Newspoll: 53-47 to Coalition

James J relates that Newspoll has Labor up further on a surprisingly strong result a fortnight ago: the Coalition’s two-party preferred lead is down from 54-46 to 53-47, and the primary votes are 35% for Labor (up two), 45% for the Coalition (steady) and 11% for the Greens (up one). Labor was last this high on two-party preferred in March, and on primaries when Labor enjoyed a brief spike in the days before Kevin Rudd’s leadership challenge. Despite this, Julia Gillard’s personal ratings have weakened still further, her approval down two points to 27% and disapproval up one to 60%, while Tony Abbott continues what seems to be a steady upward trend over recent months: his approval is up two to 34% and his disapproval is down two to 54%. And on another counter-intuitive note, the latest poll nonetheless has Julia Gillard drawing level on preferred prime minister at 38% apiece, compared with a 38-36 lead for Abbott last time.

UPDATE: Morgan’s face-to-face poll covering the last two weekends also gives Labor it’s best result since March: their primary vote is up 2.5% to 34.5%, although the Coalition is also up half a point to 44%, with the Greens down 1.5% to 10%. On two-party preferred, the Coalition lead is down from 56-44 to 54-46 on respondent-allocated preferences and 53.5-46.5 to 53-47 on previous election preferences.

Newspoll having turned in results which look relatively kind to Labor twice in a row, I thought now might be a good time to review the recent performance of the pollsters relative to each other. I have done this by calculating averaged quarterly results for each regularly reporting pollster going back to the start of 2009 (with separate results included for the respondent-allocated and previous-election figures from Morgan’s face-to-face polls). The first chart shows the progress over that time of Labor’s two-party vote.

This shows an impressive consistency of trends once weekly/fortnightly/monthly fluctuations are ironed out. The closest we get to an aberration is the April-June 2009 result from Nielsen, which conducted only one poll in that period. A clearer indication of pollsters’ “house biases” can be provided if we convert the results into deviations from the average of the four pollsters (using the previous election measure for Morgan for the sake of consistency).

This indeed shows that Newspoll has lately been more generous to Labor than at any other point in the time covered, but the difference with Essential Research is still fairly modest. Nielsen, it would seem, has reliably been a point or two worse for Labor than Newspoll over the entire period. Essential favoured Labor in the early days of operation, apparently due to methodological teething problems, but has closely matched Newspoll throughout the current parliamentary term. It is true that a gap has opened in the two most recent observations, but I would want to see this continued over a longer time frame before reading much into it.

The widely recognised lean to Labor in Morgan-face-to-face polls is shown up fairly clearly on the respondent-allocated result, although the other pollsters “caught up” with it at the peak of the Rudd honeymoon. As I’ve probably said about a million times now, the gap which opened up between respondent-allocated and previous-election two-party results in early 2011 is an inexplicable quirk of Morgan’s. The respondent-allocated results produced by Nielsen show no such pattern, and if I had gone to the bother of including separate measures, it would have hugged the previous-election line as closely as Morgan’s did over the first half of the chart.

Taken together, the average two-party results for Labor since the 2010 election have been 45.9% from Newspoll, 44.2% from Nielsen, 45.7% from Essential, 48.1% from Morgan previous-election, and 45.9% from Morgan respondent-allocated.

Other polls:

Essential Research has primary votes unchanged on last week, at 32% for Labor, 49% for the Coalition and 10% for the Greens, although rounding has resulted in an increase in the Coalition’s two-party lead from 56-44 to 57-43. Also featured are questions on power prices, with 37% thinking power companies most responsible against 28% for the federal government and 23% for state governments; price increases under the carbon tax, which 52% (including 68% of Coalition voters) say they have noticed and 36% say they haven’t; and the various aspects of the Houston report recommendations, which find very strong support for limiting the ways boat arrivals can bring their families to Australia, opinion divided on increasing the humanitarian program and strong opposition to the Malaysia solution, but strong approval for implementing them all as per the new government policy.

