Morgan phone poll: 50.5-49.5 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Bonner

A new phone poll corroborates Newspoll. Or does it?

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Roy Morgan has published a poll which, so far as the headline figure goes, is extremely interesting in that it a) is consistent with the Newspoll result, and b) was conducted by phone, and thus cannot be anticipated to suffer the pro-Labor bias typical of Morgan’s face-to-face polling. However, the headline figure to which I refer is from respondent-allocated preferences, which for so long have been flowing to Labor in confoundingly weak proportions in Morgan’s face-to-face polls. In this poll however they have flowed to Labor inordinately strongly. If using the measure which allocates preferences according to how they flowed at the previous election, which I and all other pollsters recommended, the Coalition has a somewhat more comfortable lead of 52.5-47.5. The primary vote results are striking in being high for both major parties: 39.5% for Labor and 47% for the Coalition, against 8% for the Greens and a very low 5.5% for others.

The poll was evidently conducted from Monday to Thursday (despite some confusion in Morgan’s heading) from a sample of 668, with a margin of error of about 3.8%. Other questions were also posed by this poll, so stay tuned for more detail.

NOTE: As you may have noticed, Crikey has a new look and its implementation is characteristically being accompanied by teething problems – most seriously the failure of comments thread pagination, which has caused the previous 5000-plus comments thread to not work terribly well. Presumably this one should be okay though, for at least as long as it remains fairly short.

UPDATE: Further findings from the Morgan poll are that Julia Gillard recorded a fairly solid approval rating of 40%, with disapproval of 51%, which represents changes of 3% and 6% since Morgan last posed the question in January. Tony Abbott meanwhile is respectively down four to 32% and up four to 60%. On the question of better prime minister, Gillard has remained steady on 45% while Abbott has dropped four points to 37%. Abbott has also lost further ground to Malcolm Turnbull on the question of best leader for the Liberal Party, the former down three to 19% and the latter up five to 42%. That leaves Abbott nearly level with Joe Hockey, who is down one to 18%. Julia Gillard continues to trail Kevin Rudd as preferred Labor leader, with Gillard up three to 22% and Rudd up one to 34%.

And not forgetting …

Seat of the week: Bonner

To commemorate Labor’s improved position in the polls, Seat of the Week takes its first excursion to the Coalition side of the electoral pendulum.

The Brisbane electorate of Bonner extends south-westwards from the bayside Wynnum-Manly area to Mount Gravatt. It was created at the 2004 election, and has remarkably been left unchanged by the two redistributions conducted since. The seat is also remarkable for having changed hands with each election, starting with the Liberals’ success in overhauling a 1.9% notional margin in 2004. The defeated Labor candidate was Con Sciacca, a Keating government minister who held Bowman from 1987 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2004. Sciacca took the safer option when the transfer of Wynnum-Manly to the new seat left Bowman with a notional Liberal margin of 3.1%, but he was unable to withstand an adverse swing of 2.4%. Labor appeared to be especially hampered by the loss of Kevin Rudd’s personal vote in those areas of the electorate which had previously been in Griffith.

The inaugural member for Bonner thus became Ross Vasta, a staffer to Senator Brett Mason, former restaurant owner, and the son of noted Brisbane barrister and Bjelke-Petersen era Supreme Court justice Angelo Vasta. Vasta’s main source of publicity in his one term in parliament was his involvement in the scandal surrounding misuse of electoral printing allowances, for which he was cleared by the Director of Public Prosecutions shortly before the 2007 election. He was always going to have his work cut out defending the Coalition’s most marginal Queensland seat at the 2007 election, and duly fell victim to a 5.2% swing which compared favourably with a statewide swing of 7.5%.

Bonner was then held for a term by Kerry Rea, previously a Brisbane councillor representing a ward that included the area around Mount Gravatt. Vasta meanwhile returned to his old job with Brett Mason and unsuccessfully contested the Wynnum-Manly ward for the Liberals at the 2008 Brisbane council election. The newly constituted Liberal National Party then gave him the chance to recover his old seat, which did not seem a likely proposition in the political climate of the time. While that had certainly changed by the time of the 2010 election, Vasta’s victory on the back of an emphatic 7.4% swing was a serious disappointment for Labor, making Bonner the “safest” of its nine notionally held Queensland seats to fall to the LNP.

