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.
why bother with a news ticker when you’ve got BK?
Onya BK!
Bah, Williams saved 2 Championship points.
Yes! Stosur wins it!
don
I had to go into the shower and missed the finish. Damn.
What a beautiful, typical proper Aussie girl!
She dominated. Set her own terms and crushed Williams.
morning bludgers
Stosur wins US Open. Amazing!
imacca @ 55
Sums it up very well. I could not more strongly disagree with the notion of lack of leadership. Just making the whole thing work is an achievement in itself. Having the ministers say a lot more in their own portfolios than previously is another example of it. You need to show confidence in your own troops. In my view they’re doing very well, even if they haven’t exploited the politics aggro that much.
It is interesting that Nielsen now joins in this preferred leadership thing with Newspoll. It is definitely the last throw of the dice to try to head off carbon pricing.
She kinda reminds me of the dignity of those women outside Albo’s office the other day as they screamed at him.
Aussies really do know how to understate it.
The comments most often seen on Poll Bludger, in relation to the current polls:
1. 2 Years is a long time
2. The MSM is biased against Julia Gillard
3. Labor will win the next election if it sticks with Gillard as leader
4. Abbott will shortly self-implode
5. Kevin Rudd ought to retire and go to the U.N
6. Wayne Swan is our greatest ever Treasurer
7. The end of News Ltd is imminent
8. Eric Ripper will win the next WA election(Frank Calabrese)
9. Any Labor voters who aren’t 100% behind Julia Gillard are traitors and really Liberals.
10. Gillard’s only got to get the Carbon Tax legislated, and by July next year, her ratings will be soaring upwards.
BB
She is what we really are. Not the over-reported ratbag fringe.
Williams being entirely gracious.
USD$1.8m for Sam!
Good morning, Bludgers.
Great news about Sam S & the US Open!
Thanks, BK, for starting my day with a laugh:
Well, of course gold & silver are “a bubble” (never mind the grammar; he’s an American)! But US$$$???
Bricks & mortar (but I’d steer clear of MacMansions; try ones from the pre-chipboard pre-compressed paper days, after you’ve had a nit picking solicitor & ditto building inspector check for everything); platinum, fine pre1890 jewellery (in Oz, pieces by top “art” jewellers like R Wager & D Judge, Stuart Devlin) or genuine Nouveau/ Deco and c1955-75, (it’s not artificially coloured or “nuked”), good art (as distinct from “in” and “decorator” – no, I wouldn’t go for chopped up cows)- if you can’t afford the big stuff, try fine miniatures; good postwar studio ceramics & glass from top names (the ones in good museums) in Oz as well as UK, Japan etc – there’s still a few top Oz bits kicking around in obscure “antique” shops …
If all else goes down the gurgler (though platinum group metals won’t, not in the medium term), at least you’ll have a home and a stash of “pretty bits” to enjoy or flog.
Yes, I am avoiding the Kev v Julia thing … now we know why Farfax took up NewsLtd’s drum-up anti-Gillard hysteria before the next poll
TLM,
I’d agree with
And I honestly believed
for a long time.
Plenty of groupthink supporting the rest 😛
I wouldn’t be that unhappy to see Rudd back myself….
Cripes, I never thought of that. Almost makes sense re the Gillard loathing and the Rudd martyrdom.
Serena Williams to the umpire.
“If you ever see me walking down the hall, look the other way.
You’re a hater and you’re unattractive”
Bring back smacking.
Well, you don’t see this too often these days. A Nielsen that is kinder to Labor than a Newspoll.
shellbell?
Fair dinkum? Did she say that
It is, isn’t it!
Yes.
Labor will lose the next election if it doesn’t, is more common.
I don’t think that’s a common statement – it is a common hope.
OK. If it’s common, you should be able to find me one example of this statement.
I can’t recall reading it at all.
As for 5.
I don’t think that’s a common statement either but won’t dispute it hasn’t been made.
I’ll leave this to Frank.
More an inference than a statement.
An exaggerated version of a common statement. I don’t think anyone’s nominated a date and I don’t think anyone’s predicted ‘soaring’.
The prediction is more along the lines of ‘once the carbon price has had time to settle, Labor’s polling will improve.’
What’s really going on: the right wing powerbrokers are sticking with Gillard, because of their implacable resistance to Rudd. They’re desperately hoping that another alternative can be found within the next 6 months or so(Smith or Combet or Crean or Shorten).
Their mantra is: ANYONE BUT RUDD, even if it means that the ALP is reduced to 30 or 40 seats at the next election.
So we have Imaginary Polls on PB and the radio, and Wild accusations all around, how normal, NOT.
BB really they don’t have much else to write about.
One year of stable government, 185 bills passed, none rejected, reforms for business to cut costs, NBN on track with great benefits, heath reform consensus for the first time.
No scandals to write about, ministers rorting travel, conflicts of interests, like in howie years, no mri awb manildra.
Now they are going back to 1999 to find something
shellbell
I just saw all of Serena’s outburst. Dickhead. She should get hammered for that.
And now I’m off to the flatlands for some coin and an appointment at the fang doctor.
I’ll rush back for QT.
Good morning all.
Congrats to Stosur! What a champion.
@Evan/169,
Perhaps you guys should have left Kevin Rudd then at an all time high polling, it’s only your fault for kicking him out for low opinion polls!
