Morgan phone poll: 51-49 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Perth

A small-sample Morgan phone survey features the first published polling data on the AWU slush fund affair.

Morgan has published results from a phone poll of 523 respondents conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, which have Labor on 36.5% of the primary vote, the Coalition on 44.5% and the Greens on 8.5%. Morgan’s headline two-party result is 51-49, but this comes from the dubious respondent-allocated preferences measure: the more reliable measure using preferences from the previous election has the Coalition’s lead at 52.5-47.5. This being a phone poll, it should not have the Labor bias associated with Morgan’s face-to-face polling. It also reverses the consistent trend of the face-to-face series in giving Labor the better result on respondent-allocated preferences (I have consistently had grave doubts about the face-to-face polling on this score). However, the poll shows no gap in voting intention between men and women, which perhaps illustrates the difficulties you can get with small samples. The margin of error on the poll is about 4.3%.

Morgan has also taken on the tricky job of framing questions appropriate to the knotty AWU matter. The most useful of these asks if respondents approve or disapprove of Gillard’s response, coming in at 37% and 28% respectively. A question on whether the Prime Minister should resign if “scandal allegations are true” has 43% saying she should against 27% saying she shouldn’t, but this rather overlooks the enormous range of the allegations that might be levelled (had they started a few days later they could simply have asked if respondents agreed with Christopher Pyne). Another question asks whether Gillard “was aware that the AWU ‘slush-fund’ was illegal when she resigned from Slater & Gordon in 1995”, which seems simplistic at best. Thirty-three per cent answered in the affirmative (including 10% of Labor voters and 20% of a tiny sample of Greens voters) against 26% negative, 17% couldn’t say and 24% not aware of the scandal.

There is also an entertaining plethora of questions on preferred party leaders, the chief head-to-head scorelines being Gillard 49 Abbott 36, Turnbull 59 Gillard 31, Gillard 46 Hockey 44, and Turnbull 54 Rudd 38. Not featured: Gillard versus Rudd or Abbott versus Turnbull.

Seat of the week: Perth

The electorate of Perth extends north-eastwards from the city centre to accommodate an area bounded to the south by the Swan River, extending from Mount Lawley and Maylands to Morley and Bassendean. An electorate bearing the name has existed since federation, with the entirety of the metropolitan area having been divided between it and Fremantle until the expansion of parliament in 1949. It then assumed more familiar dimensions, with Swan being drawn into the metropolitan area and Curtin created to accommodate the western suburbs.

Perth was held from its creation until 1922 by James Fowler, first as a Labor member and then as a Liberal and Nationalist following his defection in 1909. It thereafter remained in conservative hands until the Labor landslide of 1943, when it was won by Tom Burke (father of Brian). Burke held the seat until defeated in 1955 by Liberal candidate Fred Chaney Senior, whose son Fred Chaney Junior was a Fraser government minister, Senator and member for Pearce. Chaney was in turn unseated in 1969 by Joe Berinson, who became a junior minister in the Whitlam government and later a state Attorney-General. When the 1975 debacle cost Labor all its WA seats except for Fremantle, Berinson suffered a narrow defeat at the hands of Liberal candidate Ross McLean.

Redistributions in 1977 and 1990 respectively reoriented the seat westwards to the advantage of the Liberals and eastwards to the advantage of Labor. Australian hockey captain Ric Charlesworth was able to gain and hold the seat for Labor in the more difficult conditions after 1983, and Stephen Smith came to a seat with a solid Labor margin when he succeeded Charlesworth in 1993. It continued to trend in Labor’s favour thereafter, remarkably producing a slight positive swing amid the 1996 landslide, and surpassed Fremantle as Labor’s safest WA seat at the 2010 election. However, such has been the party’s progressive malaise in WA over the past decade that the margin has worn down to 5.9%.

Stephen Smith had been an adviser to Paul Keating and a state party secretary before entering parliament, emerging as a senior figure in the Right faction. He was elevated to the front bench after the 1996 defeat, and became Foreign Minister when the Rudd government came to power in 2007. He relinquished this role with displeasure when it was given to Kevin Rudd after the 2010 election, instead being assigned to defence. His desire to return to the foreign ministry was thwarted when Bob Carr was drafted after Kevin Rudd’s failed leadership challenge in February 2012. Smith also served as Trade Minister from Julia Gillard’s ascension to the prime ministership in June 2010 until the reshuffle which followed the subsequent election.