Labor’s preselected candidate for the next election is Laura Fraser Hardy, an associate with Hall Payne Lawyers.

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.

1,563 comments on “Morgan phone poll: 50.5-49.5 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Bonner”

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  1. sustainable future,
    I absolutely object to any putative leader of this country infusing their religion into the everyday workings of our federal government. We are a secular nation, built upon the separation of Church and State, for a very good reason, based upon centuries of history wrt this issue.

    We only have to look at the trouble caused around the world, and even in our own backyard in Sydney last weekend, by the clash between one religion, the Christian religion and a film that a few zealots made to taunt the Muslims, and the over-reaction of the Muslims to that tawdry film, to know that it would be a mistake for our country to be taken over by a similarly zealous Christian cabal.

  2. […We are a secular nation, built upon the separation of Church and State…]

    Absolutely, and education is the greatest defence against the influence of the zealot. Reform via reports like Gonski are not a luxury but a must.

  3. I agree 100% C@tmomma. I hope the media give this some more play. As I said, there are more catholics and ex-catholics who will react strongly against abbott than there are catholics who will support him if this side of abbott gets more exposure. I’d also like someone to ask Abbott and Pell why they reject even the conservative vatican on the need for action Climate Change. I’ll hazard an answer/hypothesis – they reject it because, like Nick Minchin, they think it is all a communist plot. Their brand of irrationality deems that if the left support something it must be rejected – they are the ultimate reactionaries. As Sheridan showed this week – they believe their is a communist plot to get them – and abbott made it his mission at university to get ‘the commos’. I am sure Pell (& therefore abbott’s) hatred of the greens and environmental issues also stems from their support for legalised euthanasia (& the fact that Peter Singer was involved in policy formulation on this in the early days), full equality for homosexuals, and more equitable federal education funding. the fact that Bob Brown was openly and proudly gay (but also a christian) would have caused Pell issues as well. people like pell and abbott are lazy thinkers – dogma removes the need to think for yourself (unfortunately there are some pretty dogmatic greens as well).

  6. From a comment on the Barrie Cassify piece:

    “Custard, I think the election will be in April 2013. It will be before a new budget needs to be announced in May. Too embarassing after May.

    Here is my prediction. Julia will in late October announce her engagement to, whatever his name is, with a Lodge wedding for late February 2013. This will be done in time to milk the womens magazines for some warm Christmas reading. It will also keep Rudd at bay during the political “killing season”. After all, how could he challenge a blushing bride to be.

    Obama (if he wins) will be guest of honour, along with the young royals, and every left leaning actor Julia can summon. The February wedding will be beamed live to our living rooms. A brief honeymoon with all the happy snaps will follow. Then a few weeks back, then an early election will be called.

    Julia will milk every moment for all that she can.

    Bit fanciful? Perhaps. But lets wait and see.”

    You can tell the Tories are getting worried with comments like the aforementioned

  11. Gawd…

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/push-for-iemma-in-canberra/story-e6freuy9-1226479809355

    [Push for Iemma in Canberra
    By Andrew Clennell, State Political Editor
    The Daily Telegraph
    September 24, 2012 12:00AM

    FORMER premier Morris Iemma will be urged to run for federal politics by ALP powerbrokers.

    Labor’s head office wants Mr Iemma to run for the seat of Barton should former attorney-general Robert McClelland retire from parliament, as expected, at the next federal election.

    Senior Labor sources have confirmed Mr Iemma will be approached should Mr McClelland retire as they believe his high profile would help win a seat that could be in danger, with a 6.86 per cent swing required for the Liberals to wrest it from Labor.]

  12. Katherine Murphy has a typical bob each way. What does she mean by ‘close proximity? Like many other MSM ladies she seems in thrall to Basher.

