Newspoll: New England and Lyne

The Australian brings results of a Newspoll survey conducted from Tuesday to Saturday in Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott’s regional NSW seats of New England and Lyne. The polls targeted about 500 voters each, producing margins of error of a little under 4.5 per cent. As expected, the results indicate a plunge in support for the incumbents since the election and their subsequent decision to back a Labor minority government. In New England, the poll has Tony Windsor at 33 per cent compared with 61.9 per cent at the election, with the Nationals at 41 per cent compared with 25.2 per cent. In Lyne, Rob Oakeshott’s primary vote is at 26 per cent compared with 47.1 per cent at the 2010 election, and the Nationals are at 47 per cent compared with 34.4 per cent.

Determining two-candidate preferred results for individual electorates in circumstances so radically different from the previous election is problematic, and Newspoll has done the best that could be done under the circumstances by publishing both previous-election and respondent-allocated measures. In New England, the previous election measure has Windsor and the Nationals tied at 50-50. Unfortunately we do not have a full set of primary vote figures at this stage, but it would seem to me from the two-candidate result that the “others” vote (excluding Windsor, Nationals, Labor and Greens) must be in the mid-teens. UPDATE: Full tables here courtesy of GhostWhoVotes – “others” is at 14 per cent in Lyne and 13 per cent in New England. At the 2010 election it was only 1.2 per cent, that being the combined total for One Nation and the Citizens Electoral Council. To apply these parties’ preference distribution to such a large chunk of the vote is obviously imprecise at best. The respondent-allocated preference measure has Windsor trailing 53-47, but this has problems of its own – in particular it requires respondents to make up their own mind, when many will in fact follow how-to-vote cards.

In Lyne, Rob Oakeshott trails 62-38 on respondent-allocated preferences and 55-45 on the previous election results. Similarly to the New England poll, the latter figure appears to have been obtained by amplifying a mid-teens “others” vote through the 2010 preference distribution of one independent who polled 0.7 per cent. While this is by any measure a depressing set of figures for Oakeshott, it is a good deal better for him than a ReachTel automated phone poll conducted in August, which had the Nationals leading 55 per cent to 15 per cent on the primary vote. That poll was rightly criticised at the time for asking about the carbon tax and pokies reform before getting to voting intention. It may also raise doubts about the precision of automated phone polling, which in this country at least has a patchy record (though it seems to be a different story in the United States).

Another difficulty with polls for these two seats is that it is not yet clear which candidates the Nationals will be running, which can have a very significant bearing on regional seats especially. After initially stating he wasn’t interested, the party’s state leader Andrew Stoner has recently said he would “never say never” to the prospect of running in Lyne, with earlier reports suggesting he was being “courted” to make such a move with a view to replacing Warren Truss as federal leader. This was said to be partly motivated by a desire to block a similar move by Barnaby Joyce, who has declared his interest in New England. However, Tony Abbott has said the candidate in Lyne from 2010, Port Macquarie medical specialist David Gillespie, would get “wholehearted support” if he wanted to run again. According to a flattering profile of Abbott by Tom Dusevic in The Weekend Australian, Gillespie is a “boyhood friend” of Abbott’s.

Newspoll also sought approval ratings for the two independents and gauged opinion on their decisions to support the Labor minority government and the carbon tax legislation. This provided one heartening result for Tony Windsor, who retains the approval of 50 per cent of his constituents with 44 per cent disapproving (UPDATE: Sorry, got that the wrong way around). Rob Oakeshott’s respective ratings are 38 per cent and 54 per cent. Voters in Lyne were the more hostile to their member’s support for the Labor government: 32 per cent were supportive and 61 opposed, against 36 per cent and 54 per cent in New England. The results on the carbon tax seem to have been effectively identical, with respective opposition of 72 per cent and 71 per cent. Only 22 per cent of respondents in Lyne were supportive; The Australian’s article neglects to provide a figure for New England, but it can be presumed to have been very similar.

