Newspoll quarterly breakdowns

Newspoll published its quarterly geographic and demographic breakdowns on December 29 (full tables from GhostWhoVotes), aggregating all its polling from October to December to produce credible sub-samples by state, gender and age. This period neatly coincided with Labor’s mild late-year recovery, with the overall two-party lead recorded for the Coalition at 55-45 compared with 57-43 for July-September. The shifts proved fairly consistent across all states, such that the relativities are much as they have been since the election: Labor holding up relatively well in Victoria and South Australia (two-party preferred in both now 50-50), hardest hit in New South Wales (6.5 per cent lower on two-party than at the election), still in dire straits in Queensland (41 per cent two-party against an election result of 44.9 per cent) and not appreciably weakened from a disastrous election performance in Western Australia (43 per cent against 43.6 per cent).

The weakening in support recorded for the Coalition was, to a statistically significant extent, greater among women than men. The current gender gap on the Labor primary vote is 6 per cent – equal to the April-June quarter and the final poll before the 2010 election, but otherwise without precedent since Newspoll began publishing quarterly breakdowns in 1996. Of borderline statistical significance is the distinction between the capital cities and non-capitals: the Coalition’s lead is only down from 54-46 to 53-47 in the capitals, but from 61-39 to 57-43 elsewhere.

Newspoll also offered us an abundance of state polling during my fortnight off, which you can read about in the posts 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.

1,830 comments on “Newspoll quarterly breakdowns”

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  2. [BK,

    You are right. I couldn’t finish that piece of Abbott arse-kissing.]

    And a monumental Labor-bash, Lib-love-fest revisionist history piece too.

    Although, at first I thought it was a bet to see how many times the author could get the words homo- or hetero- fil and mono- or poly- morphic into an article.

    Then at the end, this chap has the cheek to say Labor can’t communicate its message!

    And and even bigger cheek to claim he teaches political communication at Sydney Uni.
    Is there really such a beast? How much does he get paid for this gig?

  3. BK,

    You should have heard what Mike Malloy had to say about the Catholic Church and the Pope the other day.

    The names he called the Pope I won’t even dare attribute to him here.

    If someone in Australian had said what Malloy did, our media would have gone into meltdown for a week!

    http://www.mikemalloy.com/

  4. kezza2

    [And and even bigger cheek to claim he teaches political communication at Sydney Uni.
    Is there really such a beast? How much does he get paid for this gig?]
    The guy should be charged with bringing academics into disrepute. An early strong contender for the 2012 Worst Newspaper Article award.

  6. From that poly/hetero/morphic SMH piece:

    The metaphor is easy – imagine the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, as a rugby wing three-quarter, give him some space and let him take the ball up to the line. In election imagery, scoring is the same as winning an election. All that’s needed is room to move.

    Abbott wouldn’t take the ball up the line. He’d run about 4 metres, slam the ball on the ground and tell everyone it was a try. And then stop for a couple of interviews on the sidelines about how bad the other side is and how he should be given the trophy now.

  7. poroti
    [An early strong contender for the 2012 Worst Newspaper Article award.]
    He’d also be a strong contender for Don Watson’s Decay of Public Language Champion 2012.

  9. Last night Al mentioned leadership unhappiness amongst some ALP insiders. I don’t doubt that that is true, even though probably confined to a few used to the old ways (NSW Right) of doing things. Things bad? Polls Bad? Time for a spill.

    Most of us here, including Al, think Gillard is doing fine and it is a time thing. And there is also the little matter of there being a minority government, the new paradigm and … MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction): any spill will confirm the impression of a government in disarray, guaranteeing a landslide coalition win. So I’m pretty sure nothing will come of it.

    It won’t stop some of the rumbling and grumbling. The worst of it is that some are prepared to whinge to News Ltd reporters and keep it all alive. They are pretty dumb if they haven’t yet learnt they are the enemy. Maybe they don’t care anyway.

    Over at LP, they’re also at it
    http://larvatusprodeo.net/2012/01/09/federal-politics-in-2012-more-leadership-speculation/
    Albeit their take is a sort of leftist-Ruddstoration one. I hope more are like Mercurius, who has changed from one openly hostile to Gillard to one gradually, almost grudgingly, gaining respect for her on what she has achieved and what abuse she’s taken without being deterred.