• Channel Nine in Brisbane tonight reported results of a statewide ReachTEL automated phone poll of over 1000 respondents, which showed the LNP on 42.2% (compared with 49.6% at the election), Labor on 31.6% (26.7%), Katter’s Australian Party on 9.6% (11.5%) and the Greens on 9.2% (7.5%), for an LNP lead of 56-44 (62.8-37.2) on two-party preferred. Daniel Hurst of Fairfax has more results from the poll, including the finding that Campbell Newman’s disapproval rating (42%) has nearly shaded his approval (44%). This adds to the impression from Morgan polling (see below) and last fortnight’s ReachTEL Ashgrove poll of a solid shift away from the LNP over recent months, albeit nowhere near enough to threaten their lead.

• Morgan has published a headache-inducing release on state voting intention which details results from various small-sample phone polls conducted over the past two months. Last week they polled between 319 and 343 respondents in each of the four biggest states; a month ago they polled 648 respondents nationally for a poll on “the most important public problems facing Australia”, from which tiny state-level sub-samples have been derived for comparing the latest results with. Every individual set of results is from too small a sample to be of much use, but you can see them all here if you’re interested. They can at least be used to derive combined July-August results for New South Wales and Victoria from passable samples of just below 500 and margins of error of around 4.5%. For New South Wales, the results are Coalition 54%, Labor 25% and Greens 10%, with the Coalition leading 61-39 on two-party preferred; for Victoria, Coalition 45%, Labor 35% and Greens 12%, with the Coalition leading 51-49. In each case Labor and the Greens get similar results to the previous elections, but the Coalition are three points higher on the primary vote in New South Wales and four points lower in Victoria.

Jamie Walker of The Australian reports research conducted for Labor by UMR Research in March found Clive Palmer was viewed favourably by 26% of men and 16% of women, and unfavourably by 35% of men and 22% of women. Forty-two per cent of women and 26% men said they had never heard of him.

Preselections:

• Barnaby Joyce said last week he would “definitely” run for preselection in the outback Queensland seat of Maranoa if its 68-year-old incumbent, Bruce Scott, decided not to seek another term. Should Scott remain intransigent, he will “seek the counsel of party people in the electorate”.

• The NSW Nationals have confirmed state independent Richard Torbay as their candidate to take on Tony Windsor in New England.

Fairfax reports Jane Prentice, the LNP member for the Brisbane seat of Ryan, faces preselection challenges from Jonathon Flegg, son of state government minister and former Liberal leader Bruce Flegg, and pharmacist John Caris.

• The ABC reports that Michael Burr withdrew as Liberal candidate for the northern Tasmanian marginal seat of Braddon last month, a fact which escaped by notice when I compiled my “seat of the week” entry a fortnight later. The front-runner to replace him would appear to be Brett Whiteley, who held a state seat in Braddon from 2002 until his defeat in 2010. Former Senator Guy Barnett says he was approached to fill the vacancy, but is instead focusing on entering state politics. The two unsuccessful candidate for the original preselection, veterans advocate Jacqui Lambie and Poppy Growers Tasmania president Glynn Williams, have indicated they might try again.

Barry Kennedy of the Sunbury Leader reports Sunbury businessman Ben Collier and two other candidates will contest Liberal preselection for McEwen on the weekend. Rob Mitchell gained the seat for Labor at the 2010 election and scored a free-kick at the redistribution to take effect at the next election, which adds Labor-voting Sunbury to the seat and boosts his margin from 5.3% to 9.2%.

• Warring factions in the NSW Liberal Party are reportedly negotiating a compromise after a “hard Right” push to entrench preselection plebiscites led to fears numerous sitting MPs would be targeted with branch-stacking. Together with a raft of state MPs, Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald reported those affected might include Philip Ruddock in Berowra, Scott Morrison in Cook, Bronwyn Bishop in Mackellar and Alex Hawke in Mitchell. Heath Aston of the Sun-Herald reports the compromise would likely involve sitting members being protected, branch members required to be members for two years before being entitled to a plebiscite vote, limitations on state executive’s power to impose candidates and, in a concession from the hard Right, a requirement for direct attendance at elections for state executive positions to guard against postal vote rorting. At the root of the dispute is the decision by state executive, which is dominated moderates and the centre Right, to impose centre Right candidate Lucy Wicks in the seat of Robertson.

