Essential Research and Morgan quarterly breakdowns

The weekly Essential Research result, released yesterday a day later than usual, pooped Labor’s party a little in failing to replicate the shift to them detected by other pollsters over the past fortnight. Labor, the Coalition and the Greens are all steady on the primary vote, at 32%, 49% and 10% respectively, although rounding has ticked the two-party result a point back in Labor’s favour to 56-44. The poll also finds 22% expecting the economy to get better over the next year against 45% worse, essentially unchanged on May; 29% and 37% ditto for personal finances; 47% concerned and 37% not concerned about job security, likewise little changed; and 30% thinking they will be better off and 32% worse off under a government led by Tony Abbott. There are also complex questions on the manufacturing sector, and to my mind rather loaded question on public sector job cuts.

We also have an entertaining release from Roy Morgan which replicates Newspoll’s quarterly exercise of breaking down accumulated federal poll results (in this case its face-to-face polling) by state, gender and age. The only substantial differences from Newspoll are that separate results are provided for each month, rather than just a single aggregate for all three, and figures are provided for Tasmania. I gather the monthly sample size would range from around 1100 in the case of New South Wales to barely 100 for Tasmania. Combining the three at least produces a reasonable number for Western Australia and South Australia, while the monthly samples for the larger states are large enough to be useful in their own right.

Tossing aside Morgan’s peculiar respondent-allocated two-party preferred results and using the preference flows of the 2010 election, we see Labor’s two-party result up from 46% in July to 47.5% in August in New South Wales (rounding as Morgan does to half a per cent); from 49.5% to 50% in Victoria; and, interestingly, from 38.5% to 44% in Queensland. Despite the small sample of about 300, the combined three-month result for Tasmania is worth a mention, as I believe it’s the first published result of federal voting intention in Tasmania since the election. It roughly bears out the reported Labor internal polling from Mark Riley of Channel Seven in showing an averaged swing over the period of 14% – enough to cost Labor all four of its seats if uniform, although the margins in Franklin and Lyons would be within the 6% margin of error.

Hopefully Morgan will make a habit of this, as it will at least allow us to see if Morgan’s apparent skew to Labor is more pronounced among particular cohorts, to the extent that this can be accurately measured through comparison with Newspoll. This will require many, many more observations than we have at present, but to get the ball rolling I have looked at the differences between Newspoll’s April-June quarterly result and the June and July figures from Morgan, figuring they should be close enough to comparable due to the poll trend during this period. The only cohorts which buck the trend of Morgan being roughly 2% better for Labor are Victoria, where Morgan produced a quirky 55-45 to the Coalition result in July; Western Australia, where Labor rated 6% higher in Newspoll, which can be written off for the time being given Morgan’s small sample; and among those aged over 50, where Morgan had Labor 4.5% higher.

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.

2,327 comments on “Essential Research and Morgan quarterly breakdowns”

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  1. Rossmore @ 2298
    I agree except for your last sentence.

    Nixon introduced much needed cultural change in the Victoria Police but made at least 2 serious errors of judgement. These do not negate the good she did.

    Overland continued her good work and there was no excuse for the way he was cut down.

  2. For heaven’s sake, don’t misread me.

    Undergrounding power is great, and should be encouraged.

    When we first bought this block – over twenty years ago – we had the power lines put underground (greenfield site). It cost us $4000 back then (perspective: we had just sold a house for $85k, so it was a considerable amount of money).

    And undergrounding is fine for residential streets, where there are multiple users.

    Where it gets incredibly expensive is when you’re talking thousands of kilometres of very high voltage wires, the vast majority of them far from any dwelling at all, and that’s exactly what we ARE talking about when we’re talking about the findings of the Bushfire Commission.

    The Beechworth fire started only about twenty kilometres from us as the crow flies, and one of our friends came across the burning electricity pole quite soon after it started, and was a key witness.

    It wasn’t a residential street. It was one of those poles you see marching across the mountainsides, in bushland some distance from the nearest house….which means that, in the rare occurence where one of them DO fail, they’re often not spotted (as this one wasn’t) until far too late.