    “I don’t think Tony Abbott has a problem with women in substance. That’s my view, formed in close proximity. But perceptions formed at a distance are another matter altogether. Take ”old-fashioned Tony”, add lashings of past pre-feminist exuberance, add his enduring hard-wired hyper-competitiveness, combine it with the Coalition’s core political strategy – which, to put it kindly, has lacked light and shade – and you have the elements of a perfect storm on the gender question.”

    In other words, Tony dear, show the punters the side you’ve revealed to me. Just saying……

    Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/handbags-at-10-paces-20120923-26eve.html#ixzz27IbKELOQ

  14. zoidlord

    Yes, an election can be held any time, but any time before 1 July 2013 and it has to be a House of Reps election only (and its been a long time, 1983, since we had one of those).

    Any slightly early election talk since the year started (to do with deliberately putting off the Senate election to “limit damage” supposedly) only comes from the Libs, media stirrers, and perhaps leadership destabilisers or unnamed alledged “ALP backbenchers”. The PM and the cabinet have shown absolutely no signs of thinking its a good idea or having any desire to do.

    Any 2 years of demanding an early election the govt obviously didn’t want, people are now dreaming up fantasies where the govt actually wants one.

  15. [Can the election even be called in early 2013?]

    Yep. A few precedents for early elections ’83, ’84 & ’87, Howard v Beasley (2.5 years in re GST) plus the odd double dissolution.

  16. sustainable future,
    The thing which really worries me is that the puritanical Abbott is pulling his punches before the election, and if elected he will then unleash the full force of his zealotry upon the nation.

    Journalists keep saying that he knows he could never get away with inflicting full tilt Conservative Catholicism on the nation, however I believe he would give it his best shot, and with a supportive Catholic media mogul in Rupert Murdoch and the Catholic mafia that work for him supplying the publically-disseminated propaganda to support his cause, well, I believe he would get a long way along the road to imposing his values set on the nation.

    The journalists also say that Abbott has never tried to impose his religious beliefs on the nation when he was a Minister in Howard’s government, but, of course, we all know that is a lie. RU486 was fought tooth and nail, and Faith-based Pregnancy/Abortion Counselling was instituted by Abbott as Health Minister.

    Imagine what he would think he could do as Prime Minister with a mandate from the people?

  19. Hey guys.. back from overseas.. had a ball!

    Just plain too fiddly/arkward posting on, and reading a blog that’s this popular, from a smartphone.

    Worse.. they went and screwed the software up royally 🙁

    William.. is there *any* chance you can convince the coders to at least revert to the convention that reading downwards gives you the logical progression from original post to response?

    Every blog that I know of, that involves seriously long discussions progresses downwards.. This is plain stoo-pid!

    Oh and for the coders. Take a look at Whirlpool. Linking done right

    Cheers!

  20. Leroy,
    The journalists are cooking up fantasies of an early election because it is the only way they become relevant again in the public discourse. As it stands now, they are fast passing into irrelevancy.

  24. Gecko – re: my source of abbott’s homophobia comment – I agree, let’s not go there as i was not serious. I am sure the source was/is the all-boy catholic schooling/indoctrination in the 1960 and 70s. The ‘no poofters’ Ocker culture monty python parodied would have been strong. However his REACTION to gay rights and legalisation was to oppose and belittle – straight from the Santamaria ravings of the time. (His REACTION to the 1960s and 70s was to join the liberal party – this speaks volumes) It is pure politics of hate and intolerance and he seems to have have been the champion of this at uni. he has never said ‘I was wrong’ about this, so we can assume he still holds these views.

  25. Hey Cud welcome home.

    William can’t speak right now he’s on a drip in a monastery listening to Tibetan bells and trying to regain a sense of worth. His answer machine advises complainants to get to the end of f%$king queue while he deals with the S#@tfight from hell.(or WTTE)

  27. Possible way to expose Abbott’s zealotry:

    1. an interviewer to ask him whether he agrees with Sheridan that there is an anti-catholic, genocide supporting, communist cabal within the ABC.

