Nielsen: 58-42 to Coalition; 52-48 to Labor under Rudd

Dreadful though the headline figures are for Labor, the latest monthly Nielsen poll might have offered them cause for relief, with no change to the Coalition’s two-party lead of 58-42. Labor is down a point on the primary vote to 27 per cent, with the Coalition steady on 48 per cent and the Greens up one to 13 per cent. However, the poll offers new torment for Julia Gillard by finding Labor would be ahead 52-48 if it were led by Kevin Rudd. The primary votes, we are told, would be 42 per cent to Labor, 43 per cent to the Coalition and 9 per cent to the Greens. Rudd has 44 per cent support as preferred Labor leader, against 19 per cent for Gillard, 10 per cent for Stephen Smith, 8 per cent for Simon Crean, 5 per cent for Bill Shorten and 4 per cent for Greg Combet. There has also been a sharp drop in Julia Gillard’s already miserable personal ratings: approval down six to 32 per cent, disapproval up five to 62 per cent. Tony Abbott is steady on both approval (43 per cent) and disapproval (52 per cent), and now leads as preferred prime minister 48-40, out from 47-44. I should have full tables complete with state breakdowns tomorrow, along with the regular Monday Essential Research results.

UPDATE: Phillip Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The latest Herald/Nielsen poll finds 54 per cent of voters believe asylum seekers arriving by boat should be allowed to land in Australia to be assessed. Just 25 per cent say they should be sent to another country to be assessed while 16 per cent believe the boats should be “sent back” and 4 per cent don’t know … When the question was asked a month ago, 28 per cent favoured offshore processing and 53 per cent onshore processing.

UPDATE 2: Essential Research. Another poll showing Labor’s position has not actually worsened since the High Court’s ruling on the Malaysia solution: indeed, the Coalition’s two-party lead has narrowed slightly, from 57-43 to 56-44. Labor is up two points on the primary vote to 32 per cent, with the Coalition steady on 49 per cent and the Greens down a point to 10 per cent. Unfortunately for Gillard, this survey features Essential’s monthly personal ratings, which show Gillard beating her previous worst result from July with 28 per cent approval (down seven from August and one from July) and 64 per cent disapproval (up nine from August and two from July). Tony Abbott is up two on approval to 39 per cent and steady on disapproval at 50 per cent, and leads 40-36 as preferred prime minister after trailing 38-36 in August. A question on processing of asylum seekers is bewilderingly at odds with the Nielsen results (see above), with 36 per cent rather than 54 per cent favouring processing in Australia. “Sent to another country” has 53 per cent – here the difference with Nielsen can partly be accounted for by the absence of a “sent back” option. You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but Andrew Wilkie’s pokies reforms have overwhelming support: 67 per cent (up two from April) in favour against 25 per cent opposed. Forty per cent support changes to industrial relations laws when it is put to respondents that doing so will increase productivity, but 42 per cent remain opposed.

Full tables from the Nielsen poll can be viewed here. With results for September, we can now construct Newspoll-style state-level results for the third quarter with reasonable sample sizes by combining the last three monthly polls. For the Nielsen figures, samples and margins of error are about 1300 and 2.7 per cent for New South Wales; 1000 and 3.1 per cent for Victoria; 750 and 3.6 per cent for Queensland; 390 and 5.0 per cent for Western Australia; 330 and 5.4 per cent for South Australia.

  Apr-Jun Jul-Sep
  Newspoll Nielsen Nielsen Swing
Total 46 43 41 9.1
NSW 45 41 41 7.5
Vic 52 47 48 7.0
Qld 42 40 35 9.9
WA 42 44 39 4.6
SA 50 47 40 13.2

Some more preselection snippets to add to the ones from Friday, with Tasmania being a bit of a theme:

• Brigadier Andrew Nikolic won Liberal preselection for Bass without opposition in July. Nikolic had most recently run the Defence Department’s international policy division, after previous service in the army including postings in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was rated a favourite for the preselection ahead of the 2010 election, but withdrew citing work and family reasons.