    Getting on with governing is the best response.

  11. I actually had this vision the other day of julia in a one piece bathers, running out of the surf..

    can You all. imagine the outrage, the absolute horror of it all
    prime minister wastes time on beach
    pm, should be working getting some policies.
    pm choice of bathers, disgusting ect.

    every time abbott does something sporty. twitter could ak these questions about abbott

    now if rules where reversed where is Tim , meme,would also be popularalso
    I don’t twitter because I don’t trust myself.
    but this what I would be saying to any reporter who covers abbotts stunts.

  12. I use to think L P
    was left, gee I am guliable, I had not been there it was just the impression I got
    so is that blog crickeys answer to balance.

  13. Those of you who have followed my ramblings (and if you haven’t been, explain why not!!) will remember that one of my biggest beefs with Bob Brown was his linkage of Green party preferences to action on Tasmanian logging in 2004.

    It’s my belief that he should have nominated climate change as the issue of concern over Tassie forests.

    Nominating Tassie forests as the dealbreaker sent the message that that was the biggest environmental issue facing Australia.

    It wasn’t. Bob Brown knew it wasn’t. He knew that climate change was far bigger, but he chose to put his parochial interests first.

    Now he’s doing this again, by refusing to continue his (and Adam Bandt, a Victorian MP) regular meetings with the PM:

    [
    But Senator Brown sought to pick a fight with Labor yesterday, claiming that logging threatened a 10-square-kilometre area within a 430,000-hectare region set aside for protection in a landmark Tasmanian forestry agreement signed in August.

    He said as a result of Labor ”dishonouring” the agreement, neither he nor fellow MP Adam Bandt – the only Green in the lower house – would take part in regular meetings with Ms Gillard intended to smooth over tensions in the minority government.

    Asked whether this could affect the running of Parliament, Senator Brown said: ”I ask you, what is a Greens party leader to do? … I have very directly taken on the Prime Minister over this breach of the forest agreement, but nothing has happened.”]

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/miffed-brown-cancels-catchups-20120111-1pvjp.html#ixzz1jBkTTJfI

    Once again, BB has put Tassie forests ahead of every other issue. He has apparently bound a Victorian MP to do the same.

    This is just as dangerous as it was in 2004. It sends the message to Green voters that Tassie forests is THE environmental issue and that all others are secondary.

    By including Bandt, it suggests that the environmental issues facing Victoria – the future of the Murray Darling, cattle grazing on the High Plains, and native forestry logging, to name just three – should be considered by Victorian Greens as less important than those in another state entirely.

    It’s easy to dismiss this as simply Bob Brown being petulant. But the ramifications of his decision are far more serious than that.

  15. Aguirre
    [Abbott wouldn’t take the ball up the line. He’d run about 4 metres, slam the ball on the ground and tell everyone it was a try. And then stop for a couple of interviews on the sidelines about how bad the other side is and how he should be given the trophy now.]
    Meanwhile television replays would show this is what actually happened to Abbott the winger 🙂

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11E9XctWsMY

  16. And then there’s this story in The Australian:

    [Company American Express for one in 10 NBN staff

    * by: ANNABEL HEPWORTH AND MITCHELL BINGEMANN
    * From: The Australian
    * January 12, 2012 12:00AM

    THE publicity machine charged with spruiking the National Broadband Network employs 27 people, while more than one in 10 NBN Co staff have been issued with an American Express corporate credit card. ]

    From the story, there are 104 credit cards spread over 1,355 staff. The staff who hold them have to pay the charges themselves, then seek reimbursement. All normal procedure, so far.

    I guess the explanation is that at the moment the NBN is top-heavy with admin staff, as the management, HR and PR infrastructure is being built first. These would also be the class of staff who tend to have cards issued to them. It is a $40-odd billion organization. After all, it just ate a large portion of Telstra.

    But on the general topic of NBN expenditure, an IT recruitment friend of ours was here the other night complaining that the NBN is paying full time staff what she reckons is 20% more than a similar organization would pay contract staff. Contract staff have loadings etc. in lieu of holiday pay and other entitlements. But (she swears) the NBN paying permanent staff even more than contractors would receivie is a “waste of money”. She reckons they needn’t pay them the extra; that the NBN could get the same quality of staffing by paying normal telco rates.