    2.If Pell deservedly cops more heat over his multiple examples of inaction or cover up over child rapists in the church (pedophile is too ‘nice’ a term for these bastards), and abbott is given opportunity to defend him – I am confident he will defend him if an interviewer pose a question about it. A line of questioning starting ‘Do you support a royal commission or judicial inquiry into the church’s inaction on pedophiles?’ and ending ‘Is it because your mentor and confidant Archbishop Pell’s alleged inaction and cover up of cases that you do not support a judicial inquiry or royal commission?’ would be most instructive. I’m hoping being a mate of Pell will backfire badly on abbott as more information re: his inaction and cover up of the child rapist scandals are revealed.

  31. Sustainable Future,

    I’m a page (approx) behind, but I’m so glad to see that soneone else recognises Abbott as a medievalist.

    Medievalist fanatic sums him up in two words but unfortunately nine syllables.

  33. Rossmore @ 1362,

    In other words, Tony dear, show the punters the side you’ve revealed to me. Just saying……

    Surely by now even Ms Murphy should have realised that there is only so much that can or should be revealed to the punters in the fambly newspapers?

  34. sustainable future,
    Who the hell has the good fortune to be a young gun in the 60’s and 70’s, and in England to boot, the home of secks, derugs and Rock ‘n Roll,and joins the bloody LIBERAL PARTY?

    How do you spell loser?

  39. [child rapists in the church (pedophile is too ‘nice’ a term for these bastards)]

    Whether it’s too nice or not, paedophile is not an accurate term for the kind of sexual abuse that has been rife in Catholic (and some other religious) schools. Paedophilia is a sexual fixation on children – persons below the age of puberty. It is a recognised disorder, and actually quite rare. What we have been seeing is not paedophilia, but the sexual abuse and exploitation of adolescents – persons over the age of puberty, but usually below the legal of age of consent. The people doing the exploiting are not paedophiles. They are adults, whether heterosexual or homosexual, who take advantage of positions of power to abuse young people who are powerless. In the Catholic Church most of the abusers are closetted homosexual men, who take opportunistic advantage of their positions to abuse young men.

  41. [If You Like Sarah Palin, You’ll Absolutely Love Cory Bernardi
    By Mike Seccombe

    He’s not just a homophobic, Islamophobic, climate-change denying South Australian senator, he’s an ideological entrepreneur, importing the Tea Party’s ‘astroturf’ techniques and now training others in the faux-grassroots campaigns first cultivated by the American far right…]

    http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/if-you-like-sarah-palin-youll-absolutely-love-cory-bernardi/390/

  42. I reckon Cory Bernardi wants to beAustralia’s first Tea-
    party Prime Minister. This is one scary man.
    [And he is not just a networker — he’s an ideological entrepreneur, setting up franchise organisations as he goes.

    Bernardi’s most important connections are with the Tea Party movement in the US.

    He has assiduously fostered links with the same right-wing think tanks, funders, vested interests and propagandists who underpin that movement in America. He has absorbed their techniques and is in turn training others in their ways.

    Let’s go to a few examples, easily found by looking at Bernardi’s entries in the register of senators’ interests, filed with the Parliament.

    Like this item, declared in the section which requires the disclosure of any sponsored travel and hospitality worth $300 or more:

    “Accommodation provided by the Heartland Institute 30/9/10 and 1/10/10.” This Chicago-based conservative/libertarian outfit promotes itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank” promoting climate-change scepticism.

    The institute spends millions every year funding fringe scientists and others, including some in this country, to produce work denying human involvement in global warming. Bernardi has twice been a speaker at its conferences.]
    http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/if-you-like-sarah-palin-youll-absolutely-love-cory-bernardi/390/

  43. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    I had a rotten night’s sleep due to incessant throbbing from my now blackened thumbnail after jamming it between a gas bottle and the body of a BBQ. I’ll take it to the medical centre of the large company I’m doing work at this morning.

    More evidence of the Howard era’s values?
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/officials-implicated-in-bribery-scandal-20120923-26f6c.html
    Swanny likes Crikey’s idea of fact checking.
    http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/swan-slams-critics-who-talk-down-economy-20120923-26eo7.html
    Swan has stirred up the cranks and crazies in the US a bit.
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/swan-is-spot-on-say-us-online-readers-20120923-26eo8.html
    This could become interesting. More from the Howard era.
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/police-fight-to-keep-corby-secrets-20120922-26dni.html
    Alan Moir is on Romney’s case this morning.

