Nielsen: 58-42 to Coalition

The Fairfax broadsheets report this month’s Nielsen result has the Coalition’s two-party lead at 58-42, from primary votes of 28 per cent for Labor (up two), 48 per cent for the Coalition (down three) and 12 per cent for the Greens (up one). Although a bad result for Labor by any measure, this is nonetheless an improvement on their 61-39 from Nielsen the previous month, and it maintains a trend evident throughout this year of Nielsen being a few points worse for Labor than all other pollsters. It accordingly sits quite well with the 56-44 Newspoll and what I am interpreting as a 57-43 result from the substantial Morgan phone poll released on Friday.

Julia Gillard’s personal ratings have risen slightly from the canvas: her approval rating is up four to 38 per cent with disapproval down five to 57 per cent, while Tony Abbott is down four on approval to 43 per cent and up four on disapproval to 52 per cent. Abbott maintains a 47-44 lead as preferred prime minister, down from 51-40 last time. Michelle Grattan’s report tells us Labor has a 52-48 two-party lead in Victoria, compared with a 55-45 deficit in last month’s poll, and that the Coalition lead in Queensland is 65-35, down from 68-32 last time. It should be remembered here that state-level results are from small samples. Further from Grattan:

Victoria … is also where Ms Gillard has a big lead as preferred PM – she is ahead by a hefty 51-40 per cent; in New South Wales she is ahead by 46-43 per cent. By contrast, in Queensland … Ms Gillard is behind as preferred PM 36-55 per cent. In Western Australia, she is behind Mr Abbott 33-57 per cent. Voters are disillusioned with the current leaders as economic managers. Almost three in 10 (29 per cent each) think former leaders Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull would be ”best to manage another economic crisis if one occurs”. Mr Abbott was rated as best by 21 per cent, compared with 15 per cent for Ms Gillard. A total of 58 per cent prefer a leader other than the current leaders. People remain strongly against the government’s carbon price, with opposition to it steady on 56 per cent and support at 39 per cent. Backing for the carbon price is highest among the Greens (79 per cent) and ALP voters (68 per cent); overwhelmingly, Coalition voters are opposed (82 per cent). More than a quarter of Labor voters are against the carbon price, and one in five Green voters. Regional voters are more likely to oppose the carbon price (62 per cent) than city voters (53 per cent).

UPDATE: Gordon Graham on Twitter:

#Nielsen best to manage another economic crisis if one occurs: Rudd 29%, Turnbull 29%, Abbott 21%, Gillard 15%

UPDATE 2: Full results from Nielsen here. The Coalition two-party vote is 58 per cent in New South Wales (down one on last month), 48 per cent in Victoria (down seven), 65 per cent in Queensland (down three), 61 per cent in South Australia/Northern Territory (steady) and 61 per cent in Western Australia (down two), remembering that the smaller states especially come from small samples. Labor has a better overall result on respondent-allocated preferences (56-44, a five-point improvement) than on the previous-election measure, and while I don’t recommend reading much into this, it’s interesting to note how different this is from Morgan, which has consistently had Labor doing worse on respondent-allocated preferences throughout this year.

UPDATE 3: Essential Research has the Coalition lead unchanged at 57-43 on two-party preferred, Labor has gained a point on the primary vote to 31 per cent, but the Coalition and the Greens are steady on 50 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. As with Nielsen, Julia Gillard’s personal ratings have rebounded from a diabolical result a month ago: most encouragingly for her, this is the first poll since June 14 (Newspoll and Essential results from the same day) in which she has led Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister, now leading 38-36 after trailing 37-39 last month. Gillard’s approval is up six to 35 per cent and her disapproval down seven to 55 per cent, while Tony Abbott is down two to 37 per cent and up one to 50 per cent.