A Liberal preselection in June 2012 was won by Darryl Moore, a former mining engineer now involved in “investing in and managing the family’s commercial and industrial real estate portfolio”, ahead of Geoff Hourn, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Intelligence Corps.

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.

717 comments on “Morgan phone poll: 51-49 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Perth”

Comments Page 12 of 15
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  2. [I’ve read Psephos’s reasoning (ie that there are a number of seats in Western Sydney that appear to be unwinnable]

    The ‘reasoning’ is based on leaked internal polling.

    [ The 2013 election won’t be “decided” in western Sydney or any other particular place. And if the Gillard government loses anything like 10 seats there, that won’t be the reason for the overall result.

    If that happens, the result won’t have been close. It will have been a 1996–style landslide, or worse. ]

    Mumble had a good post about this yesterday.
    http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/where_would_we_be_without_western_sydney/

  4. [I see that nasty, biased, Ruddster – Peter Hartcher]

    If you want a more objective analysis, you should give up on the press gallery. They consistently demonstrate time after time that they are incapable of doing objective.

    Hartcher is no exception.

  7. bemused

    no, again, it’s simple maths.

    You either accept polling or you don’t.

    If some seats are swinging 10% against the government in NSW and yet the overall swing is 6%, that means that some seats have swung to the government – so, on that basis, the internal polling (not worth much at any time, in my opinion) that says those seats are gone is either wrong or misleading (given that it’s focussed on a few select seats, that’s possible – i.e. yes, those seats are gone, but it hasn’t picked up where the swing the other way is).

    That’s not tea leaf reading, that’s mathematics – which you are constantly saying we should base all our predictions on.

    The other predictions – that Labor would turn the polls around, that people hadn’t stopped listening, that Gillard would last the distance – have been consistently made by those you dismiss as ‘faith based’ and yet have proved to be more accurate than yours.

    As I said before, a Martian comparing the two parties (their record, what they’re offering, etc) and looking at the trend of the polls would most likely come to the same conclusion most of us here have – that Labor is more likely to win next year than the Liberals.

    (I throw all the usual qualifiers in there – although an unexpected event dramatic enough to cause a jump in the polls either way would, given past performances, far more likely to be handled more positively by Labor than by the Liberals, so would be far more likely to send votes to Labor).

  9. feeney @ 547….Even if you’re Peter Hartcher, sometimes it is difficult to avoid the facts. Abbott and Bishop threatened to eviscerate JG in a public ritual. But instead these two seem to have gagged on their own lies. They have both lost the power of speech and any sense of propriety at the same time.

  10. Sprocket #556, if only the LOTO or Chrissy had been on a “study trip” to North Korea like some idiot contemporaries of mine in the 80s it would all make sense!!

  12. The party did once do an internal poll for Indi, btw – 52 Libs, 48 Labor.

    Result on election day? 60 Libs, 40 Labor.

    Tampa in between…..

  14. Laurie Oakes, doyen of the Press Gallery, sayd the impact of “the speech” has irrevocably changed the politcial landscape.

    He is too embedded to bag his OldMedia cohort who got the import of the speech so wrong when it happened. Slipper who?

    [But Gillard blindsided Abbott – and stunned him – with her sexism and misogyny speech. He is still unsettled by it.

    Why else, when he was attacking the PM over the AWU slush fund affair in the House on Thursday, did he say: “This is not about gender, this is about character.”

    To that point, gender had not been mentioned in the debate. The impact of Gillard’s speech has clearly messed with his mind. Perhaps Abbott’s claim on television that morning that the PM had committed a crime was an attempt to reassert his supremacy as an attack-dog.

    But he overreached. You can’t accuse a prime minister of criminal activity and then fail to substantiate the allegation without yourself being diminished in the process.

    And all that careful work the Opposition Leader had done to soften his image by letting deputy Julie Bishop and others take over the head-kicking went for nought.]

    http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/this-parliament-put-the-Christmas-grinch-out-of-work/

  15. zoomster@557


    bemused

    no, again, it’s simple maths.

    You either accept polling or you don’t.