    Cathy Wilcox hoes into Bernardi.

    Ron Tandberg’s view of IR “flexibility”.

    How can we ever justify giving tax money to this type of institution. They are obviously very hard up.
    http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/mlc-parents-pledge-big-money-in-bid-to-restore-principal-20120923-26f6s.html

    David Rowe has a beauty on the “cranks and crazies” remark. I had to laugh at “Mitt for brains”!

  44. And from the Land of the Free –

    More trouble for Mitt for Brains with his tax returns release.
    http://www.americablog.com/2012/09/is-there-9-million-missing-from-romneys.html
    http://www.americablog.com/2012/09/romney-family-trust-invested-in-china.html
    Even the resident FoxNews neocon Bill Kristol reckons the Repugs are GORN.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/09/23/video-bill-kristol-on-the-financial-meltdown-the-obama-team-has-turned-that-around-pretty-well/
    The cartoonists are giving Romney a hard time.



    The ever so plastic Ann Romney is piking it now.
    http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/ann-romney-cancels-interviews-after-y

  48. From one of BK’s links on US online reactions to Swan’s “cranks and crazies” observation:

    [Meanwhile, back in Australia, opposition deputy leader Julie Bishop said Mr Swan’s comments were a “calculated insult” against Mitt Romney’s presidential running mate, Paul Ryan.

    “I was appalled to think that Wayne Swan would deliberately insult a congressman in the US who advocates balanced budgets and paying down debt,” she told Network Ten’s Bolt Report]

    It’s telling that Bishop sets a different standard for Ryan’s ambition to achieve “balanced budgets and paying down debt”. No “where’s the money coming from?” questions here.

    To begin with, if Ryan sticks to what he’s said, keeping the Bush-era tax cuts, not doing the “affordable care act” and raising military spending, it’s estimated that spending by the Feds might need to be cut by 90%. It’s unlikely the that even a Repug-led Congress would pass such measures. Certainly, Ryan is, in the American parlance, “writing checks his butt can’t keep”.

    The SMH also featured some remarks that rather underscored the validity of the cranks and crazies observation — including one who asserted that “progressives, soc|alists and c*mmun|sts {had} taken over DC”.

    In order to keep this post brief, I don’t comment on Ryan’s other policy stances (abortion, health care etc.)

  49. Perhaps the credibility of Essential is on the line today. All polls have bveen trending the government’s way for some little time now whereas Essential has been static for a few weeks.

  50. Good morning, Bludgers. Good morning, Dawn Patrol. Today’s special Good morning to BK for his links. Have a great day.

    Well, bludgers, what a blast from the past! I’m young again – well, still under the Big 50 – at night, when AARNet is easier to access (and somewhat faster) at a cranky Amstead (?sp); sheet of coding stuck on the desk beside me, trying to add a sentence or two to a thread. Sooo frustrating. Takes ages to get it right and send it. Then off for a loo-break while my plunger caff brews & back to my office in the hope (usually vain) it’s finished sending, so I can read the next post on the thread.

    My PB right arrow is still taking me backwards, though no longer to Friday night: there is no left arrow at present. Took me all yesterday (soothed by buckets of caff & dollops of iView/ “on demand” Wallander, NCIS etc I’d missed) to discover (trial & error) that if I wanted to “refresh” without another visit to Friday night, I could close the page, then come back in through p1. It was dark when just going back to p1, then selecting my blog, actually refreshed the page.

    Ah, well. That’s life in the netted world! I’m putting it down to an International Conspiracy of nerds, geeks & single-eyebrow types to keep my aging brain active! Same on ebay sections I use. Soon as I work out how the new format works, damned if the format hasn’t changed & I have to master the new one!

    Sic vita! 😉 Luv ya anyway, Crikey, esp William!

    You read it first on PB yesterday morning … or was it Saturday or Friday night? update (Sunday, September 23, 2012 – 4:31PM) Swan is spot on, say US online readers Well, hello MSM! Wakey wakey!

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