Morgan: 56.5-43.5 or 53.5-46.5 or 57-43 or 54.5-45.5 to Coalition

Roy Morgan has released two sets of poll results simultaneously, by way of confusing the hell out of everybody who doesn’t pay more attention than they ought to. One combines the results of the last two weekends’ face-to-face polling; the other is a phone poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights from a big sample of 1006. Furthermore, Morgan as always publishes separate two-party results using both respondent-allocated preferences and preferences as directed at the previous election, and these continue the recent trend of being highly divergent.

For mine, the most significant of the resulting four sets of figures is the previous-election two-party measure from the phone poll, as this has been conducted with the same methodology and from a similar sample size as Newspoll. Unfortunately, this particular result does not make sense to me. Whereas the primary vote figures are slightly better for the Coalition than this week’s Newspoll – 49 per cent against 29.5 per cent for Labor and 12 per cent for the Greens, compared with 47 per cent, 29 per cent and 12 per cent – the previous-election two-party result is a fair bit worse: 54.5-45.5 compared with Newspoll’s 56-44. Applying the preference flows from the previous election (with 79 per cent of Greens preferences and 42 per cent of all other minor party and independent preferences going to Labor) produces a result of 57-43. That, as it happens, is the result Morgan has listed for its respondent-allocated measure – which is not to suggest they have run them the wrong way around.

The phone poll also comes with attitudinal questions, finding global warming scepticism at a plateau of 37 per cent after a steady increase over the previous three years; opinions on the carbon tax more or less unchanged since a month ago with support at 38 per cent and opposition at 58 per cent; and support for the Coalition’s policy of overturning the carbon tax down three points to 45 per cent with opposition up three to 48 per cent. There is also a flawed question on asylum seekers which invites respondents to choose between allowing boat arrivals to apply for immigration or subjecting them to the Malaysia solution, with no further options available. This finds 52 per cent appearing to support the Malaysia solution, contrary to last week’s Essential Research, but this is almost certainly because it’s the “tougher” of the only two alternatives presented.

The face-to-face poll shows essentially no change on the previous published result from the weekends of July 16-17 and July 23-24. Labor’s primary vote is steady on a relatively healthy 34.5 per cent, the Coalition is up half a point to 47.5 per cent and the Greens are steady on 12 per cent. The respondent-allocated two-party result is unchanged on 56.5-43.5, while the previous-election result is up from 53-47 to 53.5-46.5. This time, the latter figure is exactly where I would expect it to be.

In other news, draft federal boundaries for South Australia were published today: see the post below.

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. View all posts by William Bowe