    If some seats are swinging 10% against the government in NSW and yet the overall swing is 6%, that means that some seats have swung to the government – so, on that basis, the internal polling (not worth much at any time, in my opinion) that says those seats are gone is either wrong or misleading (given that it’s focussed on a few select seats, that’s possible – i.e. yes, those seats are gone, but it hasn’t picked up where the swing the other way is).

    That’s not tea leaf reading, that’s mathematics – which you are constantly saying we should base all our predictions on.

    The other predictions – that Labor would turn the polls around, that people hadn’t stopped listening, that Gillard would last the distance – have been consistently made by those you dismiss as ‘faith based’ and yet have proved to be more accurate than yours.

    As I said before, a Martian comparing the two parties (their record, what they’re offering, etc) and looking at the trend of the polls would most likely come to the same conclusion most of us here have – that Labor is more likely to win next year than the Liberals.

    (I throw all the usual qualifiers in there – although an unexpected event dramatic enough to cause a jump in the polls either way would, given past performances, far more likely to be handled more positively by Labor than by the Liberals, so would be far more likely to send votes to Labor).

    I know of no polls with a sufficient sample size to be credible for particular seats.

    I do base things on mathematics and your argument is valid but I question your source data.

    And just because there is no logical basis for a ‘prediction’ doesn’t mean that it is excluded from possibility.

  16. briefly @ 559

    I don’t disagree with you on this matter.

    I was merely pointing out that some on this site are forever bagging and slagging Hartcher et al when they are critical of JG but adopt a different stance when he is positive about JG.

    That said, I don’t have much faith in any of the commentariat these days. They express personal opinons dressed up as factual analysis.

  17. I don’t know as much about politics as many people here do. However, I am pretty confident of two things. Labor are around 48% support at the moment, and a TPP of 50.5% will give them a very good chance of re-election. If the TPP is 50, and it has crashed in western Sydney, it must have risen elsewhere. Win the TPP and the rest will follow.

    Having worked for a couple of years in Lindsay, I’m not convinced that the “Lindsay Test” is the approach the ALP should follow.

  18. feeney@566


    briefly @ 559

    I don’t disagree with you on this matter.

    I was merely pointing out that some on this site are forever bagging and slagging Hartcher et al when they are critical of JG but adopt a different stance when he is positive about JG.

    That said, I don’t have much faith in any of the commentariat these days. They express personal opinons dressed up as factual analysis.

    Not to mention the disgusting comments repeatedly made about Michelle Grattan.

    Beats me why William doesn’t act against those.

  19. Sprocket, of course the DT has taken down the stories. They comprise a tale of good over evil…of the triumph of courage and truth over intrigue, insults and lies.

    This story concludes with a victory by a steadfast and proud leader over not just one but a score or more of her treacherous enemies. It signifies the public defeat of the jealous by the righteous. It is a moral tale – a fable waiting to be written up.

  20. victoria

    [Well well well. Ms Grattan on the Abbott slush fund ]
    From the comment below I think Grattan and co should hang out in the PB lounge a bit more. Abbott’s bull dusting about the slush fund was not forgotten here !

    [She remembered what many of us, in the heat of this slush fund battle, had forgotten. Tony Abbott has had his own slush fund experience, not all of it happy]

  21. bemused

    What? I use the same data psephos uses and in his case we have to take it seriously and in mine it gets questioned?

    Look at the sidebar – top right – which has a 2.1% swing away from Labor in NSW.

    Do you doubt that data? If so, why?

    I was being generous and factoring in a 6% swing from the last election (think I was using the last Newspoll).

    So the maths is even more stark – if we accept the internal polling pseph accepts, than Western Sydney is swinging away from Labor by 10%.

    If we accept the data William has amalgamated, however, the swing is 2%.

    That leaves two choices —

    — both polls are correct (my working hypothesis), in which case there are swings to the government in seats unknown;

    — one poll is incorrect.

  22. [I was merely pointing out that some on this site are forever bagging and slagging Hartcher et al when they are critical of JG]

    Hartcher was on the RUdd drip for all those confected leadershit stories. He dressed up his views as supposedly those of a disinterested, objective commentator. He deserves all the criticism he’s had sheeted at him from commenters here.

    [but adopt a different stance when he is positive about JG.]

    I’ve seen no praise for Hartcher on this site, presumably owing to the reason I’ve already stated, which is quite justified.

  23. [zoomster
    Posted Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 9:41 pm | PERMALINK
    bemused

    What? I use the same data psephos uses and in his case we have to take it seriously and in mine it gets questioned?

