Morgan: 53.5-46.5 to Coalition

The latest result from Roy Morgan combines its last two weekends of face-to-face polling from a sample of 1776, and finds the Labor primary vote recovering slightly to 35 per cent (up 1.5 per cent on the weekend of June 4-5), the Coalition steady on 46.5 per cent and the Greens down half a point to 11.5 per cent. On the two-party preferred measure that allocates preferences as per the result of the previous election (my favourite), the Coalition’s lead has gone from 54-46 to 53.5-46.5; it’s down more substantially on the respondent-allocated measure favoured by Morgan (lately), from 56.5-43.5 to 54.5-45.5.

Now it’s time for PB Chart of the Week, a feature that may or may not live up to its name over the long term. With Labor polling disastrously in every jurisdiction, I thought it might be instructive to plot the party’s federal and state voting performance since the inception of Newspoll in late 1985 (I’ve started at the beginning of 1986 for the sake of neatness). The chart below shows combined quarterly measures for Labor’s two-party vote, both federally (which is quite straightforward) and at state level (a population-weighted result with the larger states accounting for proportionally greater shares of the result, and Tasmania excluded because Newspoll doesn’t do them regularly).

What we see is that the party’s federal and state fortunes do seem to be quite closely related. While Labor was travelling better at federal than state level from 1986 to 1990 and again since 2008, they tended to move up and down (actually just down more recently) in tandem within those periods. However, this may be because the respondents for Newspoll’s federal and state surveys are usually the same people. The two lines sat very closely together throughout the 1990s, but decoupled as Labor achieved state-level dominance in the Howard years. The impression more recently is of the federal line chasing the tail of the states, although recent form suggests the downward federal trend wouldn’t have bottomed out yet.

If the results don’t quite bear out talk of Labor being in record-breaking dire straits at present – at least to the extent that they do not appear in a worse position than in the twilight of the Keating years – it should be noted that the picture would look worse for them if I was using the primary vote rather than two-party preferred.

UPDATE (27/6/11): Essential Research: 55-45 (steady). Coalition 48% (+1), Labor 32% (-1), Greens 11% (-1). “If Kevin Rudd was Labor leader”, 45 per cent say they would vote Labor against 42 per cent for the Coalition, with Labor leading 53-47 on two-party. Similarly, the Coalition leads 59-41 if Malcolm Turnbull was leader. In both cases I suggest you have to account for mischief-making by supporters of the other party.

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.

3,934 comments on “Morgan: 53.5-46.5 to Coalition”

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  1. [Yes, I know, it’s immaterial and it won’t happen and the factional bosses ignore such stuff.]

    You still don’t get it Evan. The people and the polls didn’t ask Rudd to stand down. The parliamentary party did. Not because of the polls. They wanted rid of him because of his leadership style!

  5. [Labor’s support in QLD is too low, it’s smarter for Julia to keep Rudd inside the tent, ditto for Craig Emerson(who I’ve always got a lot of time for).]

    Both Rudd and Emerson are Cabinet Ministers. When you say ‘inside the tent’, what exactly do you mean? That the tent is pitched in the grounds of the Lodge?

  6. [GP their idea of reform is another new tax.]
    Hello! What about the GST?

    You know full well the cheapest way to deal with carbon pollution is to price it. You also know that about half the Liberal partyroom knows it is the only economically sane thing to do, and they are simply opposing it for purely political reasons.

  7. Apple

    I can assure you, having used several different pseudo whatsits in my blogging life, that your arguments are treated very differently when other posters assume you’re a male.

    I got outed by Diog, having managed to remain mysteriously sexless for about three years (by which time, it didn’t matter….)

  9. [I will suggest to Julia that she promotes Jason Clare]

    Clare is a factional ally of Mark Arbib. Still interested?

  13. [The problem for Labor is that their agenda is about new taxes, that’s it. They have raised concerns about sovereign risk and no-one listens to, or has confidence in, the government.]
    No, the only threat to Sovereign risk is Abbott\’s bullshit promise to repeal the carbon price, which he knows he won\’t actually be able to do because he won\’t be able to get it through the Senate.

  14. vp:

    I see HSO comment in other places with her actual name (gravatar is the same), so I guess I don’t code her as male, despite her screen name here.

    But yes, from screen name she’s ‘male’.

  16. [I got outed by Diog, having managed to remain mysteriously sexless for about three years]

    Zoomster, so, do you recommend celibacy after your experience of three years?

  17. [No 106

    I knew there was a reason why ‘tard’ is in your name.]
    What is your position? Do nothing on climate change? Or the Abbott proposal of increasing taxes in order to fund inefficient pork barrel carbon abatement projects that the Productivity Commission cost more and achieve less abatement?

    A carbon price is the market solution, you seem to be proposing a Marxist / Leninist non-solution.

  18. [Apple Blossom @ 75:
    Posted Friday, June 24, 2011 at 9:54 pm | Permalink

    Sorry, I should have said the main – emphasis main – protagonists were male, with the rider that there might be females using male pseudonyms, but I doubt regular posters would be able to maintain that guise for too long.

    I’ll further concede that there were a few females posting last night but that for me is not the point.

    What makes you say there are women using male pseudonyms? I don’t think there is any reason for them not to reveal the fact they’re women.]

    Without protraction, I think that was Gusface’s point. But you’d be better asking him & perhaps view all the posts concerning this subject.