Shannon Tonkin of the Illawarra Mercury reports John Rumble, a Wollongong nurse and son of former local state MP Terry Rumble, will challenge incumbent Stephen Jones for Labor preselection in Throsby. It had been widely reported that the Right was gathering strength in local branches in preparation for a push by Mark Hay, son of state Wollongong MP Noreen Hay, but he announced earlier this month that he would instead pursue work commitments with the Royal Australian Navy.

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.

5,425 comments on “Newspoll: 53-47 to Coalition”

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  1. http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

    [The New New Deal
    The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama
    By Michael Grunwald | @MikeGrunwald | August 23, 2012

    TIME just published “The Party of No,” an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) where they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular president-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.” The excerpt includes a special bonus nugget of Mitt Romney dissing the Tea Party.

    But as we say in the sales world: There’s more! I’m going to be blogging some of the news and larger themes from the book here at time.com, and I’ll kick it off with more scenes from the early days of the Republican Strategy of No. Read on to hear what Joe Biden’s sources in the Senate GOP were telling him, some candid pillow talk between a Republican staffer and an Obama aide, and a top Republican admitting his party didn’t want to “play.” I’ll start with a scene I consider a turning point in the Obama era, when the new president came to the Hill to extend his hand and the GOP spurned it.]

  2. [Psephos
    Posted Friday, August 24, 2012 at 10:11 pm | Permalink

    Is Anna Bligh a descendant of Admiral Bligh? I used to know but I’ve forgotten.
    ]

    No; Bligh has the name, Turnbull is the descendant.

  3. Shellbell @ 4958,

    [Some things are bad luck but this has been a disaster for justice in Queensland outstrips Cameron Doomadgee/Chris Hurley.]

    Yes, this has to get certain peole asking some very uncomfortable questions.

    (On another matter – thank you for your responses at the beginning of the thread. My apologies for my failure to respond – I shall try to make amends over the weekend.)

  4. I think Newman might provide the same gifts to Labor as Kennett did in 1993.

    In 1990, like Queensland in 2010, Victoria had a huge swing against the ALP that almost cost them the Federal Government.

    But in 1993, after Kennett won a year earlier, Labor regained 4 of the 7 seats that Labor lost here in 1990.

    Overall, since Labor lost seats in Queensland, SA and WA, these were seats that needed to be regained. And with Liberal governments slashing and burning in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania, enough federal seats were gained in these states that Labor ended up winning the 1993 election.

    Will history repeat itself? Who knows? But as far as I can tell, Baillieu and O’Farrell have mostly been able to hold on to their election winning margins through relatively moderate policies, while Newman seems to have burned half of his up in the first 6 months.

  5. [GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes
    #Galaxy Poll QLD Federal 2 Party Preferred: ALP 43 (+7) L/NP 57 (-7) #auspol
    10:43 PM – 24 Aug 12

    GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes
    #Galaxy Poll QLD Federal Primary Votes: ALP 30 (+7) L/NP 49 (-7) GRN 10 (-1) #auspol
    10:44 PM – 24 Aug 12]

  6. An informative and amusing i/v on LL. Summary: “Romney is in the thrall of the Tea Party.”

    Barack could do worse than: “Romney would do to the US of A what Newman is doing to Queensland.”

  7. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/editorial-time-to-move-on-as-julia-gillard-stands-firm/story-e6frerc6-1226457696089

    [EDITORIAL: Time to move on as Julia Gillard stands firm
    by: Editorial
    From: The Courier-Mail
    August 25, 2012 12:00AM

    POLITICAL leaders seldom like being told what to do, which was very apparent during the week as Prime Minister Julia Gillard resisted incessant demands she explain herself in relation to events that occurred between 17 and 20 years ago, when she was a partner in the law firm Slater & Gordon.

    …………….

    Just as Ms Gillard will welcome the opportunity to push her agenda along, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott should broaden his outlook and not spend his time simply regurgitating his often alarmist claims about the impact of carbon pricing. Today’s Courier-Mail/Galaxy poll shows people do not see the carbon price as hitting their hip pockets, with more than half saying there was virtually no impact and another quarter saying what they saw was minor.]
    worth reading it all

  8. What the fuck does this have do with Australian politics?

    Is “Leroy” from the US Embassy?