    Look at the sidebar – top right – which has a 2.1% swing away from Labor in NSW.]

    You see the other data right next to that? 9 seats going from ALP to LNP = 18 seat majority for the LNP.

    That is not including the seats of Rob O and Tony W.

  26. Given all this talk about the various ways in which things can change between now and an election, I was wondering if there are any graphs of how quickly poll results fall away from each other over time.

    One would expect polls taken close together to be more closely related than ones taken far apart, but the question is just how quickly they decohere (if such a question is even meaningful).

    I’m also wondering if things such as autocorrelation and frequency analysis show anything interesting. Maybe not, but we all like pretty graphs, don’t we? :).

  27. sprocket, I reckon Laurie Oakes has been browsing @ PB. His best reasoning could have been lifted from these screens….

    And feeney…

    [I don’t have much faith in any of the commentariat these days. They express personal opinons dressed up as factual analysis.]

    I think the whole point about the OM these days is to present opinion in order to attract attention/reaction, rather than to offer good old facts. “Facts” and “opinion” are always in flux, a product of and a reason for the 24/7 news cycle. Facts can be googled. Opinion has to be created. This is the new OM business model.

  28. And here we go in the same position as last week mod lib is still talking about useless stuff :O

    Well, he’s amongst people (us bludgers) who also talk about lots of useless stuff, what else can you expect? It must be catching.

    😛

  29. Somewhere above Grattan said she was only reminded of Abbott’s slush fund by Margo K recently and had forgotten all about it in the heat of the Abbott attack on Gillard over the past few weeks. What a bare-faced lie from Michelle. What a pathetic journalist she is.

  30. zoomster@571


    bemused

    What? I use the same data psephos uses and in his case we have to take it seriously and in mine it gets questioned?

    Look at the sidebar – top right – which has a 2.1% swing away from Labor in NSW.

    Do you doubt that data? If so, why?

    I was being generous and factoring in a 6% swing from the last election (think I was using the last Newspoll).

    So the maths is even more stark – if we accept the internal polling pseph accepts, than Western Sydney is swinging away from Labor by 10%.

    If we accept the data William has amalgamated, however, the swing is 2%.

    That leaves two choices –

    — both polls are correct (my working hypothesis), in which case there are swings to the government in seats unknown;

    — one poll is incorrect.

    I have doubts about the ‘internal polls’ that Psephos accepts. I remember some others in 2010…

    Having said that, the NSW State Election did show some alarming swings out in the Western Suburbs but whether these will carry through to anywhere near the same extent Federally is anyone’s guess.

    When you say things like “I was being generous and factoring in a 6% swing from the last election (think I was using the last Newspoll).”, you are just making up numbers. I could make up other numbers with equal validity.

    National polls have a good sample size, but the state breakdowns are far less reliable as the sample sizes are much smaller.

    And it is not much good basing anything on what is said on PB. It departs wildly from what I pick up elsewhere and what polls seem to point to.

    There is little adulation of Julia Gillard outside of PB and she is widely distrusted.

  31. [DisplayName
    Posted Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 9:50 pm | PERMALINK
    And here we go in the same position as last week mod lib is still talking about useless stuff :O

    Well, he’s amongst people (us bludgers) who also talk about lots of useless stuff, what else can you expect? It must be catching.]

    Don’t worry Displayname, it is quite common for me to be criticised for responding to another post with the meme that I am “bringing up irrelevant topics”.

    You see, they would not criticise the ALP poster who originated the topic, so it is easier to criticise the Lib responder! 🙂

  32. ModLib

    [You see the other data right next to that? 9 seats going from ALP to LNP = 18 seat majority for the LNP.]

    Yes, but unlike you I can do basic maths.

    A shift of 9 seats gives a 9 seat majority.

  33. The finns

    Agreed

    The last paragraph is garbage

    [Obviously, there were clear differences between Abbott’s slush fund, which was aimed at a broad political purpose (the destruction of Hanson and One Nation) and the limited self-serving objectives of the AWA body, let alone the vehicle for illegal behaviour that it became. But the point is, Abbott does not bring an unblemished record to the argument.]

  35. I’m a little surprised at how quickly the polls closed in after July 1st. I think it suggests the Coalition were riding high on fear and smear campaigns, and that perhaps carbon pricing was the big-ticket issue. I can’t see any other explanation for what’s happened in the polling.

