is that this is a rogue poll, there’s nothing to worry about, Julia is doing a superb job, it’s just the media who are deliberately distorting the good work the government is doing, everything will turn around by 2013?
    I’d be happy if you’re all right about this, I don’t want an Abbott Government either.
    We’ll wait and see what transpires over the next 6 months.

  44. [Glen @181.
    That is so premature, you will be arriving before you have even left.]

    Yes but it’s fun playing with the calculator …

  45. Morrison needs to be careful about what he says he ‘finds’ in Malaysia… i’m sure Australia’s relationship with them is more important than its relationship with Nauru. If he comes back bad-mouthing it could back fire on him.

  46. glen you will have your fun when he takes your pension away and send you down the mines to work for living.

    thats how bad i think abbott would be

    and i think he would plan to stay in power for year, we would not know out country.
    hope you enjoy yourself

  47. No 179

    Cuppa, it’s time you actually lay the responsibility on the Labor party instead of constantly finding a target in the media.

  49. 179 Cuppa
    Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:30 pm

    [It’s the media winning the vote.

    It is. If not for the media, the Liberals would be extinct.]

    Thanks Cuppa

    Beginning to think everyone’s gone mad here

    Here’s an example:
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/16/3245609.htm

    Headline: “Independents vent fury over carbon ad spend”

    Fury?? Absolute crap: I listened to every interview with Windsor and Oakeshott. Not a breath of fury. Mostly, a “so what” attitude – this is the way it plays in a minority govt, etc.

    Somebody commented earlier about another ABC item – wtte that the first statement was a lie, the second was political opinion. Re Nauru and the Refugee Convention.

    The Murdochracy – every freaking headline – NO NO NO to Labor.

    Fairfax – since Coorey’s trip to Nauru – the bias is tangible.

  50. victoria

    My view is that Mr Abbott’s lies about the carbon tax have been the single most destructive element in terms of Labor’s popularity.

    I also believe that the relentless campaign to destablise the Government by the Opposition and by the Government’s MSM enemies has been effective.

    All the other stuff is probably more or less noise.

    The Afghanisatan war, and the deaths, is part of the noise. It is not helping but it is not, IMHO, a major vote changer. Yet.

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 4 of 78
1 … 3 4 5 … 78