Galaxy: 54-46 to Coalition; Nielsen on preferred Labor leader

GhostWhoVotes reports that Galaxy and Nielsen have dipped toes into the murky polling waters, the former with a complete set of results and the latter with numbers on preferred Labor leader. Galaxy’s poll was conducted yesterday and today, and the voting intention figures are essentially unchanged on the previous poll four weeks ago: the Coalition two-party preferred lead is unchanged at 54-46, from primary votes of 34 per cent for Labor (unchanged), 47 per cent for the Coalition (down one) and 12 per cent for the Greens (unchanged). Interestingly, a question on voting intention if Kevin Rudd were Labor leader has produced far less dramatic results than when Nielsen conducted a similar exercise last September. The Coalition lead would narrow to 51-49, a three-point improvement in Labor’s position rather than the 10-point improvement in Nielsen.

On preferred Labor leader, Nielsen has it at 58-34 in Rudd’s favour (it was 57-35 at the poll a fortnight ago) compared with 52-26 from Galaxy (52-30 a month ago), suggesting the two were doing different things with respect to allocating respondents to the undecided category. Galaxy’s result points to a dramatic swing in favour of Rudd among Labor supporters, from 49-48 in Gillard’s favour a month ago to 53-39 in Rudd’s favour now. That the shift among all voters is less dramatic presumably suggests that support for Rudd among Coalition supporters has dropped.

The Galaxy poll also finds that 57 per cent believe the independents should force an early election if Rudd becomes leader, but it is not clear how many would prefer that in any case. Full tables from Galaxy here.

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.

670 comments on “Galaxy: 54-46 to Coalition; Nielsen on preferred Labor leader”

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  1. G’day all, posting my first ever comment on PB tonight solely to express my strong and growing contempt for Kevin Rudd.
    I was born and raised in the southern suburbs of Perth, working class suburbs where the people actually need and rely on a labor government.
    That a former labor PM would put his ego and liberalesque born to rule mentality above the good of the party is unforgivable.
    To actively set out to undermine a labor PM and government is the act of a treacherous dog.
    So now we have to witness the embarrassing spectacle of Rudd wheeling out his wife and adult children, unelected faceless men like Bruce Hawker and a few disgruntled duds in caucus just to further stroke the inflated ego of a sociopath who failed so miserably as PM that when the shit hit the fan he could not even face the judgement of his collegues in a vote because he was so despised.
    History will judge Rudd as nothing more than a liberal in alp clothing, a man who spent more time ingratiating himself with the press gallery instead of collegues.
    A man so lacking in any fortitude that he put every ex liberal politician into government jobs merely to get a pat on the head from the murdocracy.
    I have more respect for Latham than this fraud.
    I will watch with great satisfaction on Monday as this fraud has to once again give an embarassing and probably tearful losing speech after being trounced by a true labor PM in Gillard.
    Two more points while I’m at it, those bleating about Rudds family being bought into the fray need only to lay the blame at said family. Therese Reins intervention was nothing more than patronizing and sad and to see his adult daughter parade herself around to help daddy actually turns my stomach. I guess being a media tart is genetic!
    Memo Jessica, grow up!!! Your daddy isn’t owed the primeministership.
    Also to that fool from South Australia, Nick Champion. The future of the ALP and country Is too important to be decided by who ever happens to be first to stick a scrawled on receipt on your office window. I mean what a knob! If someone had of gotten in earlier with a vote Gillard message would he now be voting for her?
    Should of just flipped a coin Nick, would of had as much credibility!
    The fact that most liberal supporters seem so keen to push Rudd over Gillard says it all to me.
    Go Julia, f#*k off Kevin.
    Cheers.

  2. [I imagine if that happened you’d mysteriously start seeing articles about how he undermined Gillard and wasn’t she hard done by, even when you don’t factor in the problems with forming/running government in the first place….]
    Of course, and there were such articles published after Keating blasted Hawke out of the Lodge too.

