Morgan face-to-face: 52-48 to Coalition

Last weekend’s Morgan face-to-face survey echoed other polls conducted at the time in showing little change on earlier polling despite Labor’s leadership turmoil, though as always it failed to echo other polls in having Labor’s primary vote several points higher. In this case Labor’s primary vote was up half a point on the previous week to 37.5 per cent, with the Coalition also up a point to 42.5 per cent and the Greens down 3.5 per cent from an anomalous 14.5 per cent last time. As usual with Morgan (though not Nielsen), there was a substantial difference between the two-party preferred results as derived by respondent allocation (52-48 to the Coalition) and using preference flows from the previous election (50-50).

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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.

2,750 comments on “Morgan face-to-face: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  2. Tom Hawkins & Bemused,

    Geraldine Doogue is one of the best interviewers around, imo – thoughtful, intelligent, articulate, balanced and civil. She never tries for the”gotchas” and really knows how to listen and draw out her interviewees.

  3. Greetings all

    Thank you one, thank you all for fantastic commentary on, as an opera lover, the libretto for a gripping, tumultuous, breathtaking, emotional, hilarious, villianous, treacherous, subplotted, character teeming, pendulum and ultimate final triumphant Act, worthy of Aida! 

    Tentatively enbtitled:

    TOOK YOU FOR A RIDE IN MY CARR CARR

    A National cast, lead by an enormously gifted lead heroine!

    An Opera in several parts.

    I watched every thrilling moment of the drama as it unfolded, listened to everything I could bear, read everything I could handle.

    Revenge of Julia – εκδίκηση της Julia (ekdíki̱si̱ ti̱s Julia)

    BRAVO! BRAVO!

  4. There was absolutely no doubt who was running the show at the Gillard/Carr presser and it wasn’t Bob – as some of the thicker journos found out.

    Good to see that the PM is getting fed up and sorting a few of the nongs like JBishop.

    Love watching Nostro have a go at Carr’s age. What about BBishop, ARobb, WTruss, etc … They missed their shot ten years ago!

  6. [Journos don’t as they barely care if they get it wrong and getting in first is much more important to them.]
    Totally agree. They missed the Rudd fall and have been jumping at shadows and been susceptible to every rumour ever since. Therefore they report every “leak” without exercising any judgement..

  9. Meanwhile, top spot on the ballot paper in the race to become the mayor of Darwin has been won by Mr Jenkins.

    Mr Jenkins has gone one better than the NSW Shed Man.

    Mr Jenkins is homeless. Apparently, Mr Jenkins eschews publicity. The NT News couldn’t find him for an interview, even though it followed a trail of his found object sculptures.

  11. Carney:

    [She took revenge on Robert McClelland, who a week ago said he believed the government could not win the next election under Gillard but could do so under Rudd. Only 10 days before last Christmas, McClelland was attorney-general, a member of cabinet. Now he is a backbencher.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/a-tough-road-ahead-for-gillard-as-the-dust-settles-20120302-1u8ia.html#ixzz1o0soslda

    Sic transit gloria, Shaun.

    Excuse me, but why would a Prime Minister want someone in a cabinet position who had publicly said that the government’s cause was lost? Why would she want someone who had probably leaked to the newspapers against her? And who was prepared to spit the dummy even after being given the message that he was no longer wanted?

    McClellend’s sacking is not a punishment, it’s common sense, almost a public duty. If you’re not part of the team, and don’t think the team can win anyway, you’re superfluous to requirements.

    [The argument Labor MPs mounted to defend Gillard – that she was a highly effective leader who gets difficult things done that the public does not like but are good for them – was fine as a way to defeat Rudd. They’ll need more than that to stave off Tony Abbott.]

    Carney often writes, after wring his hands in despair, that Abbott has no policies, and no plan for policies, is a humbug full of brainfarts and half-baked thought bubbles, surrounded by half-competent time-servers. Yet, in Carney’s estimation, a “highly effective leader who gets difficult things done” has little chance against him, and (we might surmise from the tenor of Carney’s previous writings) deservedly so.

    He is touting for Abbott here, not just sniffing the rose water. Carney has been so wrong, so often before. What are the chances of him making it a quadrella?

  12. Zoomster 1700 – Interesting but how do these small business owners think people spend money that they don’t have?

    Ask them why can a small business in wealthy suburbs charge more for goods and services?

  13. a few comments:

    1. Howes has said Hartchers references to him are untrue
    2. For those who may have missed Gareth Gareth Evans thoughts on Bob Carr, worth alook:

    http://theconversation.edu.au/cabinet-reshuffle-gareth-evans-on-bob-carr-5678

    3. For the “No Shit Sherlock” media types, don’t you think the Arbib resignation came out of the blue? And first time Carr was sounded out was Monday of this week? And the rebuilding the party trust and unity post-Rudd has been at the forefront of people’s minds for longer than 11am Monday?