Stop blaming Labor for every thing.
Australia’s population is at fault here.
confessions
It was an amazing performance by Stosur.
On the politics front, The Age header
LABOR WIN IF RUDD WAS LEADER.
it would seem that politics is not about governing, but just about winning the next election.
Socrates 134
Pretty well spot on. My attitude (as one supporting the Malaysia swap) was that with the HC decision, they might as well quit while they were behind and go onshore. The politics of the situation as it now is really means less Scott Morrison moaning. It’s the law. Deaths at sea are beyond government control.
It seems as if they’re making one last try at Malaysia. I don’t think they’re devious enough to want that defeated in Parliament, but if it is, it’s no bad thing. It would clear the way for onshore, supplemented by queues in Malaysia and Indonesia. That would be the best outcome for humanitarian, economic and political reasons.
What did Katter say about the number of gay people in Qld, something like 0.001%?
BK
I think the AFL should invite Serena Williams to toss the coin on grand final day just so we can hear the reception she will get from a real sporting crowd.
here is link
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/labor-mp-gary-grays-health-scare-looms-as-test-for-liberals/story-fn59niix-1226134301742
victoria:
We played a great game yesterday too!
On the fantasy poll I agree it’s just sideshow stuff.
Good morning, Bludgers.
Yep. That was the point I made yesterday morning. The fact there is nothing NEW for them to attack Labor members about means that Labor’s candidate vetting process is pretty good; they seem to be a squeaky clean lot. Let’s face it, if there was ANYTHING worthy of a run in the media we would have heard about it by now.
The Libs, on the other hand, might yet live to regret opening up that “what’s in your closet?” can of worms, especially if Labor go into 2013 with nothing to lose and decide to go the mongrel. They have been playing nicely until now, but if push comes to shove then they need to open up their own shit sheets on the Coalition and invite the media to take a look.
I know of more than one Liberal member who would be feeling very, very nervous should that ever happen.
What’s the bet the Libs deny him a pair and use the argument that he could drive if he can’t fly. Never mind the small matter of where he lives. If he really needs to get to Canberra, he could …
Hartcher’s article is worth a read:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/yesterdays-man-may-not-be-fit-for-tomorrows-problems-20110911-1k4bc.html
Yes, will Abbott agree to pair Gary Gray?
confessions
Carlton played brilliantly.
Son lost his final yesterday, so his team are out now. He is very disappointed. Me on the other hand, not so much. Just in the past two weeks, one of his co workers did his knee playing football, and will be unable to work for months, and someone who works for my BIL did his knee as well. Just quietly, I am relieved that the season is over for my son.
lol How to pick your GOP candidate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7721462&l=e9d912dbf9&id=128983569089
What a farce. (I’m assuming of course this has never been done before): A poll that asks if a given person was leader of a party who would you vote to run the country?
But what a bunch of softc*cks the electorate is if they’d vote for a person rather than policy.
Phil Coorey
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-stays-coy-on-tough-policy-as-he-inches-towards-the-lodge-20110911-1k40m.html#ixzz1XgPcc7dg
The headline reads “Hardball Abbott putting politics ahead of policy”
So now they’re playing Gillard against Rudd to try and spook the Labor Party to commit suicide and change leaders again. If Rudd, or any of his cheer leaders believe for one second that those polls would last more than a week after he regained the leadership they’re living in the land of nod.
It is a bloody disgrace that the media, the teaparty conservatives and their followers continue to play games with the well-being of their country’s economy, its standing on the world stage and the welfare of its people. Besides, my much loved and wise mother always told us it is folly to go back because when you get there you find it wasn’t nearly as good as you remembered. Therefore her advice was to never look back but to always look forward for the new opportunities that are there for the taking.;
The Coorey article is interesting – I think Abbott is backgrounding him. The article is sympathetic and presents Abbott as cautious on IR. A politically smart move for him. I found the article disquieting.
madcyril,
The growing internal ‘noise’ in the Fib camp, mentioned in that Phil Coorey article, will become a festering boil after the CP legislation goes through!
Article on an email campaign by “anti-Murdoch global activist group Avaaz” to urge MP’s to support a media inquiry. Interesting comments from Steve Gibbons
http://www.theage.com.au/national/email-blitz-for-media-probe-hits-politicians-20110911-1k45p.html#ixzz1XggTsXWg
The asylum seeker issue is a weird one – again over 50% of people polled say they want onshore processing but both major parties are hell bent on not giving it to us – why???
They don’t believe the polls???
Come on Labor left – stand up and be counted today – PLEASE
Lynchpin/SK
Interesting how your perspectives differ on the same article
Here we go with the old legitimacy drum beat. Peter Hartcher “guesses” its about legitimacy, therefore it’s a fact. Why? Never mind that leaders have been rolled while holding office before. Never mind the hundreds of times leaders of parties have been rolled while in opposition.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/yesterdays-man-may-not-be-fit-for-tomorrows-problems-20110911-1k4bc.html#ixzz1XgiUBhPR
I generally find Coorey worth reading. Pretty balanced. The fact that he was reporting Abbott as being cautious rather than reactionary was what interested me. Of course, Abbott lived through the IR Workchoices stuff and his desire to get the PM’s job will mean he is cautious, bide his time, and then probably re-implement Howard’s policy.