    But still, most voters won\’t care, they still can\’t understand why Rudd got booted out in 2010, and will just be happy to have him back.

    Of course the opposition will go troppo, but when voters enter the ballot box at the next election, they will have a choice steady as she goes Rudd, the boring chap who voters trusted over John Howard, or Tony Abbott the somewhat erratic Lathamesque guy who is yet to come up with a single credible policy.

    Game on.

  3. [But governing can at least be learned, whereas voters have just completely given up on Gillard so she has no hope of winning.]

    You say this, but over the course of time Gillards support has risen, admittedly from bottom of the barrel levels to just bad levels, but this was all during a time of difficulty for the government – the passage of the carbon tax and continued undermining by the Rudd camp.

    Unpopular leaders have won in the past, Keating for example. What they had was a united party and a deeply flawed opposition leader.

    I’m of the mind that neither Rudd nor Gillard will win the election, but for the good of the party, the Rudd chapter needs to be closed for good. If necessary, the party needs to move to a new leader with none of the baggage of the past years, but someone the public might listen to.

    It’s quite clear the public are not in love with Abbott after all.

  4. Robert Menzies was an example of a polly that was a flop in his first term but came back better for it.

    I liken Ming to JWH. Both had huge resources boons, one with cheap imported labour, the other with “oh look what we found in the ground that we can sell!”

    At least we got the Snowy Scheme from Ming: JWH was a net negative.

  5. [Unpopular leaders have won in the past, Keating for example. What they had was a united party and a deeply flawed opposition leader.]
    Keating was also campaigning against the ultimate big target opposition proposing a 15% tax on everything.

    Abbott is proposing NOTHING. His basic campaign tactic over the last year has been \”I am not Julia Gillard\”. Which as it stands will be more than enough to get him over the line next year.
    [I’m of the mind that neither Rudd nor Gillard will win the election, but for the good of the party, the Rudd chapter needs to be closed for good. If necessary, the party needs to move to a new leader with none of the baggage of the past years, but someone the public might listen to. ]
    A leadership change to someone other than Rudd would be completely suicidal. It would be like Iemma to Rees to Kenneally. Voters would think that Labor is treating the office of PM as a total joke.

    They need to make a change because Gillard can\’t win. The only credible change they can make is to go back to Rudd who many voters feel should still be the PM in the first place.

  6. Kevin Rudd, hero of the people:

    [But Mr Rudd suggested the transition ought to be more rapid – a position that will be applauded by business.

    ”I’ve always supported a price on carbon … and I’d be working for the earliest possible transition to an emissions trading scheme and a floating price,” he said. ”I think it’s important to look carefully at how the implementation of the current tax goes in its first six months.” Mr Rudd’s original carbon pollution reduction scheme, which he ditched in 2010, had a starting price of $10 and shifted to a floating price scheme after 12 months. Any changes would need to pass through Parliament.

    Such changes would likely create a drop in the price, since international carbon permits are currently trading at about $11, though there are myriad complexities and Mr Rudd offered no further detail yesterday.

    He also claimed that Ms Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan had persuaded him to ditch his CPRS in 2010.

    Minerals Council of Australia boss Mitch Hooke said Mr Rudd had ”acknowledged that it will not be the economic positive claimed by the current government”.

    ”This review will show that Australia’s carbon tax is the biggest in the world by a significant margin,” he said.

    Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/challenger-makes-pitch-to-business-on-carbon-price-20120224-1tu70.html#ixzz1nJTdiCzD
    ]

  7. It seems that Greentard and leftye are devotees of ‘polaroid’ politics.

    You take a picture of teheopinion polling and hold it up as proof that opinions will ever be thus.

    Hmmmm. I seem to recall some extraordinarily good polling for Malcolm Fraser and the Libs in late 1975. Took a polariod of it too.

    And we all know the country never saw another Labor PM.