UPDATE: The weekly Essential Research has the two-party preferred steady at 55-45, although Labor is off a point on the primary to 32 per cent with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 48 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. My favourite of the supplementary questions, as it was at my suggestion, gauges current opinion of major reforms of the past few decades, which gives a resounding thumbs-up to compulsory superannuation and Medicare, strong support to floating the dollar and free trade agreements, a fairly modest majority in favour of the GST. Privatisations, however, are opposed in retrospect as well as prospect, although reversing those already conducted has only bare majority support. For some reason though, more support regulating the dollar than thought it was a bad idea in the first place, and a big majority favour increasing trade protection. Other questions relate to a republic (41 per cent for, 33 per cent against), the Commonwealth (47 per cent believe membership of benefit) and succession to the throne (61 per cent believe it should be gender-neutral) and who is to blame for the Qantas dispute (management by and large).

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.

815 comments on “Newspoll: New England and Lyne”

Comments Page 4 of 17
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  2. [OT but I need computer advice.
    How do I turn off a laptop that is jammed? On my pc I can simply turn it off at the wall.
    Please don’t laugh. This is serious]

    Lizzie, I take the battery out and turn it off and unplug it from the power point. That works.

  6. Burgey and Lynchpin

    Thanks very much for your efforts, but confessions’ idea was simpler.

    It’s a bad computer morning. Crikey keeps freezing as well.

  7. lizzie@137

    OT but I need computer advice.
    How do I turn off a laptop that is jammed? On my pc I can simply turn it off at the wall.
    Please don’t laugh. This is serious

    Just hold the power button down for about 10 to 15 seconds. Take the battery and power out as a last resort.

  10. ShiftyPhil

    Thanks.
    Wouldn’t it be more useful if the ON button was labelled ON/OFF, to help slightly nervous computer users like me? Take the battery out? That’s as difficult as Abbott sticking to one story at a time.

  11. thanks poroti. I have those 2 bookmarked so that I don’t have to open the rest of the OO.

    [Newspoll also sought approval ratings for the two independents and gauged opinion on their decisions to support the Labor minority government and the carbon tax legislation. This provided one heartening result for Tony Windsor, who retains the approval of 50 per cent of his constituents with 44 per cent disapproving. Rob Oakeshott’s respective ratings are 38 per cent and 54 per cent. Voters in Lyne were the more hostile to their member’s support for the Labor government: 32 per cent were supportive and 61 opposed, against 36 per cent and 54 per cent in New England. The results on the carbon tax seem to have been effectively identical, with respective opposition of 72 per cent and 71 per cent. Only 22 per cent of respondents in Lyne were supportive; The Australian’s article neglects to provide a figure for New England, but it can be presumed to have been very similar.]

    William – I know you’ve noted the carbon tax effect is almost identical in both electorates but I was wondering whether the ‘Alan Jones’ effect has taken hold in Lyne. His radio program and other 2GB programs are networked through parts of Lyne and are pretty popular whereas Windsor’s electorate seems to be free of 2GB. Could that explain the difference in the approval/non approval vote of the 2 Indies.

  12. Poroti

    [How to spot our psychopath pollies by how they speak.]

    http://www.livescience.com/16585-psychopaths-speech-language.html

    That is an interesting read at that link.

    Especially when they are discussing murderers and psycopathy.

    Toxic Tone is on the record as saying that the only one of the ten commandments he has not broken is the one “thou shalt not kill”.

    He may have a secret desire to tick all the boxes to make the claim that he is now a full blown psycopath. That may be a little harsh but he is a perfect description of lots/most of the points made in the link.

    One could easily draw the long bow and say that he has ticked that box because he was a member of the rodents cabinet when our country was committed to an illegal war in Iraq and the slaughter of thousands of innocents.

    IMHO he is the complete psychopath and on his own admissions has ticked all the boxes.

  14. The Australian paywall is just censorship. If it was about cost of business advertising could carry the Australian alone. This by junking the romantic old fashioned idea of usind dead trees. Instead just go online and avoid all the very hefty costs of printing.
    The audience for the Australian would read it online.
    With proper accountability to shareholders this and not a paywall is what would happen.
    One day hopefully Crikey can do this. However Crikey does not have the audience to attract advertisers that The Australian does.
    One day I hope Crikey gets the audience and advertisers to publish free and independent.
    Then we would see Crikey have real numbers to offset the agenda setting.