  14. Is there any such thing as truth in a relativitistic post-modern world?

    Aren’t the journalists simply doing the job of confecting whatever it is that their readership will consume?

    Shouldn’t we be ready to share their pain as they dog paddle for survival in the primordial murk of their deliberate deceptions, self- deceptions, half-glimpsed reality and chosen fragments of a complexity they lost hold of long ago?

  15. For OPT’s BISOQ:

    JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much Mr Speaker. And in answer to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition’s question; let me restate – don’t believe everything you read and let me promise the following – and let me promise the following – whoever I select won’t break into a sweat wiping the floor with her.

    Hansard.

  19. Dean Jaensch, emeritus professor of politics at Flinders University, has a weekly column in the Adelaide Advertiser. This week he looked back at the three great Labor Party splits – over conscription in 1917, over how to deal with the Great Depression in the early 1930s and over Communism and the formation of the DLP in the 1950s.

    Dean then makes the remarkable claim that “none of the previous internal disputes involved such venomous language and vitriolic attacks as the past week or so. The Gillard camp, especially, could only be described as using poisonous ferocity. The Rudd camp was akso far from genteel”.

    Poor old Dean! The likes of Billy Hughes, Jack Lang and B.A. Santamaria and his Communist adversaries make present day pollies look like pussy cats.

  20. [1. Howes has said Hartchers references to him are untrue]

    I think Poss’s reference to Hartcher’s article as a big dummy spit are pretty on the mark.

    Hartcher was on the Rudd drip, and sounds like he’s having difficulty resigning himself to the fact Rudd will no longer be a source of Cabinet info.

  23. [I wish I had seen it live. The replay is never as good.]

    Yesterday’s Press Conference re Bob Carr’s Appointment

    Puff, the best part of that presser was the Canberra Press Gallery’s reaction. Initially, stunned – aghast, even – silence. The first journo who tried to interrupt was slapped down immediately; so CPG, as if struck mute by a Gillard-supporting God, did STFU for what remained of Gillard/ Carr speeches.

    When the PM moved to questions & it seemed the usual big-mouths would behave as an ignorant, strident rabble (as usual), the PM, in another STFU moment, decided who could ask questions, in what order, in “tranches” – she did say,” I’ll move to the next tranche”, with an ask a silly question and you’ll be put in your place manner used by tough teachers to control a rowdy ill-mannered adolescents.

    Card game triumphs best describe the PM’s: Jane Austen’s generation called comprehensive opponent demolition, Piqued, Repiqued and Repined; my parents’ generation Euchred (a term also implying very devious and sneaky) or Trumped, or Grand Slam doubled redoubled and vulnerable.

    My highlight, however, came afterwards, with Lyndal Curtis’ puffy, white, shocked face, and a shocked voice robbed of its usual strident arrogance. Magic!

    The Press Gallery’s Bad News Week

    Behind CPG’s almost cowered reactions was more bad news than Ruddstoration’s comprehensive demolition. Tuesday’s news that the ACCC had approved Telstra’s structural separation meant that, once all legislation was cleared and implemented, any Lib promise to scrap the NBN would prove prohibitively expensive in government and ensure any LNP attempt to scrap it would be killed off by the Senate.

    Still worse than a Background from Hell NewsLtd’s trying to pretend isn’t there – yet more crushing Levenson Inquiry revelations of criminal acts and police corruption, more high-profile arrests, and James Packer’s resignation as the latest in a long line – was a nearer, more fearful shock: the hand-over to the Government of former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein’s media review. Today, The Australian’s David Crowe wrote Media fears for freedom as watchdog unleashed (not paywalled).

    [PRINT and online news will come under direct federal government oversight for the first time under proposals issued yesterday to create a statutory regulator with the power to prosecute media companies in the courts…

    The proposals, issued yesterday by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, also seek to widen the scope of federal oversight to cover print, online, radio and TV within a single regulator for the first time …

    The recommendations feed into a wider Gillard government media Convergence Review that is tipped to lead to reforms to ownership laws later this year.]

    The Elephant in Australia’s Press and News Rooms

    For Later this year add Levenson and Finkelstein to get the elephant in the Canberra Press Gallery and other News Rooms; the possibility that, to Oz Media & Convergence reviews, Minister Conroy might add UK Levenson Inquiry Recommendations and structures for Media supervision and regulation which safeguard the UK from future Murdoch-like corruption. Even worse, there could be additional recommendations from probable FBI & other USA inquiries into the Murdoch Empire’s criminal behaviour.