  8. Oh sorry. I have a bad habit of assuming everyone is male.

    You may have quite a problem. I am given to understand that more than half of the population of this Earth is not male. If you have evidence otherwise feel free to e-mail our Prime Minister.

  9. When Rudd gets drafted he should offer Gillard Treasury.

    With the numbers Labor is pulling from the economy it should be leading the economic debate by a 2:1 margin. But Swan, while a competent administrator, is a terrible politician at selling policies and achievements.

  10. The Snowy Scheme.. LBD 561
    __________
    Actually we didn’t get the Snowy Scheme from Menzies at all
    It was started by Chifley in 1949 before his defeat brought Menzies back to power…but it was in the the last years of Chifley that all the prelim work was undertaken,,,and he had made it a policy in the 1946 election campaign

  11. [You may have quite a problem. I am given to understand that more than half of the population of this Earth is not male. If you have evidence otherwise feel free to e-mail our Prime Minister.]
    I meant everyone here blogging.

    I know what a female looks like when I see one.

  12. [Unpopular leaders have won in the past, Keating for example. What they had was a united party and a deeply flawed opposition leader.]

    Up until this week the Gillard govt had a genuine chance at re-election. Rudd’s actions this week however, have all but killed off what chance it had on that front, and just as the govt was starting to get on the front foot.

    Rudd doesn’t give a shit about whether Abbott is elected, or what happens to the ALP. If he did, he wouldn’t have been actively desabilising the party for the past 18mths, wouldn’t have been bitching about the PM behind her back to industry and the media, and would’ve publicly defended the PM at every opportunity and united behind the leadership team.

    Rudd is a Labor rat of the first order.

  13. [At least we got the Snowy Scheme from Ming: JWH was a net negative.]

    Duckie, that was a Labor (Chifley) initiative that Ming and his morons opposed.

    When they won office in 1949 they only carried-on with it because work was too advanced to stop.

    Don’t credit that fool with the Snowy. He was against it.

  14. [Hmmmm. I seem to recall some extraordinarily good polling for Malcolm Fraser and the Libs in late 1975. Took a polariod of it too.

    And we all know the country never saw another Labor PM.]
    I have never claimed there will never be another Labor PM after Gillard.

    I do note however that Fraser won the 1975 election in a massive landslide, so hey, bad polls for Labor do sometimes turn into landslides for the Coalition. The idea that you just wait and they get better before the election isn\’t always true.

  15. Mr Greentard,
    Fair enough, I withdraw the query about binning. Now you have clarified that point I understand your post. BTW, be a dearie, give your goat the night off.

  16. [deblonay
    Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 2:27 am | Permalink
    The Snowy Scheme.. LBD 561
    __________
    Actually we didn’t get the Snowy Scheme from Menzies at all
    It was started by Chifley in 1949 before his defeat brought Menzies back to power…but it was in the the last years of Chifley that all the prelim work was undertaken,,,and he had made it a policy in the 1946 election campaign]

    Too right, debs.

    It was always thus with the Tories.

    No damn vision, none at all.

  17. But Mr Rudd suggested the transition ought to be more rapid – a position that will be applauded by business.

    I find Kevvie’s purporting himself to be a Labor politician to becoming stranger and stranger.

    He connives with journalists and all the Bigs to try to get the Coalition elected.

    He spits on the PM: faction relationship which he created.

    If the vote is about to be tight on Monday then the PM, I am sure, will put this front and centre.

  18. Duckie,
    I am passing through, by the time I read half the posts, even scrolling by most of greent’s, I am ready to plump the pillow.

  19. rishane:

    So a Rudd govt MkII would oppose pokies reform and water down the carbon pricing scheme? Plus chit chat amongst the press gallery in blokey, misogynist terms about women leaders?

    If this is to be the new progressive mecca provided by Ruddstoration, then I’m far happier under a Tory Gillard govt.

  20. [Mr Greentard,
    Fair enough, I withdraw the query about binning. Now you have clarified that point I understand your post. BTW, be a dearie, give your goat the night off.]
    Oh, so clearly your concern for the decorum of this forum was a load of nonsense.