• The Launceston Examiner reported in late July that Brett Whiteley, who lost his seat in Braddon at the state election, had been sounded out as a candidate for the federal seat of Braddon by Senator Eric Abetz and state party president Richard Chugg. However, Whiteley was quoted saying he would prefer a return to state politics. Whiteley is now chief executive of council-owned Burnie Sports and Events.

• The Liberals have again endorsed wool marketer Eric Hutchinson to run against Dick Adams, Labor’s member of 18 years in the central Tasmanian seat of Lyons. There was earlier talk that former Senator Guy Barnett might be interested in running for the seat.

• The retirement announcement of Labor’s Bendigo MP Steve Gibbons excited some speculation that recently ousted Victorian Premier John Brumby, who held the seat from 1983 until his defeat in 1990, might seize the opportunity for a federal comeback. However, the Ballarat Courier reports that Brumby has ruled himself out. The report also said former Bendigo Health and Ambulance Victoria chairwoman and lawyer Marika McMahon had long been touted as Gibbons’ possible successor.

• Rick Wilson, Katanning farmer, divisional branch president and Pastoralists and Graziers committee chairman, will be the Liberal candidate in the WA seat of O’Connor, where the Nationals’ Tony Crook unseated Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey in 2010. Wilson won an April preselection over Cranbrook Shire president Doug Forrest and Kalgoorlie consultant Ross Wood.

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.

10,653 comments on “Nielsen: 58-42 to Coalition; 52-48 to Labor under Rudd”

Comments Page 211 of 214
1 … 210 211 212 … 214

  1. [Just remind me why I should have changed my vote to the ALP on the asylum seeker issue George?]
    Because when John Howard put a bill to parliament that would’ve enabled an SAS officer to commit murder aboard the Tampa, but be immune from any legal action, Labor voted against it; even though it meant Howard would use this act to say that Labor was weak on border protection.

    You voted for the guy who was so desperate to make asylum seekers a political issue that he didn’t even think asylum seekers deserved the protection of the crimes code.

  2. [I would be surprised if Abbott wins the Senate.

    If this is blocked now, it could well and truly stop offshore processing for good.]

    I sincerely hope so. That to me is more important than who wins the next election.

    [We are in the high stakes part of the game, and I am sorry if it offends all of you, as it seems to be doing, but I am very very excited about potentially being in the death throws of this disgraceful policy (if Gillard goes down with it, water off a ducks back to me, I think she is hopeless remember!)]

    That’s a valid point and I know we, at times, disagree but if that’s the end result you and I are in agreement over its benefit. My original comment was more directed at people who are pro-offshore but are only disagreeing with it because they want Abbott to be the victor (and I am aware there are plenty of people on this site who are the same with Gillard/Labor).

    Sometimes I seem a bit more angry and oppositional than I am. I write too aggressively when it comes to political critique 😆

  3. [William, I hope you’re taking this to heart – why didn’t you start this blog up when you were in your early teens? ]

    Cos we would’ve had posts discussing the Merits between Midnight Oil & Agadoo 🙂

  4. [rummel regardless of your spin, you are ashamed of your side to the point that you wish to paint us in the same light. We don’t buy it for a second.]

    Im not spinning. Your fearless leader Gillard is the one spinning that Labor is tougher then the Libs and is trying to prove it. How else would the Libs be able to snuggle in on the side of being the humanitarians.

  5. rummel

    [Labor supporters screamed blue murder during the pacific solution, took the high ground and claimed JWH was a criminal. Now every thing is fine, Gillard and team labor are not hypocrites and every thing they do is because the Lib made then do it.]

    I would have thought that the UNHCR giving approval to Malaysia whilst still rejecting the Pacific solution indicates that it isn’t hypocritical at all to support the first and not the second.