Tellingly, 47 per cent of respondents say they think it “likely” there will be “another global financial crisis similar to the one that occurred in 2009” against 39 per cent who think it “about 50/50”, with only 8 per cent opting for “not very likely”. In that event, 40 per cent would more trust the Liberals to deal with it against 31 per cent for Labor and 20 per cent no difference, while 36 per cent would favour stimulus spending in response against 39 per cent who would not. For all that, 54 per cent believe the government has handled the economy well in recent years against 39 per cent who rate it as poor.

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.

2,327 comments on “Nielsen: 58-42 to Coalition”

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  1. Yes Puff, they are nutbags in a particularly fetid echo chamber as far as AGW goes.

    Actually that may be a bit harsh. I’d say quite a few of them are just scared of the effects of anthropogenic global warming and their reaction is to deny its happening so they can ignore it and sleep better.

    Havent been there for a while, but might check back tomorrow and see if that SA proposal for recall elections surfaced there and what kind of discussion it may have generated.

    Night all.

  2. imacca
    from your link,
    Doesn’t this describe Monkton?

    An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

    1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
    2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
    3. Therefore, C is true.

    This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

    This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

  3. Re The New Guard…. what to read !!
    _______________
    By far the best book on the whole subject of right-wings armies and far-right groups in the 1930ies is Michael Cathcart’s splendid study called “Guarding the National Tuckshop ”
    He looks at the plans to stage a coup had Scullin’s Labor Govt been re-elected in 1931,and similar plans against Lang in NSW in 1932(The Gov. dismissed Lang and saved the New Guard the trouble of a making a coup.)

    but the New Guard ha the backing orf a large number of conservatives ready ,many armed,and convinced that Lang was about to “Sovietize Australia

    Conservative opinion was shaken by the Great Depression,by the Russian Revolution a decade earlier and they were all convinced that the ALP was a communist front…they saw no difference between the ALP and the miniscule Communist Party of the day
    In fact their entire motivation was to remove all Labor Governments,and arrest and jail all Labor and union leaders…fascists indeed!

    MM took me to task for my critique of ex-servicemen…many of whom had been sacrificed in the pointless horror of the First World War

    Many came back with Pro-Empire views about King and Country(Views that John Howard actually holds in his view of the Republic today )

    They were fodder for the New Guard,whose leader Eric Campbell was an admirer of Italian fascism,though he later visited Nazi Germany.,and
    liked what he saw…as did King Edward 8th and his awful wife Wallis Simpson..later the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

    It is also important to understand that this issue was common everywhere in Europe where veterans were attracted to many such right-wing movements…
    Mussolini and Hitler were both war veterans after all..as were many Nazi leaders
    like Goering and Hess

    In Germany a fascist military group called the Freikorps made several attempts to overthrow the democratic Weimer Republic before
    Hitler killed it in 1933

    Michael Cathcart in his book looks at the links between many of the military leaders and the New Guard,notably Blamey then Police chief in Melbourne

    However the most notable military leader of the time General Monash refused to counternance such treason. He was Jewish and must have been alarmed at European anti-semitism in that time,linked to fascist groups.

    As to MM and his silly personal comments on my views,it suggests a rather juvenile attitude to debate
    Frankly I don’t give a damn what he thinks of me…
    …but in historical debates what is important is not silly abuse but facts and evidence
    Do some reading MM ,and that will give you something to go on about so that
    next time you comments may have some value

  4. Hah! Could do Puff, could do.

    But you have to remember that what Monkton is doing is debating, in the high school debate sense where you don’t actually need to be telling the truth or seeking it, just “win” the argument in an apparently plausible fashion. Audience reaction is the thing.

    His technique seems to revolve around finding a small, possible flaw in his oppositions argument or evidence and them to spin that into the complete discrediting of his oppositions overall position. This makes him appear to the audience to be an authority on the subject, and importantly, smarter than his opposition as he’s found the “flaw”.

    If his opposition tries to argue that Monkton’s talking out his arse, misquoting, willfully misinterpreting and such, Monkton will launch into the “ad hominem attack that he’s only defending himself against” argument and bluster until the time is about to run out in the debate or interview.