  16. Victoria

    Yes I know. However Journalists worthy of the name should be asking the same question.
    If The Nationals lose numbers in the bush it does not matter how high the Liberals are in the city.

  17. Oooh i just realised John Waters is going to be a guest. Not Aussie actor, but American one of Pink flamingo fame. He is outrageously good fun

  21. [Polling has to suit the narrative of Labor being bad]

    And constantly under pressure, so everything gets reported through the lens of the polls. And because the Libs are ahead in the polls, Abbott’s stupidities get taken as effective nay clever policy. i.e. this from Coorey:

    [The government always does better when the rapacious Opposition Leader is out of the picture. The two most recent examples were when he went on holiday to Europe and during the recent week of the tax and jobs summits. The government looked like a government that week, and its feeble primary vote rose three percentage points in Newspoll.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/gillard-buys-some-time-with-a-roundtheworld-ticket-20111023-1meaz.html#ixzz1bf6tyZRd
    ]

    You’d think people might argue that the government has looked like a government for a lot longer, but Abbott’s stunt antics and lies distract from it.

  23. Good quote from Windsor, lame one from Abbott, surprise surprise:

    [Mr Windsor says he is not surprised by the poll results.

    “I’m not all that disappointed with that result, particularly given that it’s done by News Limited, you’ve got to put a bit of a codicil on that,” he said.

    “It [the poll] was done during the carbon tax, just after the carbon tax, and that fear campaign run by Tony Abbott and others.”

    Mr Abbott says Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott are paying a price for backing the carbon tax.

    “People should listen to their electorates and I think that’s the problem,” the Opposition Leader said.

    “I think that some of the independent members of parliament haven’t been listening to their electorates, and if you don’t listen to the electorate, you pay a price.”]

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-24/newspoll-on-windsor2c-oakeshott/3596402

  24. [Poor Tanya will never get a word in against those two.]

    Fanatastic! Have a look at the propaganda influenced polls!

    She better start.

  25. I like Windsor, he will not tolerate crap from a biased media with its own agenda to install its preferred PM.

    At present the media is far too powerful and influential.

    Media laws must be changed as a matter of urgency.

    It’s Time!

  27. Poor old Roo, what’s the man to do.
    He is junking all his media behind paywalls trying to shore up profits.

    I am sure he is not overly concerned as to whether his fish and chip wrappers are making profits as long as they are there to assist with his regime changeing agendas.

    He is having great difficulties with the European WSJ and is faking the numbers of copies sold.

    It appears that there aren’t much in the way of profits from these fish and chip wrappers to be divied up among the shareholders which now is about to give him a headache.

    One could imagine how much more would be there to slice up if it weren’t for all the payouts from litigation.

    Now the third biggest shareholder is calling on Mordor to divest of all of his fish and chip wrappers.

    [ News Corporation’s third-largest investor has urged Rupert Murdoch to sell all his newspapers and double the size of a share buy-back plan, as the company emerged from a bruising annual meeting dominated by the phone-hacking scandal.

    “I’d like for them to sell all the newspaper businesses,” Kevin Holt, a senior fund manager at Invesco, told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s a digital world now and the competitive advantage that newspapers had has been competed away.”]

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/8843215/Rupert-Murdoch-urged-to-sell-off-newspapers-by-top-News-Corp-shareholder.html

    what a bonus, sell all the F & C wrappers and go behind paywalls where noboby, in vast numbers, pays to read the tripe.

    I feel sorry for the fish and chip eaters. 😆

  28. Centre what do you mean by wanting to change media laws? Are you referring to ownership only? I would have thought it would be dangerous to start legislating content?

  29. Sarah Ferguson was interviewed this morning on RN Breakfast about the Four Corners program ‘Asylum’ to be aired tonight on ABC1 at 8.30 pm.
    [More than 3,500 asylum seekers are being held in immigration detention centres spread across the country and, on average, asylum seekers remain in detention for around a year. But some are locked away for much longer periods, sparking deep concerns about their mental wellbeing. Four Corners has gone inside the detention system and has uncovered horrific and widespread examples of psychotic illnesses, self harm and suicide.]
    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/
    [Despite a massive debate about Australia’s asylum seeker policy, few people know what life is really like inside detention camps. According to refugee activists, the reason is simple – the Government does not want the broader population seeing the conditions inside and the impact the camps are having on the detainees. Now, reporter Sarah Ferguson has gathered together startling evidence exposing the truth about life inside; how medication prescribed to asylum seekers is being misused and how many cases of self harm are going unreported, giving the public a false impression of conditions behind the wire.]