    [http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

    The New New Deal
    The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama
    By Michael Grunwald | @MikeGrunwald | August 23, 2012

    TIME just published “The Party of No,” an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) where they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular president-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.” The excerpt includes a special bonus nugget of Mitt Romney dissing the Tea Party.

    But as we say in the sales world: There’s more! I’m going to be blogging some of the news and larger themes from the book here at time.com, and I’ll kick it off with more scenes from the early days of the Republican Strategy of No. Read on to hear what Joe Biden’s sources in the Senate GOP were telling him, some candid pillow talk between a Republican staffer and an Obama aide, and a top Republican admitting his party didn’t want to “play.” I’ll start with a scene I consider a turning point in the Obama era, when the new president came to the Hill to extend his hand and the GOP spurned it.]

  9. Anna Bligh is indeed a descendent of William Bligh.

    Good to note that Galaxy is discerning a swing to the ALP on the back of Can Do.

  10. meher baba 5084
    [And he has lots of rather strange preconceptions, eg: an unshakeable belief that neither the public service nor big business is any good at running things and a strong bias towards NGOs (preferably Christian) and small businesses. It’s easy to see why he’d be attracted towards the ideas of small “c” conservative thinkers like Phillip Blond.]

    Oddly enough, although I have seen no redeeming features in Abbott, his preconceptions on NGOs in relation to employment agencies might well have saved the Howard government.

    Kemp had made an ideological dog’s breakfast of the Job Network – the so-called competitive market solution as a replacement for the CES labour exchange network. It was inequitable in tendering, generally ineffective and had managed to piss off the coalition’s small business constituency.

    Abbott was given the task of salvaging the mess. His solution was to give most of the business to NGO/community organisations. A few very successful private companies (like Therese Rein’s) survived but most business was given to NGOs. And if the Job Network is still not as effective as the CES was, at least Abbott’s model stopped the bleeding that had been occurring.

  11. Hi to the late PBers, am sitting at Heathrow airport, another 4 hours to go, will go and have a shower in a couple of hours to help with the 24 hours coming home to Oz.
    Is it this weekend Nielsen polls, surely with Fairfax reporting about Newscorpse and JG ALP will go up? See Yahoo as I came in running with Pyne’s JG ‘has more to answer’
    Of course it is running at 73% yes, wonder why???? Ha Ha
    All the best

  12. I have to thank Kezza at Page 100 for convincing me that I should get up, shower, change my feverflu soaked sheets, go for a walk, make my dog happy and clear my head. I’m jumping some ten pages of comments, so if someone has already said this or if you are all over this topic forgive me.

    Kezza, you talk about Zoomster and BS claims! As I read both your comments he didn’t ‘claim’ anything! In his first post he was merely clarifying for himself whether or not the description ‘volunteer’ applied to these two women, since it seemed to be a recent one. It turned out he was wrong. He would have shrugged that aside, but you have persisted in an obsessive pursuit of him on this. Why? For what purpose?

    Regardless of when they were first so described, or if the term is technically incorrect, both were hovering around Assange and Wikileaks lectures and functions either performing services like organising travel bookings or offering to perform simple services to fetch and carry for him. Neither were paid, nor have complained about that. So volunteering is a fairly accurate description of what they started out doing.

    Or do you see them both from the beginning as bewitched by Assange’s obvious physical appeal, his charisma and the glamour of his role as founder of the Wikileaks ’cause’ and hoping for a sexual encounter with him? In that case perhaps you think they could be better described as groupies or camp followers? Would that make what Assange then did legitimate? Can women who have been conned into providing free transport, food and accomodation as well as sex, which they may well have wanted, even asked for, really complain if the condom breaks and they later discover they were not his only sexual partner that weekend and so have good reason to have concerns about infection? Because that is what Julian Assange is saying. He admits to every complaint of these two women up to this point. He is only defending himself against their other complaints of offences which if proved make him liable to prosecution.

