James J reports a somewhat interesting result from Newspoll, with the two parties locked together at 50-50, from primary votes of 36% for Labor (up three on a fortnight ago), 41% for the Coalition (down five) and 12% for the Greens (up four from an anomalous and over-hyped result last time). The Labor two-party and Coalition primary and two-party figures were all last seen at this level in the poll of 18-20 February 2011, while Labor was last at 36% on the primary vote in the poll of 18-20 March 2011. Julia Gillard has shot to a resounding 46-32 lead as preferred prime minister, up from 39-38, and she is also up five on approval to 36% and down five on disapproval to 52%. This 10-point improvement in her net rating follows a 7% improvement in the previous poll. Tony Abbott meanwhile is down one on approval to 30% and up one on disapproval to 60%.
UPDATE: Troy Bramston on Twitter reports Nielsen has the Coalition leading 53-47 (down from 54-46 last month), from primary votes of 34% for Labor (up two), 45% for the Coalition (steady) and 10% for the Greens (down one). Julia Gillard is in the unfamiliar position of having a personal approval rating with a four in front of it, although this is partly to do with the unusually low uncommitted results Nielsen gets on its personal ratings. Her approval is at 42%, up three, and her disapproval is at 53%, down four. Tony Abbott meanwhile is down three to 36% and up two to 59%, which is five points worse than what was previously his weakest net rating from Nielsen. Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 46-45 to 47-44.
UPDATE 2: Full tables from GhostWhoVotes. In brief:
The poll finds 44% saying they would vote Labor against 41% for the Coalition if Kevin Rudd was leader, for a two-party lead to Labor of 53-47, though I personally take these sorts of questions with a grain of salt.
Kevin Rudd continues to lead Julia Gillard as preferred Labor leader, but his lead is down from 60-31 to 55-37. Gillard leads 52-47 among Labor supporters.
Malcolm Turnbull on the other hand has a commanding 63-30 lead over Tony Abbott, including a 53-45 lead among Coalition supporters.
On the state breakdowns, Labor’s two-party vote is at 47% in New South Wales (up two), 49% in Victoria (down one), 42% in Queensland (up one), 44% in Western Australia (down two) and 54% in South Australia/Northern Territory (up seven), remembering the sample sizes on the smaller states in particular are extremely small.
Support for the carbon price is essentially unchanged on a month ago, with support up one to 37% and opposition steady at 59%, and 3% thinking themselves better off (steady), 38% worse off (down two) and 54% unchanged (steady).
UPDATES 3 & 4: It’s Monday madness in polldom, with Roy Morgan also bringing its publication forward a day to join with the regular Essential Research. The latter deflates the Labor balloon a little, showing two-party preferred steady at 55-45 and the Coalition actually gaining a point on the primary vote, to 48%, with Labor and the Greens steady on 34% and 9%. However, Julia Gillard is found to have done a lot better on leader attribute measures than when the questions were posed in the April 2 poll, which was also a 55-45 result.
The biggest movers for Gillard are out of touch with ordinary people, down nine to 56%, and superficial, down eight to 46%, while her smallest improvement is on understands the problems facing Australia, which is up two to 43%. Tony Abbott meanwhile rates over 50% on every negative measure, ranging for 51% for erratic to 63% for arrogant. On positive attributes, both leaders score strongest on hard-working (Gillard 69%, Abbott 67%) and intelligent (68% and 62%), and weakest on trustworthy (30% each), visionary (31% and 29%) and more honest than other politicians (31% and 27%).
Essential offers further interesting reading in the shape of an exercise on drug laws, in which propositions about policy responses were worded slightly differently for two separate sub-samples. The results were found to be all but identical, with across-the-board support for the hardest available line. The most liberal finding was of 38% support for cannabis decriminalisation, with 49% opposed. Elsewhere, a startling 83% said they were willing to sign on for “government legislation to prevent people from using social media to attack and bully individuals”, against 9% opposed.
The Morgan face-to-face poll combines results for the last two weekend’s surveying, and nudges further in favour of Labor to give them another best-result-since-March. On the primary vote, Labor is up a point to 35%, the Coalition is down one to 40.5%, and the Greens are up half a point to 12%. That comes out as a 50.5-49.5 lead to the Coalition if allocating preferences as per the previous election result, as is done by all the pollsters measured above, or at 53.5-46.5 according to the curiously pro-Coalition preference allocations nominated by its respondents.