  30. I am not sure what other polls are due this week, and the story they will tell! As Windsor’s comments today indicate, the Newspolls for Lyne and New England are hardly surprising, and he and Oakeshott supported Labor 14 months ago with their eyes open.

    That a conservative politician with Windsor’s obvious quality and stature should have turned his back on the Liberals and Nationals so many years ago, leading him down a path where he has supported a Labor government, is a telling insight into the direction that the conservative parties have taken. Imagine a Liberal Party led by Windsor! Compare it with the Abbott reality…

    Windsor has emerged through this period of minority government as a man of integrity, committed to achieving what is best for Australia. Without him, we would have no NBN and no action on climate change. History will judge him kindly. Today’s Newspoll: who cares really.

  31. just finshed a fairly comprehensive scan of reports on this poll

    this seems to be an attempt to pre-empt oakey and windsor spruiking the CPRS

    funnily it coincides with the paywall

    😉

    ps the oakey/windsor thing is about all the fibs/OO have left, sorta a signal that no shots are left in the locker

  33. If Tony Jones is HALF fair dinkum, he should put that seriouisly improving potential Butt Cleansing champion Richo and Wimp Pyne into line!

    I’ll organise a $5,000 bet right here on PB now if there are any takers – that Pyne or Richo WILL be the first tointerrupt Plibersek when she talks. 😎

    You read it here first. 😛

  35. Gaffhook

    [Poor old Roo, what’s the man to do.
    He is junking all his media behind paywalls trying to shore up profits.]
    It looks like the Murdoch empire will likely follow the saying “Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.”.

  40. DavidWH

    I have made plenty of comments about necessary changes to the media, for the good of our democracy, in the past few months or so!

    How’s Rupe going these days? Certainly in the best interests of News Corp shareholders if he’s put out to pasture asap in my view. 😉

  41. gusface

    Savva said that there was a senior shadow minister talking with an indie. She would not disclose who and what they talked about, save to say it was not Abbott.

  42. For those interested in other perspectives than those offered by the MSM and bloggers such as Jericho (aka Grog) and Possum Commitatus on the portrayal, stereotyping and characterisations of the Occupy movement and its supporters:

    1. http://left-flank.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupyoz-captures-mood-but-its-critics.html

    2. http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/10/22/occupy-australia-and-the-antipodean-bubble/

    3. http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/10/17/occupy-x-and-australias-99/

    4. http://overland.org.au/2011/10/occupy-melbourne-some-initial-thoughts/

    5. http://johnquiggin.com/2011/10/14/percentiles/

  44. Poroti/Gaffhook 161

    Thanks for the fascinating link on detecting psychopaths. I was particularly interested because in my own research I have read a bit on the question of whether some corporate executives are psychopaths, or to be more blunt, to what extent the proportion of corporate executives who are psychopaths is higher than in the general community. As with politicians, these people can do a lot of damage in charge of a large organisation.

    Anecdotally, the answer is obvious. Again, the language might give them away. Thinking about this part of the article:
    [The researchers interviewed 52 convicted murderers, 14 of them ranked as psychopaths according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a 20-item assessment, and asked them to describe their crimes in detail. Using computer programs to analyze what the men said, the researchers found that those with psychopathic scores showed a lack of emotion, spoke in terms of cause-and-effect when describing their crimes, and focused their attention on basic needs, such as food, drink and money. ]
    Delet the words “crimes” and substitute “management decisions” and it fits pretty well.

    How many corporate statements about staff cuts, excessive executive bonuses, and shareholder losses would fit that description? I suspect many, if not most, would fit.

  50. peg

    not really

    grog is a great advocate on some issues and poss has the intellectual depth to understand his figures in human terms

    I was surprised by their responses

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