    Since the Ruddstoration’s Hydra again reared its destabilising heads, and Wilkie spat the dummy re supporting the PM, the CPG had envisaged another enticing chance that Abbott could finally roll the Gillard government before CP, MRRT, NBN, health benefit subsidies, AN & new ABC appointments etc were entrenched/ made … and media Inquiries’ recommendations resulted in new regulatory oversight!

    No wonder yesterday’s Presser announcing Bob Carr’s appointment, and introducing a PM determined to eliminate Canberra Press Gallery & other News Rooms’ members’ rude, overbearing, and mendaciously insulting behaviour towards her and her Ministers, sent chills through attending journos, as the PM put paid to any dreams (esp media magnates’ & Big Miner wannabes’ dreams of unbridled media control) that Abbott & his Oppo Cavalry would ride to their rescue before the government could entrench its controversial legislation.

  24. I see that the start up taskmaster ad to your right features Mr Kitchiner.

    I protest against Crikey allowing the casual use of of the images of concentration camp owners cum mass murderers in advertising.

    Apart from that, Mr Kitchiner could hardly be rated as a ‘smart leader’.

  25. The thought occurred to me that the vehemence of the journosphere’s dummy-spit today is in direct proportion to the scale of the Gillard victory over them last week.

    They have {cobbled|phone-tapped|guessed} their list of facts together over the week to justify their poor analysis, and are now trying to make that template fit what actually happened, with Bob Carr’s appointment as FM the logical conclusion of it all.

    So how come they didn’t tell us all this, or even hint of it, on Tuesday while they were busy “failing” Gillard for just about everything.

    They were caught flat-footed, as was most of the nation. Their only excuse is to call the Carr coup virtually an Act Of God, something so unpredictable that no-one could have seen it, or even considered it.

    Yet at the same time they argue it was all Gillard could do to “save her government”. Obvious really, when you think of it… the day after.

    A reminder of the scale of Kelly’s dummy spit, from my earlier post. These words were all used in just one article:

    [comic moment,
    defeat,
    high farce,
    roller-coaster week,
    embarrassment,
    humiliating consequences,
    collapse,
    Monty Python,
    Gillard brazenness,
    boasted,
    nervousness,
    betrayed,
    theatre-of-the-absurd,
    hammed it up,
    stood up by Gillard,
    nonsense,
    actor’s genius,
    political razor blades,
    second hit for the team,
    rescued,
    narrow escape,
    chaos,
    fragility of Gillard’s judgement,
    fiasco,
    ludricrous,
    such a mess,
    muddying the waters,
    failed,
    thin quality,
    ruthless pragmatism,
    Gillard is doomed,
    must revitalise,
    got out of jail, twice.]

    This is malevolence and childishness from a supposedly senior commentator. It is a pure tummy-up tantrum, an almost incoherent outburst of major, unhinged proportions.

    Any pretence of fairness or objectivity that Kelly once might have had, any argument that he is unemotional about this government must surely be dismissed from now on. I leave him to his pain, and his dummy.

  26. On one hand I think the appointment of Bob Carr to the senate is a good decision, I would like to see this as a start of seeing successful people being used for their intelligences and insights

    But I think the PM should have handled it a lot better than she did, I was left with the impression that Carr had been ruled out yet next minute he is going to Canberra.

    Now if I can get confused then only god knows what the average voter thinks.

    My only concern is and maybe it will work but Manufacturing and Climate Change sitting together looks a bit unwise, maybe Manufacturing could have been given to Combet and give Climate Change to a difference MP maybe promote the MP for Hindmarsh or Roberston

    And Andrew Leigh should have been promoted to Assistant Treasurer with the clear aim of promoting him post election

  28. Can someone tell Mick Collins that accusing someone of lying is against forum rules?

    And please also remind him that he is a dickhead.

  30. “From reading these pieces today, and seeing how much detail their articles contain, or purport to contain, I am forced to one of the following conclusions:

    1. They have a few facts and are filling in the gaps with bullshit.

    2. There is a super-grass in Labor that is feeding them stuff by the minute.

    3. They are tapping phones, or phone message banks.

    They are claiming to have blow-by-blow, detailed knowledge of phone calls, discussions, even emotions involved in the past week’s proceedings.”

    Yes. Much the same thought, and the same possibilities, occurred to me. There is a 4th possibility, though. Some of the material may have been deliberately leaked, either in a ‘sting” to catch a leaker, or in a ‘sting’ to one-up the media pack (or both). Or perhaps initially there was just a desire to see what the reaction would be to a Carr appointment?

    If you look at the material a few deliberate, partial, mentions of phone conversations could readily have directed the fertile imaginations of our dear press gallery down a completely wrong track.