    Seeyahs!

  5. An ‘appeal to authority’ logical fallacy is usually where someone says “X is so because so-and-so, who is important, says it is”. It’s obviously only a logical fallacy if so-and-so does not provide evidence for their belief.

    ie the logical fallacy is to assume/argue that something is true simply because someone of importance says so

    If the authority can provide evidence supporting their assertion on demand, and this evidence can be inserted into the argument in place of the appeal to authority, then it’s not a logical fallacy.

    Obviously, the part that denialists are emphasising is that a simple argument that ‘AGW is true because the CSIRO says it is’ is an appeal to authority, and they are right to a certain extent. Where this falls down is that the CSIRO claims to have evidence to support their claims, and for the most part we take it on trust that they have the evidence they claim to have.

    It’s that trust aspect that is of particular relevance. For any sufficiently complex subject matter, it is generally not sensible for us all to be experts on a subject, and like many aspects of modern life we must instead place our trust in the integrity of certain institutions.

    Which institutions we trust, and why, is the core of whether people are denialists or warmists. It is possible that there is a vast scientific conspiracy to mislead us all on AGW for reasons unclear – presumably self interest in receiving funding being the primary suggestion. It is also possible that the large majority of scientists working in the area of climate science are incompetent fools who have all been sucked in to a terrible case of group-think. However, it is much more likely that the scientists and their organisations do largely know what they are doing and are not perpetrating an evil conspiracy on the rest of us, and we should trust that what they are saying is likely to be true, and act accordingly.

    As others have said repeatedly, the logic used by denialists shifts constantly, hopping from one point to another as required to bamboozle the gullible or avoid trying to defend points of argument that have long been lost. Ultimately the core of why denialists believe what they do is that they simply don’t want AGW to be true and therefore seize any and every possible niggle or inconsistency to ‘prove’ their point.

    The stupid thing is that AGW will be definitively proven one way or the other in a matter of a few decades. Unlike a lot of public policy or science, we will actually know for sure rather than it being some ill-defined arguable point from now unto eternity. This is NOT the Y2K situation again – taking action now is not going to magically make AGW not happen, and therefore potentially being a non-problem that never needed to be solved. In 20 years time I dare say that it will be possible that we can rule a line under AGW and call it disproven, and the denialists can spend the next century saying “I told you so”.

    That doesn’t help us in the (reasonably likely) event that AGW is proven with its potentially severe outcomes. I’m willing to put up with the very mild costs of transforming our economy on the chance that we are avoiding the worst of AGW’s possible outcomes, and I can’t believe any responsible person in a position of power would not do the same.

    Sorry for yet-another-global-warming post.

  6. De Groot and the opening of the Harbour Bridge
    ______________________________________
    De Groot was member of the New Guard.
    Lang was to open the bridge,and has declined to ask a British Royal to do so,which enraged the New Guard
    This is an account of the event
    De Groot was fairly typical of the New Guard, and was helped on the day by Campbell the New Guard’s leader,who based his style on Mussolini. Later Campbell There is a good bio of De Groot called “In the name of Decent Ciitizens”
    published by ABC Books a few years ago. Campbell the New Guard leader assisted De Groot on the big day. Campbell admired Mussolini greatly but later he
    adopted the Nazi-style salute for his Sydney rallies

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_de_Groot

  10. A little bit of hope amongst the stupidly and horror of Afghanistan.

    Wylie the Afghan mutt shows how every dog will have its day
    Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent From:The Australian
    August 15, 2011 12:00AM

    IN Afghanistan’s 10-year war, where acts of cruelty are commonplace and so many thousands have died, the account of one dog’s extraordinary survival is an oddly affecting tale.

    Wylie, the Afghan mutt, was rescued in February by a convoy of British soldiers on patrol in a Kandahar bazaar, where a dog-fighting crowd was beating the smaller dog with lumps of wood to force the last fight out of him.