    These poles are exactly the ones the Commission wants to replace with underground cables.

    This was one of the few of their proposals Brumby was adamant would not be fully implemented, because of the costs involved, and I note that Baillieu – despite promises to the contrary – appears to be running away from the commitments he made on this issue as well.

  3. What a story
    ________
    Omed a little 19 year old boy…has just seen his father/uncle and cousin die in the water before his eyes
    Now alone …in an Indonesian camp with no one to care for him,…with a peniless Mother in Afghanistan
    What is to become of him?

  4. [The Beechworth fire started only about twenty kilometres from us as the crow flies, and one of our friends came across the burning electricity pole quite soon after it started, and was a key witness.]
    How the hell can an electricity pole burn?

  5. 2310

    High voltage wire breaks and comes into contact with wooden power poll (as I believe the majority of Victorian power polls are) and sets it alight.

  6. Coming home from the Cook Islands
    ___________________
    At least by coming home from the Pacific Forum early… Gillard may have not been able to be suborned by Hilary Clinton into joining up with some new American war or attack on some one somewhere

    so a kind of good news that she’s home and out of Clinton ‘s reach

    But could she spare us the usual crap about “staying till the job is done “or
    ” a war that can be won “

  7. Wooden power polls in Vic
    __________
    Yes a great many I can see some by the street lights as I type
    The main pylons are steel but most smaller ones are wooden

  8. 2312

    Most of Australia has wooden power polls. Only South Australia has a long tradition of steel and concrete “Stobie Polls”.

    2313

    I did not say that they still put them in (although I think they do sometimes). Not all electricity infrastructure is brand new. Much of it has been around for quite some time.

    2315

    I think you will find they use nasty chemicals to dissuade them.

  9. Puff

    South aus poles are not so susceptible, obviously, but ETSA has been held responsible for fires, if I recollect.

    BK would be better placed than I, too explain how wires and fires work.

  10. deblonay 2316

    “But could she spare us the usual crap about “staying till the job is done “or
    ” a war that can be won “ ”

    Certainly. Less of that would be more than welcome. Something like,

    Jeeez, I am sick to my guts about the loss of our fine lives, and the unbearable suffering of their families. But we are stuck with the USA.

  11. cw
    BK would know best, but I think it was branches touching power lines. They are very careful to cut nearby trees back now, which can cause angst for some.

  12. [Its modern construction is a composite of two steel beams connected intermittently by bolts to manage compressive buckling, with the gap between the beams filled with concrete. The bolts transfer the shear, with an equal number of bolts above and below ground. The poles are tapered from ground level to the top and the toe. This construction uses the tensile properties of the steel, giving the poles excellent properties in bending. Stobie pole strength in the strong direction may be up to 4.5 times the weak direction strength.

    Small holes through the concrete enable easy attachment of modular cross-arms, insulators and other hardware. The poles are fireproof, rotproof, and termiteproof. In the event of impact by a vehicle and in comparison with a timber pole or tree, the Stobie poles steel structure can provide a reduction of force by absorbing energy through bending and deformation of the steel channel and crumbling of the concrete. This action of the bending causes the vehicle to decelerate more slowly and exert less instantaneous force on the occupants.]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stobie_pole

  13. Jacqueline um Maley has um written an um article on um politicians um changing their um minds on um… things y’know..

    It’s um not all that um interesting, but um here’s a snippet:

    [ We should let them change their minds, as long as they have told us a good enough story about why they did so.

    Abbott changed his views on paid parental leave but was able to tell a story about why he did so. Gillard changed her views on the urgent need for a carbon tax but has so far been unable to tell a coherent story about why she did.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/flipflop-and-theres-a-gotcha-moment-20120831-255ib.html#ixzz259xoFxRi ]

    Seems Tony Abbot’s um in the clear.

  14. Paralympics
    Note: No signs of a tantrum, unshaven top swimmer, pay dispute, all night tweeting, crying because silver isn’t gold, posing for junk media or any sore losers yet.

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