    Swedish law requires him to answer those complaints. I don’t need the findings of several tiers of British justice that he should be extradited to face enquires into those complaints to convince me that Julian Assange is making a mockery of the Wikileaks cause. That cause claims to be fighting exploitation and control of the world wide web, or global intelligence, by vested interests, corporations, nation states and religious groups like scientology. By control Assange and his followers like you seemed to mean economic, financial, sexual or psychological abuse of the sort humankind has exercised against others and amongst itself since time immemorial. I would have been happy to join that struggle except that I have become increasingly convinced that our democratic government, with its jurisprudence, legal system police and other social controls, whatever their shortcomings, is more likely to protect me and work with other governments to find reliable safeguards against abuse of the internet and global intelligence than Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

    Zoomster was not having a go at your hero. He was simply trying to ensure that his reputation was not being abused by a careless media, in this country largely controlled, as elsewhere in the world, by the mega monster Murdoch and Newscorp. Inadvertently he has again demonstrated abusive behaviour is not confined to nation states, corporations and religious organizations. Your obsessive zeal defending Julian Assange and excessive splitting of hairs in this argument with Zoomster about his very reasonable curiosity, nay civilised concern, has helped me better understand my reservations about Wikileaks and Assange.

    I would rather look to my elected government, its police and judiciary, security forces and diplomatic service inter-acting with other governments, however undemocratic, for progress in protecting me against the potential dangers of exploitation and abuse of the world wide web. I have a vote, a say in the election of that government, which I may often disagree with. Your arguments here smack of the fanatical cult follower. You won’t even allow a minor disagreement about a one word description of the accusers of a man they claim had no respect for their rights to protect their own bodies.

  13. Turnbull’s anscestory…From a famous UK Labor leader
    ____________________________________________
    Malcolm Turnbull’s mother was a Landsbury…a descendent from the family of the Landsbury’s one of whom was a famed and much loved early UK Labour Party pioneer…and he’s thus also a sort of 2nd Cousin of the actress A.Landsbury(“Murder she wrote”…she was the star!)

    Landsbury was an early Labour Leader in the Commons and Mayor of an East London suburb…and he and the whole council was jailed…..by a Tory PM for their refusal to carry out cuts to measures to help the desperately poor in London’s East End after WW1

    Famously the Councillors met in prison to carry out council business
    A wonderfull stunt
    Malcolm is descended from one of the Landsbury brothers

    Malcolm’s mother…a Landsbury ..wrote a fine book on the way many of the I9th century UK authors saw Australia as a kind of paradise
    It’s called “Arcady in Australia”
    Think of Mr Micorber who went to Australia at the end “David Coppperfield”
    There are many other examples …

  14. Re Rape et al…. and Swedish laws 5421…and “rendition” PatriiciaWA…
    ______________
    Whatever the facts and the truth about all the rape claims(and I was puzzled to learn the one of the women openly boasted of her success with Julian A…days after the incident occured… on her “Facebook “entry)

    The whole case does depend on the fact…as many have said ..that the US has a terrible reputation for “rendition” and confinement without justice ..and torture on a major scale…as we saw in Iraq

    Since 9/11 the US has descended into the same pit as shared by many authoritarian states…a fact observed by many US writers and critics

    In that sense the US is not a place where critics of the Imperial nation’s policies can be sure of justice
    It’s that simple

    so no extradition to Sweden where the very reactionary rulers would be at the US’s behest

    As the latest quip says …”Sweden in the Saudi Arabia of Radical feminism”

  15. I have just logged on and still have about 10 pages to catch up on, so these may have been linked before.

    An open letter from Tony Burke to Campbell Newman.
    h­ttp://www.environment.gov.au/minister/burke/2012/mr20120823a.html

    Let me be clear, if what you want is for me to give approvals without conducting checks, then I will stand in your way.

    If you want the Government to let you trash the Great Barrier Reef, we will stand in your way.

    If you want to clear fell every acre of koala habitat in south east Queensland, we will stand in your way.

    The Sunshine Coast Daily running a survey on voters current opinion of Campbell Newmann’s governing style.
    h­ttp://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2012/08/25/have-your-say-newman-government/

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