    I was being kicked under the table by Her Indoors as I questioned our IT friend. HI didn’t want an argument to develop. Each kick signalled to me: “Let’s just have a nice night without any politics, BB”. So I wasn’t able to go the whole “BB” hog. My shins can’t take the punishment they used to be able to endure in younger, happier days.

    I offered some possible reasons to our IT friend…

    1. In a tight IT recruitment market, with NBN wishing to poach telco business managers from other organizations – and in some cases, whole teams, whole business units) from other telcos – they may have to pay a premium for a turnkey operation that’s ready to go with established relationships.

    2. Politics: NBN needs to rush this through, to build their management shell ready for an accelerated rollout, to stop the Abbott from being able to tear it down if he’s elected. The possibility of an Abbott wrecking ball coming down on the company may make careers shorter than usual, or to be perceived as such, so an extra enticement needs to be paid.

    3. The NBN is not a typical “telco” company. It’s something new, so there’s no real benchmark for what people should be paid.

    4. What’s she complaining about? Her firm is making better money out of it, whatever the reason NBN is paying more for staff than other telcos.

    She rejected all of these.

    She reckons the IT market is not tight. She says the NBN is a perfectly typical telco company. She says politics shouldn’t come into it (I said, “Tell that to Tony Abbott and 2GB”). She says as an employee the extra money is great for her firm, but as a taxpayer she’s upset at the “waste”.

    When I questioned some of these HI started kicking me harder. I guess I was directly challenging our friend’s “IT expertise” and, in HI’s mind, it could have gotten ugly.

    I don’t know the reason, or even whether the NBN is paying their new permanent staff a premium, larger salaries than even contractors would normally receive. So I put the question out to The Bludgers:

    Anyone got any ideas as to “whether” and/or “why”?

  17. zoomster,

    I question this statement in the news about BBrowns cancellation of meetings with JG. I believe it has been misrepresented by the news outlets. I have sent an email to BBs Media Director asking for further clarification and will let you know of the contents if/when I receive a response.

  19. kezza

    Aguirre

    the rugby metaphor is so Sydney-centric.
    it’s meaningless to most of the rest of us.

    I’m sure it translates to AFL.

    He’d run out to the half forward flank shouting out “Kick it to me! Kick it to me!” Which some teammate would have to do eventually, seeing as he’s captain. He’d then dribble the ball about 10 metres over the boundary line, and run about with his arms in the air claiming the goal.

    His team, after spending the first half of the game being gifted goals from very dubious free kicks, spend the second half pointing at the scoreboard and laughing while the other side closes the gap.

  20. GD – the thing that riles me in farrelly’s article was the ‘ambition-driven knifing’ – this apparently has now been written in folklore! what utter rubbish!

  21. zoomster how do you see the problems
    I am concerene he will undermine the green / labor gov I n tas, so far nick mckim has been rather even handed
    tasmanians are sick to death of the forest the protesters and
    BB, it occurred to me that the greens now are becoming irrelevent,

    we have enough locked up.we need some forestry Industry.
    if the greens had their way there would be none,
    it ink this to keep them with something to talk about
    a change of name for them now the carbon price is done
    is there only way os survival, but in tne meantime USE poor tasmania again.
    people had settled down somewhat, I hope Lara is strong and mc kim, does notside with
    bb
    ,but there is 2 greens I would see as wedging the local greens,
    this all we need here is greens trouble making

  23. [BK – the article was incomprehensible – esp at this hour of the morning!]

    About as comprehensible as a Shanahan Newspoll writeup.

    I was amused (in a “funny peculiar” way) by the actual words, but nearly fell off my chair laughing when I saw what he did for a living.

  24. BB,

    The IT & T industry has always had a very shallow ‘&T’ (and telecoms) depth and have always been paid well. I would also challenge full time staff being paid at contract rates unless they are working full time on contract and given the scrutiny this project is under they would be looking at value not huge salaries.

    The working full time on contract makes sense to me from the point of view that contractors working for the govt are often treated as fulltime employees in terms of payment but not status. (Makes govt life easier). Also contract rates for govt are a bit tighter than the private sector.

  25. [BB: or even, is it actually *true*?