    Back at Kandahar base, it was Australian Federal Police officer Narelle Jensz to whom the soldiers turned.

    Jensz had gone to war to train Afghan police but it was as the unofficial dog rescuer, vet and dog-adoption agent in southern Afghanistan that she had become something of a legend.

    In her 10-month tour, the 37-year-old has treated countless dogs and successfully adopted 15 Afghan strays out to returned coalition soldiers across the world, many of whom have testified to the rehumanising impact of their animal companions.

    Among them is Russel Bradley, a veteran US special forces commander and author of Lions of Kandahar, who told The Australian he had been inspired to adopt a pup after watching Jensz and a group of Australian soldiers, medics and police with the dogs.

    “I hadn’t expected to form such a bond in a war but it happened,” said Bradley of his pup Saber, who arrived in the US this week.

    “We travelled the roads of Kandahar in every vehicle imaginable, mostly with him in the passenger seat tucked into a spare set of body armour.”

    But Wylie’s injuries were so bad Jensz judged him unlikely to last the night.

    Remarkably he did but his torments were far from over.

    Two weeks later Jensz received another call. Local dog fighters had cut off Wylie’s ears and had scalped him in the process, before using the same homemade knife to cut his muzzle wide open from his nose to under his eye. He was patched up again by Jensz and a team of Australian Defence Force doctors only to return from his perilous forays outside the base with new injuries — a stab wound to the chest and a savagely docked tail.

    Then, horrifically, one day he limped back to the camp after Kandahar locals — many of whom despise dogs only marginally less than they do coalition soldiers — had tried to sever his penis.

    Three times Jensz and ADF doctors had to restitch the wound.

    “Once we stitched for 90 minutes without anaesthetic,” she said. “I can’t fathom how much pain he must have been in but he just lay there motionless, looking up at us. He didn’t bite or growl once.”

    Wylie’s refusal to submit became legendary around the Kandahar base.

    But when he was grabbed again by local thugs and thrown under a passing car it seemed his luck had finally run out.

    “It was the first time I felt defeated because Wylie had become a symbol of Kandahar,” Jensz said. “So many soldiers identified with him but I just couldn’t work out how to keep this dog alive. That was the day I decided I had to take him with me.”

    With the help of a British and a US soldiers’ animal companion fund, Wylie was evacuated to London via Kabul six weeks ago to begin the long road of quarantine hurdles that Jensz hopes will eventually bring him to Australia and her wildlife rescue property just outside Canberra.

    In the meantime someone — Jensz has no idea who — has set up a Facebook page for Wylie.

    He now has more than 100 friends who regularly post updates of his progress and donate money to his fundraising site. Wylie is visited in British quarantine almost daily by strangers who have heard his story from returned soldiers.

    “The humanity just makes me speechless,” said Jensz, who hopes to set up an Australian soldiers’ animal companion fund on her return next month.

    “Looking after the dogs was so far removed from war and conflict that it was a good sanity check and decompression for me.

    “But when I started to see the lives of soldiers around me changing, it became not so much about saving the dogs as saving these guys.”

    To donate to the fundraising site, visit nowzaddonations.chipin.com/wylie

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/wylie-the-afghan-mutt-shows-how-every-dog-will-have-its-day/story-e6frg6so-1226114841728

  12. Wow, just been listening to Alan Jones this morning.

    Had some Lib hack on (member for Kooyong), asked him questions and then provided the answers before the poor bastard could open his mouth.

    It seems the Jones format is: Question, then Answer provided by Jones, and “Yeah, that’s right Alan” provided by the guest.

    The punters apparently want an election now, but Gillard is “too scared” to go to The People. “Yeah, that’s right Alan.”