  6. [Im not spinning. Your fearless leader Gillard is the one spinning that Labor is tougher then the Libs and is trying to prove it. How else would the Libs be able to snuggle in on the side of being the humanitarians.]

    Libs are gutter dogs rummel – don’t fight it, you guys invented the book on playing dirty with people’s lives.

  7. Grandma alert

    [I was proven correct.]
    [I was proved right]
    1. “proven” means “tested”
    2. “correct” means “dressed to the occasion” (several meanings). “”right” works.

  8. [Tampa, Siev X, Children Overboard. Death and misery as peddled by the Libs.]

    Yep and your side is up to around 400. So much for the moral high ground, you own just as much blood in the sea and every day there is the chance of more under the Labor Party.

  10. [Libs are gutter dogs rummel – don’t fight it]

    Im not fighting it, just pointing out that Team Labor are now sitting along side JWH and Gillard is a perfect shadow of the former Lib PM.

  12. [Yep and your side is up to around 400]

    That’s your answer? That’s you moral stance? Gutter, right down to the scum that dwells in it.

    Where was your outrage when people were growing in the surrounding waters? Where was your outrage when the issue was being used to win votes? Where was your outrage when the dog whistling to the worst scum in this country was being fuelled and fuelled to the the point of hysteria?

    That’s right, nowhere – because when the Libs are back in power the same “we don’t want them here” will be rolled out. Disgrace.

  13. Zoomster:

    I appreciate your preferred view of history.

    http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/chron/1998-99/99chr01.htm

    The parliamentary library has a nice history of the GST/Consumption tax:
    1. In 1984 The Hawke government took option C forward (a 12.5% consumption tax)
    2. The ACTU strongly objected
    3. Hawke and Keating agreed to negotiate and make changes (exempting food, reducing the 12.5% rate etc)
    4. The ACTU and business didn’t agree
    5. Hawke and Keating retreated

    It will take me a bit longer to find the Hawke or Keating quote about how they were going to go ahead with this and it was an important reform for the economy (they appear to have been proven right given what has happened post GST)…

  14. [I love when copy+paste partisans accuse eachother of spin. The irony/hypocrisy is phenomenal! ]

    If you’re talking about me, then you need to think again.

  16. [Sometimes I seem a bit more angry and oppositional than I am. I write too aggressively when it comes to political critique]

    Guilty as charged too!

    Don’t worry, CM, trust me I can take a little passion in the debate, as long as it is debate and not personal insult I will play…

    😉

  17. [Where was your outrage when the issue was being used to win votes?]

    Right here George, right here. Labor as mentioned by a poster above is doing it to win government.

    I can never accuse Labor of being worse then the Libs, but you are an equal and that does not sit to well with the Left.

    Why fight it George, do the right thing and support the greens.

  20. [I love when copy+paste partisans accuse eachother of spin. The irony/hypocrisy is phenomenal!

    If you’re talking about me, then you need to think again.]

    I agree with George 🙂

  21. Oh dear!

    [Looking at the Oz now, it’s easy to imagine it as a rightwing group blog that started up in the Triassic era of blogging (say 2002). Lines weren’t drawn so sharply then, so the contributors included some a bit more leftish or just less ideological than the group as a whole. Over time, some have been pushed out, and the others have been forced to demonstrate group solidarity on appropriate occasions, such as attack from the left.

    By now however, a tribalist mode of groupthink has taken over the blog. Its members spend a lot of time reassuring each other that, in spite of all contrary evidence, they are right about everything. Even when they are demonstrably wrong on some particular point, they are still right in a way their opponents can never be. Conversely, no matter how bogus the argument, if it’s on the right side it has to be backed all the way.

    And, thanks to the marvels of Google, Twitter, RSS and so on, the group is instantly aware of any attack on them, even from a lone blogger in the furthest reaches of cyberspace. Each such attack is treated as an existential threat, as if a few harsh words are one step away from the imposition of sharia law (whatever that means!). But since any notion of logical reasoning has long since been lost, the response consists of snarky gotchas, dark mutterings, absurd hyperbole and total lies.]
    http://johnquiggin.com/2011/09/19/the-oz-as-a-dysfunctional-group-blog/

    ProfQ doesn’t hold back.