  19. [Hello! What about the GST? ]

    The GST destroyed other taxes it wasnt purely a revenue raiser for the government who had spent like a drunken sailor!

    Tax and Spend it’s the same thing we get from Labor every time they’re in office!

  22. [The GST destroyed other taxes it wasnt purely a revenue raiser for the government who had spent like a drunken sailor!]

    Here we go AGAIN! Ugh! Glen, what tax were you paying on a cup of coffee BEFORE the GST?

  27. [I’m not responding to you so stop directing me to answer questions period!]

    Yes, please stop directing your questions to him, otherwise he may have to come up with facts, and evidence, and such

  30. [The GST destroyed other taxes it wasnt purely a revenue raiser for the government who had spent like a drunken sailor!]
    The carbon taxes and mining taxes aren\’t purely revenue raisers either they both are designed to achieve clear policy objectives.

    The carbon tax prices carbon pollution to encourage PRIVATE investment in clean energy tech, while the mining tax provides a fairer return for what are finite resources. We need the money, what exactly is Australia going to sell to the rest of the world in 80 years when most of our iron ore has gone?

    If you don\’t support a market price on carbon pollution, but you support some form of action on climate change, then you will ultimately have to propose raising other taxes and / or cutting other spending in order for the government to fund billions and billions worth of abatement projects. If you oppose the carbon tax, you should at least have the intellectual honesty to name what other taxes you\’ll increase. Income taxes? Company tax? The GST perhaps? What about proposing another tax surcharge on big businesses, that\’s what the Liberals did at the last election.

    Add to this the fact the Coalition\’s \’soil magic\’ policy is a load of wishful thinking that will simply be a waste of money:
    [STEVE CANNANE: Greg Hunt has altered the transcript of the original Lateline interview and posted it on his website to reflect what he says was his intended definition of 100 square kilometres.

    Based on this altered figure, Greg Hunt believes 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide can be abated in one year over one million hectares.

    But using the CSIRO\’s best estimate, you\’d need a land mass of at least 75 million hectares to do this. And if you take the CSIRO\’s figures at the lower end of the scale, then you\’d need 500 million hectares, or 65 per cent of the land mass of Australia.]
    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3179336.htm

  31. Grattan at her usual decisive best:

    [As to any predictions on where Labor will be when the second anniversary of Gillard’s ascension comes round – that would require a Nostradamus.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/many-unhappy-returns-20110623-1gh8d.html#ixzz1QC8VwRrk

    Rudd might be a problem, but if Gillard harnesses him he won’t be. She might be there next year, and then again she mightn’t. It could be good, or it could be bad.

    The only people still obsessing over this Rudd v. Gillard thing are the not-the-media insiders and a couple of gormless PB contributors.

    They take turns to “write it up”. Everyone has to have their version of events, like the endless series of articles we got on the “Sauce Bottle” fiasco/debacle/catastrophe/non-event.

    They’re queueing up to have their digs.

    There is no election. There is no challenge. Rudd has no support. The Plebiscite never even got put up for a vote. Abbott is not Prime Minister. Morrison is not Immigration Minister. Hockey is not the Treasurer. The NBN has not failed. The BER was not botched. Pink Batts actually saved lives. Our economy is not in the toilet. Interest rates are not going up.

    We are, in short, the envy of the world.

    But the Coalition insists they have to destroy Australia in order to save it.

    The not-the-media types meanwhile take turns to write the same deadly boring “analysis”, day, after day, after day.

  35. [Yesterday, Mr Hockey posted a series of pictures on his Twitter account ]
    HoJo is a poster boy? Say it isn’t so!

  36. No 122

    Whatever could be said of the GST, Howard put his case to the people and won the 1998 election and two subsequent elections, and for several years the people received substantial income tax cuts.

  40. [Gusface
    Posted Friday, June 24, 2011 at 9:57 pm | Permalink
    charlton

    no I dont

    by your very insistence it was male, downgraded to manily male with a rider that a woman could maintain said persona]

    Call it the realpolitik; most women would understand my point.

  41. [Tax and Spend it’s the same thing we get from Labor every time they’re in office!]
    During the 1980s, the Coalition voted against Labor Governments imposing Fringe Benefits Tax, Capital Gains Tax and applying mining royalties to gold (which for absolutely no rational reason was royalty free until 1980).

    If Labor imposing taxes is so bad, why didn\’t the Howard government repeal all these taxes when the budget was in surplus?

  42. [Whatever could be said of the GST, Howard put his case to the people and won the 1998 election and two subsequent elections, and for several years the people received substantial income tax cuts.]

    So did Julia Gillard:

    [“I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism,” she said of the next parliament. “I rule out a carbon tax.”
    …
    She would legislate the carbon price next term if sufficient consensus existed.]

  46. [Whatever could be said of the GST, Howard put his case to the people and won the 1998 election]
    Hang on a second, he lost the 2pp vote at the 1998 election, and just this week Abbott was telling us how important it is to accept the judgement of the people.

    Oh of course Abbott also said if the YES case (for a carbon price) wins, he will refuse to change Coalition policy.

  48. [Whenever I see the word ‘fairer’, I put my blinkers on.]

    blinkers are permanent fixtures of the Liberal Proletariat

  50. If Labor want to retain at least some of the remaining furniture in Queensland, they should keep a lid on Beattie and a few others making unhelpful contributions.

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