    The mutual boosting within the gallery, their love of “un-named sources” and the gleaning or manufacturing of a few snippets from elsewhere would quite rapidly have converted this into a more or less plausible, or at least consistent, fairy tale for them all to tell.

  32. [4. Some of the material may have been deliberately leaked, either in a ‘sting” to catch a leaker, or in a ‘sting’ to one-up the media pack (or both).]

    Good point Rod.

    The swiftness of McClelland’s demotion from A-G to squeegee hints that there was more to it than his bumbling ways.

  33. Can’t understand any criticism of Julia Gillard re demotion of Robert McClelland.

    He said the party can’t win with her as leader, what was she supposed to do?

    If she kept him, she’d be called weak; so she demotes him and it’s called retribution.

    Does anyone seriously believe she could have kept someone in her cabinet who publicly made such a declaration?

  34. Best read of the week? Today’s Good weekend piece on MT? He ain’t going nowhere.

    So we can rule out a Libspill then ?

  35. [Some of the material may have been deliberately leaked, either in a ‘sting” to catch a leaker]

    Someone postulated yesterday that McClelland’s sacking may have been as a result of this.

  39. I seem to recall Latham claimed in his book (or perhaps in an interview) that he suspected Rudd was leaking stuff to the media when he (Latham) was leader, and so he fed Rudd some bodgy info and it ended up in print.

  41. [Can’t understand any criticism of Julia Gillard re demotion of Robert McClelland.

    He said the party can’t win with her as leader, what was she supposed to do?

    If she kept him, she’d be called weak; so she demotes him and it’s called retribution.

    Does anyone seriously believe she could have kept someone in her cabinet who publicly made such a declaration?]

    For a man with such mild mannered ways, it was clear that McClellend just couldn’t keep his mouth shut in public, and perhaps in private too.

    Carr had to good sense to “No comment” his way through the gaggle and saved some of the furniture.

    Julia learned the lesson from Elizabeth-R: it might be distasteful but, in the case of disloyalty, heads have to roll or yours will be next.

  44. [ What’s the interest in the Pyne interview? ]

    Yes, I saw it – just happened to be flicking through the sdtations and stopped (because I like Emma Alberici).

    The most interesting thing was that she could hardly keep the sneer off her face as she just walked over Pyne’s waffe. And she gently pointed out a few of his more stupid self-contradictions.

    It almost made me want to start watching the ABC again!

  45. Mexicanbeemer:
    I think the PM should have handled it a lot better than she did, I was left with the impression that Carr had been ruled out yet next minute he is going to Canberra.

    Gillard herself certainly never said this, or even gave the impression, of it. Some of Carr’s comments could have been taken that way, though they were all actually highly ambiguous. Thus his ” not pursuing the vacant NSW Senate seat” could just as readily be read to mean that he was being pursued, not doing the chasing. And his “I might have moved on from it” (cited by some journos without the “I might have”, of course) is hardly a definitive statement coming out of the mouth of an experienced politician. By this time the press gang had already written the story in their own minds, so they didn’t bother to consider the alternative meanings that didn’t fit their collective idea of what the story should be.

    THe likely scenario is that, as Gillard repeatedly (and almost certainly honestly) said, the decision simply hadn’t been made, either by herself or by Carr, at that stage.

  47. [The Pyne interview on Lateline still hasn’t been uploaded, despite all the other segments being there.]

    Glad to hear that. I thought I was going mad trying to find it.

    It’s a disgrace that this segment remains hidden. Unless otherwise proved, it seems to be a case of the ABC being nobbled badly.

    Will Emma even be there next week, or will she have had the frontal lobotomy so common nowadays among the up and coming young presenters at the ABC?

    If a segemrnt can be deleted, air-brushed from their internet line up so easily, who is really running the national broadcaster?

  48. Love the Bob Carr/FM appointment as it has really moved the focus into new territory and away from the Rudd/leadership drain.

    Perplexed though at the retention of Bowen in Immigration – for both he and the govt they needed a change and fresh start – just hope he’s looking ahead to redeveloping a fresh new approach to peoples muggling/queue jumpimg

  49. [The swiftness of McClelland’s demotion from A-G to squeegee hints that there was more to it than his bumbling ways.]
    Err, “bumbling ways”? He was demoted for supporting Rudd, pure and simple.

  50. [Perplexed though at the retention of Bowen in Immigration – for both he and the govt they needed a change and fresh start ]
    Leaving Bowen in immigration is simply punishment. He never wanted the portfolio in the first place, and has offered Gillard his resignation twice.

    She has basically said to him that if he wants to stay in cabinet, that’s the only ministry on offer.

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