    But really, The Australian is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the Liberal party, and those absurd Far Right causes it embraces, such as idiotic attacks on climate scientists and ridiculous contortions over the Iraq war.

  23. [Right here George, right here. Labor as mentioned by a poster above is doing it to win government.]

    Right here? In a blog? FFS.

    Where was your outrage to your local member? To the minister of the time? To the PM? Nothing?

    And for your info, I have posted here time and time that I am FOR on shore processing. And that we should accept more refugees and AS.

    What I won’t accept is Liberal stooges giving us a moral lesson. Especially when their faux tears about the issue are nothing more than a way to BS the electorate.

  24. [You voted for the guy who was so desperate to make asylum seekers a political issue that he didn’t even think asylum seekers deserved the protection of the crimes code.]

    I don’t accept that thesis, but if one did, then you could equally say:

    “You voted for the gal who was so desperate to negate the asylum seekers political issue that she didn’t even think asylum seekers deserved the protection of the Australian High Court”

  28. Thefinnigans TheFinnigans天地有道人无道
    Abbott can never got a deal with Malaysia bcs he dont treat Malaysia as equal. He prefers Nauru where he can bully and bully #auspol
    6 minutes ago

  29. These people want to run our country terrifying

    Why do u bother wi the libs on this s. They are the biggest hyypcrites this earth a nd if and when they loose benefits like. P b s. Hecs m edi care. They. Will screaming why why
    Because he will. U lot will get the crap he deals out also
    ofacisisim. Is no fun

  32. [I don’t accept that thesis, but if one did, then you could equally say:]
    Tsk, tsk. Your pronouns are taking a beating.

  33. [MrDenmore Mr Denmore
    ‘The CSIRO has a position’, says Abbott, as if it’s just someone expressing a half-arsed opinion at the pub #4corners]

    [MrDenmore Mr Denmore
    Gillard is right. It was Abbott’s elevation that brought out the hatred in this debate #4corners]

  34. [4 corners seems to be doing a good job debunking the anti-Carbon Pricing hysteria]

    True, but no new revelations/arguments over the issue. I guess it’s been done to death already.

  37. kezza,

    I took offence for a nanosecond but it is all good. As I said, I was talking to Puff.
    I take offence at the dribble of some Wormtongues.

  39. [Kimbo_Ramplin Kimberley Ramplin
    Very true: RT @GeordieGuy: You know what Australia needs? An actual right wing party. Not a party that just lives up to the left’s ideas about right wing parties.]

    Actually, what Australia needs is a conservative party. We don’t have one at present.

  42. [Grandma alert

    I was proven correct.

    I was proved right

    1. “proven” means “tested”]

    [a : to establish the existence, truth, or validity of (as by evidence or logic) ]
    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proven

    [2. “correct” means “dressed to the occasion” (several meanings). “”right” works.]

    [ conforming to or agreeing with fact, logic, or known truth ]
    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/correct

    Try using reliable sources Grandma, not your fading memory.

  43. [This little black duck
    Posted Monday, September 19, 2011 at 9:02 pm | Permalink
    Mo DeLib,

    Are you familiar with Grima Wormtongue?]

    I see myself more as Gandalf, riding in on Shadowfax to bring light and wisdom where there is darkness and hypocrisy.

    (hides in bomb shelter till the dust settles)

  48. What do the shock joks. Say theses days
    Know u guys. Like debates. But say again do u give the liberals the time. Of day

    Have this lot seen puffs post as I cannot at the ‘moment will some one find it. And re post it

    Watching julia I am so so proud of. Her abbott u would not bee seen in the same room as
    At least kerry obrien can present a decent show. Kerry. Md. Of. Abc

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 211 of 214
1 … 210 211 212 … 214