    There is the vague possibility she is either lying or misinformed …]

    She’s not lying, in that she does believe what she was saying. I don’t really doubt her basic facts, from at least her point of view, or that of her firm. There’s no questioning of her honesty on that score.

    Admittedly, earlier on in the evening she had suggested that Gillard should send in the Navy to sink a few Jap whalers. “That’d show ’em we mean business,” she said.

    But hey, we all exaggerate from time to time.

  26. The “political communication” article was thick with the jargon of social scientists, who struggle to make the comprehensible incomprehensible (I majored in Soc Sci, for my sins). Typical uni-lecturer snobbery, but it’s the same for every discipline.
    However, beneath the obfuscation, its message was “Abbott needs to pull his socks up, he can’t continue to speak only to his fans”. So I don’t agree that it was pro-Abbott.

  30. aguirre

    re rugby and translation to AFL

    I’m sure you’re right, but in the art of communication you don’t use a metaphor that only makes sense to a smaller proportion of a population – if you want to communicate to the whole.

    OMG, maybe that was the underlying message to Abbott – but it got lost in the translation by the communications expert. 😆

  31. SK wrote:

    [I would also challenge full time staff being paid at contract rates unless they are working full time on contract and given the scrutiny this project is under they would be looking at value not huge salaries.]

    I made a point of asking her whether these were actually de facto full time contractors.

    She was adamant that the positions she was complaining about were genuine full-time ones, not pseudo-full-time or overblown contract positions. That was her point.

    I can certainly imagine that the NBN is under political pressure to get up to speed on the rollout. It has been recently reported that the rollout schedule is about a year or so behind. They need to get bums on seats in as many diverse places as possible so that the project has an Abbott Proof Fence around it. It’s no good hiring admin staff later on. They need them NOW to get ready for the Big Push. That would be my explanation.

    Secondly, with all the “Gillard is a dead woman walking” stuff going around right now, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that a lot of staff now in cosy incumbent positions with Telstra, Optus and the rest would need a big incentive to come over to an organization with a, shall we say, “uncertain future”, for itself and for its staff.

  32. Cuppa
    I actually listened to Mike Malloy’s piece on the Catholic church this morning but chose not to post the link as it would undoubtedly start a flame war.
    He certainly let go!

  33. [the rugby metaphor is so Sydney-centric.
    it’s meaningless to most of the rest of us.]

    Time for a sitdown and a nice cup of tea, kezza2. Queensland (the one that Victorians are flocking to, and one of the ones subsidising Victoria and NSW) is predominantly Rugby, therefore it is the AFL similes that are mostly meaningless, as they are in the rest of the world.

    AFL reminds me of the “Running jumping” film the Goons (?) did so long ago ….

  35. BB,

    Many startups start, apart from upper management, with contract staff until things settle down and real numbers are determined. Also many of the staff would be start up requirement or project requirement only and would definitely be contract staff.

  36. SK

    it fits with the pattern of observed behaviour, unfortunately.

    my say

    I’m not across Tassie issues but I agree that some logging is justifiable (my main argument being that if we stop logging native forests altogether, all this will mean is that we send the environmental problems off shore. We will continue to use wood from forests, but it will be wood from forests overseas, where the level of scrutiny isn’t as high. So the environmental outcomes will be potentially worse than if we logged here).

    I’m more concerned with the message BB is sending Green supporters.

    After 2004, I was furious with BB. At the time, I was agitating within the Labor party for urgent action on climate change, arguing that this was the biggest environmental issue facing Australia, insisting that Ministers meet with scientists in the field, organising forums within the party to educate members on the issue, etc etc.

    BB’s linkage of Tassie forests with preference deals undermined this. He told all Green supporters that this was the issue that should decide which of the majors they should support. He sent the same message to the major parties; that this was the environmental issue of most concern to environmentalists.

    I was so angry that I did strawpolls amongst people I knew to be Greens supporters – what is the biggest environmental issue today? How do you know? – and (not at all to my surprise) the response was always along the lines of “Saving Tasmanian forests. Bob Brown says so.”

    Brown has a level of adulation amongst Greens that I haven’t observed in any other party. I’ve seen quite clever, cynical people go all giggly and awestruck over him, as if he were a rockstar (One told me: “My friend has met Bob Brown THREE times. She shook his hand! You know, he never really wanted to be a politician.”)