    Later on, after potentially troubling Lib MP had departed, Parrot was waxing all outraged that Coal Seam miners have a lease on part of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s old property in Queensland. Treated this as tantamount to defacing a holy shrine, “Joh would be turning in his grave”, “Folk up there love the memory of Joh”, “Just think: prime peanut land sacrificed for some loony green agenda of alternative fuel” etc. etc.

    Then proceeded to praise the Greens for being against it.

    Alan likes it both ways, it seems.

  14. For those interested in the period of The New Guard, I recommend…

    Defending the National Tuckshop
    Australia’s Secret Army Intrigue of 1931
    By Michael Cathcart
    Publisher: Penguin Books Australia
    ISBN: 014011629X
    Published 1988

    Now out of print, but lots of details on lower profile but perhaps more organised groups in Victoria. Worth finding second hand. A great background on the early thirties groups who thought the then labour govt was really “illegitimate”.

  15. Thanks Ratsars, beautiful story.

    Regarding the polls, they are bad but confirm a turning of trend in the right direction for Labor. Just as Rudd’s polls had turned for the better while promoting the mining tax before Labor’s ultra-right wing knifed him, so too Gillard’s polls are improving as she shows she is committed to delivering the carbon tax. (Will she be knifed now?) The point is not to always suggest a new tax, but to show you are committed to something beyond your own re-election.

  17. Oh, yes, the other thing that Jones was on about was “How dare Julia Gillard stop wearing out her shoe leather on the Carbon Tax.” (I’m fair dinkum here) “She should forget all that National Disability stuff, and pensions and Health, and stick to what The People want her to talk about… and that’s The Carbon Tax.”

    Not the slightest mention that Abbott took off two weeks for a holiday in Switzerland right in the middle of all this.

  18. Socrates

    On reflection you would have to agree that the manner in which Rudd announced a mining tax, was his own fatal error

  21. [BB

    I recommend you stop listening to Jones et al and 2gb. It is detrimental to your health!]

    It’s a love/hate thing. Just a 10 minute heart starter.

    How you could listen to the fluffer for hours at a time is beyond me.

  22. BB

    here in Melbourne, we have Neil Mitchell on 3aw. He is no way as bad as anything you have in Sydney. I found that i was becoming a very aggro person whilst listening to this program every morning. Since giving it away a few years ago, i have never looked back. They are just overpaid oxygen thieves.

  23. A stage collapse after “heavy wind” in Indiana which killed five people was described as “freakish”
    http://www.smh.com.au/world/fifth-person-dies-after-freakish-stage-collapse-20110815-1iter.html

    Sigh. Looking at the photos this is a straight example of structural failure after a lateral (wind) load appears to have buckled the columns. You learn to design structures to withstand such loads in 2nd year civil engineering. There appears to be no diagonal bracing in evidence in the photos. It would have taken the lateral loads. The only thing freakish about this tragedy is the incompetence of both whoever erected the stage and whoever approved it. A lot of temporary structures are built lower standards than permanent structures, but this thing hasn’t even withstood a “heavy wind”. Shameful.

  24. Good morning, Bludgers.

    Victoria: for the benefit of Bludgers like me who have Murdoch sites blocked, can you please post that article here?

    Cheers 🙂

  26. The obsession with climate change and “the carbon tax” seems stronger with Jones and the rest of the 2GB Liberal jocks than with any Green MP or member…

  29. [How you could listen to the fluffer for hours at a time is beyond me.]

    One would have to be a Liberal extremist to voluntarily sit through more than a few minutes of 2GB’s hectoring, hateful partisan propaganda.

  30. Victoria: Julia is no Paul Keating……..indeed no current politician comes anywhere near matching the brilliance of PJK in the bearpit of Parliament Question Time.

    And I see no mention of the latest poll’s other finding, that Rudd & Turnball are still preferred to Gillard & Abbott.