Other news:
The Queensland Greens have selected Adam Stone, who ran in Mount Coot-tha at the state election and was touted during the campaign as the party’s senior candidate, to lead their Senate ticket at the next election. Stone has worked in policy roles within the State and Commonwealth public services and as an advisor in the Federal Parliament. Other candidates for the preselection were Libby Connors, a history lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland, and Jim McDonald, a former union official and industrial relations lecturer, who respectively ran in Yeerongpilly and Noosa at the state election.
Leslie White of the Weekly Times reports on polling for an unspecified party showing underwhelming support for the Nationals in Hume, where they were said to be running by the Greens on a voting intention question that didn’t specify candidates. The Nationals are hoping to gain the seat from the Liberals with the retirement of Alby Schultz, with Senator Fiona Nash and state MPs Katrina Hodgkinson and Niall Blair discussed as possible candidates to run against the Liberals’ Angus Taylor.
Katherine Feeney of Fairfax reports Jane Prentice, the LNP member for the Brisbane seat of Ryan, has seen off preselection challenges from Jonathon Flegg, son of state government minister Bruce Flegg, and pharmacist John Caris.
I see that there is a new format for the “board”. Does this new format include the display of all posts fro a thread as apposed to the old format where only pages containing 50 posts were displayed.
As well at the moment the last post displayed is 4750 q5 8.16 PM. Is this a slow night or do we have a bug?
For me there is a comment box at the top of the page with Firefox but no comment box in Chrome. The font is bl**dy hard to read. Not happy Crikey.
there’s some serious gremlins with this new format.
If I didn’t know better, I would say that its all a plot by Fiberal agent provocateurs
Hmmm, Having a “discussion” with this bloke on another blog.
According to him, we shouldn’t b
there’s some serious gremlins with this new format.
I have to agree.
As well the writing is hard to read being too faint which is not good for us “older folk” whose sight is not the best. As well the requirement of having to load all the post for a thread each time is a right royal pain in the bum.
As I was saying before the gremlins of this new format rudely posted my comments on me:
I am having this “discussion” with this Bloke on another blog.
According to him, the present government is sending us down the same road as Greece or the US, economically. When I pointed out to him that the US’s problem was that their Government has repeatedly cut Taxes to the high income earners, he told me that I was being an Economic illiterate idiot as the Rich have their money “tied up in businesses that create jobs and therefore shouldn’t pay Tax.
So, If I have got this strait, he decries the position that the US is in, yet advocates that we adopt the same measures that the US took and go into massive debt.
He says it with a strait face, without a hint of understanding the contradiction of his argument.
How do you reason with these “tea-party” morons ?
What the…..
This is just awful. The font is too small and the type is too light. The red Tip Off box at the top of the screen is driving me nuts after just 5 minutes. Why on earth does the whole thing have to load instead of just one page? And why on earth is the comment box at the top? Not happy at all. Put things back the way they were.
Not happy,
JanCrikey.The trick is to be more efficient, not less…
(Or is this a cunning plan to get rid of a left-leaning crowd?)
By the way, the preview display sucks.
Goodnight. I hope it’s not goodbye too.
Whoever decided to go live with this monstrosity should be sacked.
Hockey on the news tonight doing his confected outrage thing decrying Labor for its “hate” & as always being allowed to get away with it. Just run the big lie, keep going no matter what. Didn’t bother watching Lateline where I’m fairly sure Peter Dutton was doing the same thing.
Can we have the comment box at the bottom again?
Ok … this new format is absolute … gosh … must I break my rule against profanity?
Nope … some standards must be preserved.
Noted … I did not invite the person responsible for this horror to listen to the apparent advice of the invisible Obama, though if that person did, I wouldn’t object.
When you put a system in you don’t wander away for six hours or so. You hang around to see whether it meets the performance criteria you stipulated for it. You did stipulate those criteria, didn’t you?
You also give your users immediate feedback.
[Can we have the comment box at the bottom again?]
In my next comment I’ll copy and paste the whole page.
If crikey won’t play nicely …
I gather we have a few refugees on this thread who aren’t aware there has been another thread going for the past six hours. Sorry that I didn’t report this fact on this thread, but trying to open it has been making my browser crash.
Please rest assured that the lack of comment pagination is not a design feature of the site’s new look. It is a teething problem that will be rectified tomorrow.
whats your timeline on being operational? this is a bit suboptimal in fact its far ktup!
wow, I am back. Thanks for the search party Puff.
[It isn’t all bad however. Like other uber-rich individuals such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Rinehart also believes in philanthropy.
Whereas Gates has set up the Gates Foundation to help to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty in developing countries, and Buffett has bequeathed most of his fortune to Gates’ charity, Rinehart has donated a rock with a crappy poem on it. ]
A Profile Of The Wittenoom Wombat