    His ‘not really a politician’ image feeds into this.

    As a result, he doesn’t seem to get the same level of scrutiny and criticism from either his party or its supporters than other leaders do.

    This is dangerous.

  37. BB &SK

    Here’s the bit on the link to pay. In the comments section there’s also discussion from those who dispute the following:

    [3. “… there’s about a thousand people working for the NBN, that’s one employee for every four subscribers, and the average wage of the NBN is $165,000. Now this is the best remunerated company in Australia, and one person earning $165,000 people per year for every four subscribers, and the billion dollars that they have spent so far on the rollout works out at $250,000 per connection.”

    Actually, if you examine the salaries of NBN Co’s top-earning staff, you’ll find that NBN Co is one of the poorest-remunerated major companies in Australia’s telecommunications sector, despite the fact that over the past several years it has poached high-quality senior staff from all of Australia’s major telcos.

    NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley, for example, earned $1.9 million in 2011, less than half of what Telstra CEO David Thodey did (he earned $5.1 million) and Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan ($3 million). Similarly, other top NBN Co executives such as Patrick Flannigan (who has since left the company), Gary McLaren, Tim Smeallie, Jim Hassell, Kevin Brown and others are all earning less than $1 million per year — usually around the $700,000 to $800,000 mark. The details are in NBN Co’s latest annual report (PDF).

    To say that these salaries are laughably low compared to what many of these executives could pick up by working for Telstra, Qantas, or other companies (as several of them have) is an understatement. Telstra’s top management, for example, are usually on at least $1.5 million per year and often higher — up to $3 million or $4 million a year. You can check these details for yourself in Telstra’s latest annual report (PDF).

    We don’t have as much transparency with respect to the rest of NBN Co’s staff, and certainly the company would have had to pay a decent rate to head-hunt Australia’s top telco engineering talent the way it has. If you’re revamping Australia’s entire fixed-line broadband infrastructure, you need the best. Even so, I’m betting many of NBN Co’s employees took a pay cut to altruistically join what they see as a worthy national project.]

  44. victoria,

    When it comes to voting I ask myself two questions about the candidates

    1. Do you know what they stand for
    2. Will they stand by what they stand for and deliver

    All the current front bench of the fibs fail on both counts.

  45. lizzie

    I have not read the article from the uni lecturer, but his advice for Abbott to pull up his socks is a waste of time. Abbott is not going to get more popular with the voters with the passage of time.

  47. Thanks, Kezza2 @1677:

    [BB

    Re pay rates and the NBN and other things.

    A PBer posted this link last week:

    http://delimiter.com.au/2012/01/04/the-five-nbn-misconceptions-of-tony-abbott/%5D

    The author of that article wrote that top executives at NBN receive “laughably low” salaries, compared to other high-rollers, but he went on:

    [We don’t have as much transparency with respect to the rest of NBN Co’s staff, and certainly the company would have had to pay a decent rate to head-hunt Australia’s top telco engineering talent the way it has. If you’re revamping Australia’s entire fixed-line broadband infrastructure, you need the best. Even so, I’m betting many of NBN Co’s employees took a pay cut to altruistically join what they see as a worthy national project.]

    Our IT friend was complaining about middle management salaries. She says they would work for less, but are being offered more, hinting at cronyism, using the phrase “jobs for the boys”, just stopping short of “Labor maaaates”.

    Now this is anecdotal, even from her point of view (which is not at a particularly senior level of the firm she works for), but does at least demonstrate a perception in “the IT industry” that the NBN is wasting money, offering more for salaries when they could pay less (although no-one’s talking about knocking back NBN work, of course).

    When I said to her that there must be a reason for this (and offered some) she pooh-pooh’d the reasons. My shins got too sore to continue probing.

  48. [Space Kidette
    Posted Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 9:29 am | Permalink

    BB’s friends claims certainly don’t match my experiences. BB did you question her political leaning?]
    The quote at the start of #3 was from Abbott, the rest was a rebuttal of the quote.

    BB’s friend seems terribly confused, all up!

  49. victoria

    We’re still in that difficult situation that if Abbott gets more unpopular and they substitute him with someone “better”, the Libs are more likely to win.

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