  31. Sounds like Michael Cathcart should republish. Will be able to sell through the ABC shop.

    Deblonay

    I do not think the fascist movement held as much influence in Australia as in UK. King Edward and his lady friend were more than just a little influenced I think. Indeed if Hitler had invaded the UK it was intended to reinstate him. The fear amongst lefties in Australia was that the UK would ally itself with Germany and go to war against Russia. The British upper classes were strongly in favour. My father would not join up in WWII until the Pearl Harbour when we were at war with Japan for just this reason.

    For an amusing insight into the thinking of the upper classes read the works and biographies of the Mitford sisters. One sister Unity was devoted to Hitler and may even have been in a sexual relationship. (some scuttlebut even suggest that Max Mosely is really Hitler’s child by Unity Mitford). Another sister Diana was the wife of Oswald Mosley (UK Fascist leader). A third sister Jessica was a communist and married an nephew of Churchill. She went to the US. Mind you politics was a game at home with the sisters dividing their bedroom one fascist side the other communist.

    Sorry for the diversion but I think that the potential role of the UK upper classes in bringing Fascism to UK is reather underestimated. Think of writers like Evelyn Waugh where there is a distinctly elitist “born to rule” thinking with hints of fascism. Certainly the career of Guy whathisname who I assume was Waugh himself indicated that he was not trusted to fight Germans and was distrusted. Mind you Literature scholars I may have made an ass of myself above but it is how I sense it without being an expert of Waugh.

    Gotta go

  32. Victoria
    [On reflection you would have to agree that the manner in which Rudd announced a mining tax, was his own fatal error]
    Absolutely not. Rudd’s polls were turning around during the mining tax debate. They had tanked after postponing the CPRS, and various backflips in early 2010. Poss had demonstrated this with his pollytracker analysis last year. Those were the fatal errors. I still regret both the timing of the knifing, and Gillard’s subsequent cave in to the mining companies. IMO the first decision damaged Labor and the second damaged the national interest. That is water under the bridge now, but we will have to agree to disagree here.

  33. Victoria – thanks for the link to Loosley’s piece. It was a good read.

    I thought the most interesting piece of polling in recent times was the Morgan finding that although a large majority are opposed to the carbon price, a large majority don’t want Abbott to repeal it if he’s elected.

    We’re a weird mob.

  35. Socrates

    I have connections with those in the CFMEU. They said to me after Rudd made the annoucement, he is finished as PM. Wtte that Rudd was delusional to think that as PM would be able to just announce and implement this policy. The magnates were going to destroy him. When I asked, how long he would last as PM, they said weeks. At the time, I felt tne statements were over the top, but I was proved wrong.

  41. Soc

    [I still regret both the timing of the knifing, and Gillard’s subsequent cave in to the mining companies. IMO the first decision damaged Labor and the second damaged the national interest. That is water under the bridge now, but we will have to agree to disagree here.]

    +1

  42. Kerin was a very good minister in the Hawke/Keating years!
    I don’t know what the world’s coming to when Labor stalwarts in here are so complacent about a poll which shows the ALP losing by a country mile – what if Gillard’s stocks aren’t much better in 12 months time, as you all expect?

  44. As many people have said two years is a very long time in politics.

    My feeling is the public will eventually get sick and tired of phoney Tonys negitivity/stupidity and lack of policy to take the nation forward during tough times add the weak a pathetic shadow front bench and its not so rosy as the Tory urgers at News Ltd think!

  48. I’ve written off Gillard – my opinion still is that a 100% healthy Rudd would do a better job in the next election campaign, but I know that only myself & one or two others here hold that view.
    I guess I better hope that the rest of you are all correct, and Abbott’s going to spectacularly implode over the next 12 months, because right now, I feel as if the Labor factional bosses(by sticking to an unpopular leader) are dooming many good Labor MPs to unemployment after 2013.

  49. Abbott had better tell Alan Jones!! 😀

    [latikambourke Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he won’t support the Green’s bill to forbid mining companies from entering farmers land unless allowed.
    1 minute ago]

    [latikambourke Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says the issue of mining companies accessing farmers land is one for the states.
    less than a minute ago]

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