  21. Public now getting bombarded with political articles and events on TV and radio, and its the weekend too. Most wont read or listen much else now unless it is a stratling revelation, or Rudd comes on the TV, where they do tend listen for at least a little while.

    Figures they can easily understand, so they will scan poll results and a few sentences of articles before moving on. The noise created by team Gillard in attacking Rudd in the end was just so much shouting that it glazed over eyes and ears.

    But it doesn’t matter now. The plan has been to keep Rudd away from threatening factional power.

    Gillard will get in Monday for sure.

    One can expect a sense of disappointment with Labor many voters, especially if it is Gillard rolling Rudd again, a person they already dislike, and seemingly adding injustice to injustice. Since public will at least know Rudd is easily the preferred choice, but wont get up. Confusion with Labor voters again, they will complain to each other and get angry at Labor.

    I believe Gillard’s figures will still fall some, but there will be soon a follow up in a fall in primary, the tail of the fall in personal and PPM attributes. One follows the other as it works its way through public psyche.

    Labor’s primary will tank more, back to prevous lows maybe. But this time it will be hard to budge. The personal perception of Gillard will be at its worse. If she sneezes they will lose another 1% IMHO

    So if the result is severe enough and soon enough it might not be too long before there is another replacement looked for, to stop the rot at such low levels. I imagine Rudd will join such a challenge.

    If they overlooked him at that stage Labor voters one and all would be totally fed up. And Labor would be expecting a record low PV at an election.

    It all has a senese of inevitability about it.

    Unless of course we get some out of right field revelations. Or a byelection is required because of seriously ill MP.

  22. Thanks for the correction on the Snowy, folks.

    Having lived in Canberra for 49 years I should have known.

    On the other hand, I did walk across the Central Basin of Lake Burley Griffin on 7 May 1963 when they were just letting the Molonglo in. Got my shoes and socks a bit wet.

  23. I am with the contributor on the (I think) abc website whose article asks how come the politicians knew this about Rudd and the journalists knew this about Rudd and yet the people were never told.

    How come no flocker told ME, I am the one who has to vote. Is it too much to ask for a journalist to tell me what the flock is actually going on in Canberra?

  24. [Figures they can easily understand, so they will scan poll results and a few sentences of articles before moving on. The noise created by team Gillard in attacking Rudd in the end was just so much shouting that it glazed over eyes and ears. ]
    Gillard and her minion\’s attacks on Rudd will fall as flat as their attacks on Tony Abbott for the simple reason that people don\’t believe a word she says.

  25. [How come no flocker told ME, I am the one who has to vote. Is it too much to ask for a journalist to tell me what the flock is actually going on in Canberra?]
    Because when politicians speak to journalists and it is agreed that it is \”of the record\”, the journalist must never share that information.

    If journalists told a politician \”this discussion is off the record\”, but they then went ahead and reported it and attributed it to the politician, no politician would ever talk to that journalist again, and that journalist would thus run out of things to write about (which is interesting, because previously journalists actually knew how to analyse the merits of different policies and thus didn\’t have to simply rely on leaks from politicians to write informed stories).

    That\’s just how the game works.

    Now if you think that Rudd\’s forces have been leaking to the media but Gillard\’s forces havent, then you are just gullible.

  26. [The idea that you just wait and they get better before the election isn\’t always true]

    The idea that you throw-up your hands and give-up 20 months out from an election with a 10% TPP split and an Opposition that can’t agree on how to tie its shoelaces is pretty silly too.

    Even worse is the idea of replacing a leader who has actually got things done with a re-cycled rat who actively undermined his colleagues, lied about it and was, in any event, completely useless at decisionmaking and policy implementation in the first place (which is why he was shafted by said colleagues).

    Rudd is our saviour, eh?

    Gimmie a break.

    With the truth about him finally getting out, any attempt to put him back in the Big Seat will result in a series or media atacks and exposes that will make what Gillard has had to endure over the last 18 months seem like a cake-walk in comparison.

    She had to put-up with constant carping about her appearance, speech, dress sense and such nonsense.

    He’ll have to endure psychological profiling that paints him as a lying, ego-driven sociopath.

    Yeah, he’ll be real electable by late 2013, won’t he?

  27. [Mr greentard,
    Of course, stuff decorum, I had just hoped you had done enough for Bilbo to get rid of you.]
    I only attack other posters when they attack me. And I am careful to ensure I only attack them in kind.

    As you were.

  28. gt,

    I only attack other posters when they attack me.

    I’d go easy on that one. I’m sure you’re familiar with Dave’s extensive collection.

  29. [The idea that you throw-up your hands and give-up 20 months out from an election with a 10% TPP split and an Opposition that can’t agree on how to tie its shoelaces is pretty silly too.]
    The opposition doesn\’t need any actual policies while Gillard remains leader of Labor. The only \’policy\’ they need is the \”I\’m not Julia Gillard\” policy, which is one policy Tony Abbott has perfected.

    I am not suggesting Labor throw up its hands. All it needs to do is go back to the leader who won them the 2007 election by being a boring and nerdy bureaucrat who just happens to be better liked that both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Once Rudd is leader, changing the leadership to Tony Abbott will seem like an enormous risk for most voters who are currently willing to do it if it enables them to sack Julia Gillard.

  30. Another risk maybe not taken into account in their plans, if the actually bothe to think ahead, is that if an MP has to give up his seat for any reason, and a good chance of losing it, since the swing against labor creates many such opportunities.

    They could find themselves caught short with a disastrous primary vote and least preferred PM and have to go to an election and zero time to rectify things with a replacement PM whoever it is.

  31. More grief for our favourite mogul:

    Rupert Murdoch’s News International took active steps to delete and prepare to delete the publisher’s email archives as phone-hacking allegations and lawsuits against the owner of the now-defunct News of the World mounted in 2009 and developed in 2010.

    According to court documents filed by victims of hacking, the newspaper publisher allegedly produced an email deletion policy in November 2009 whose aim was to “eliminate in a consistent manner” emails “that could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation”.

    An unnamed senior executive at News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Sun and the News of the World, also repeatedly demanded progress on the “email deletion policy” during 2010, asking on 29 July: “How come we still haven’t done the email deletion policy discussed and approved six months ago?”

    h­ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/24/phone-hacking-news-international-email-deletions

  32. [I am not suggesting Labor throw up its hands. All it needs to do is go back to the leader who won them the 2007 election by being a boring and nerdy bureaucrat who just happens to be better liked that both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.]

    You mean the guy who is now wide open to psychological profiling in the Tele, the Hun, the Australian………

    If they can ‘body-language expert’ Gillard, what pray tell, do you think they’re capable fo doing to Rudd after the revelations of the last few days?

    And don’t tell me da publik don’t care. Sure they do. They love this stuff.

    The press love it too. It sells papers.

    A few months of Professor X and Dr Y expressing their opinions on Rudd’s conduct and psyche and he won’t be electable as a local councillor, let alone PM of Australia.

    Take a polaroid of the polls then and tell us what they say.

  33. [rishane:

    So a Rudd govt MkII would oppose pokies reform and water down the carbon pricing scheme? Plus chit chat amongst the press gallery in blokey, misogynist terms about women leaders?

    If this is to be the new progressive mecca provided by Ruddstoration, then I’m far happier under a Tory Gillard govt.]

    I know! Its amazing that there are still people out there who think that Gillard is an evil right-wing sellout and Kevin Rudd is a left-wing martyr. Don’t forget Rudd’s alleged plan to junk the media inquiry too, which isn’t surprising given how much he’s relied on media bias to help his cause. And at least Abbott is more open about his sexism. 😛

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