    Gillard’s speech didn’t turn things around. What it really did was underline the trend. Other issues fell away as well. But nevertheless, it was the doubts and fears the Coalition could create around the ALP that pushed the polling out, and it was the general ebbing away of those doubts and fears that brought it back.

    My prediction back in June/July was that people would simply run out of reasons not to vote ALP, and that would shrink the Coalition lead without the ALP having to do anything. It’s happened quickly, but that is the extent of it. I think the ALP still have to make a case to vote for them, otherwise we’re more or less back at 2010 election figures.

    But what’s also happening is the Coalition are trashing their own brand. Chasing Gillard right now is 12 flavours of stupid. Promising a bitter, nasty election campaign is nearly as bad. Not only are they desperately short of material these days, there’s a feeling abroad that they need to shift to policy work because everyone’s sick of the confected scandals.

    There will be a battle next year. And it may go back and forth a bit. It’ll be interesting to see if the Coalition are prepared for it. The ALP are prepared to fight on policy, in a way they really weren’t in 2010. And they’re coming across as unified.

  37. just on translating polling results to marginal seats, in a tight race (which it appears we are going to get) the power of incumbency and a good marginal seat strategy can sandbag for the sitting member.

    For example energetic members like Deb O’Neill in Robertson and Mike Kelly in EM have not only worked their butts off for three years, but have had (and may get more) positive announceables for these electorates.

  38. zoomster@582


    ModLib

    You see the other data right next to that? 9 seats going from ALP to LNP = 18 seat majority for the LNP.


    Yes, but unlike you I can do basic maths.

    A shift of 9 seats gives a 9 seat majority.

    You just disproved your mathematical ability.
    ALP -9 , LNP +9 = a shift in the margin of 18.

    I take it maths is not a subject you teach.

  39. bemused

    right. So I’ve said all along I don’t trust internal polls – but you accepted the internal polling that said Labor was in trouble in the Western suburbs.

    We’ve had this conversation on several occasions. Each time, you have made it clear that you accepted the internal polling.

    And no, I didn’t pluck 6 % out of thin air – it’s the number that was current when we had the original conversation, a couple of weeks ago.

    Apparently they’ve shifted another 4% since then!

  40. Gary@584


    There is little adulation of Julia Gillard outside of PB and she is widely distrusted.


    And Abbott even more so it seems.

    So it would seem.
    But the Libs seem to wear a teflon coat and it doesn’t stick to them.

  42. briefly@569


    Sprocket, of course the DT has taken down the stories. They comprise a tale of good over evil…of the triumph of courage and truth over intrigue, insults and lies.

    I reckon they’ve pulled the stories because everyone finds them boring. It’s obvious by now that they’re not going to get a scalp here, and nobody’s reading the stuff. Parliament’s over so there’ll be no direct Bishop vs Gillard stuff to watch. They’re looking for something else now.

  44. zoomster@589


    bemused

    right. So I’ve said all along I don’t trust internal polls – but you accepted the internal polling that said Labor was in trouble in the Western suburbs.

    We’ve had this conversation on several occasions. Each time, you have made it clear that you accepted the internal polling.

    And no, I didn’t pluck 6 % out of thin air – it’s the number that was current when we had the original conversation, a couple of weeks ago.

    Apparently they’ve shifted another 4% since then!

    Where have I trusted “Internal Polls”, or more correctly, figures people claim as coming from internal polls that may or may not exist?

    We saw what happened in the NSW State Election and where the swings were. That provides a reasonable basis for imputing that the ALP is in trouble out there.

  45. …and 9 seats going from one party to another is still a shift in the margin of 9.

    There aren’t 18 seats in play on that table. There are 9. 9 have moved from Labor to Liberal.

    Thus Labor loses 9 (hence -9) and Liberal gains 9 (+9).

    It’s not Labor loses 9 and Liberals gain an extra 9 from somewhere else.

  46. [So it would seem.
    But the Libs seem to wear a teflon coat and it doesn’t stick to them.]
    Yet. Let’s see if that’s the case when people have to put pencil to voting slip.

  47. [zoomster
    Posted Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 10:00 pm | PERMALINK
    ModLib

    you talked of ‘an 18 seat majority’ not a shift in the margin]

    The thing that amuses me about you guys is that even when you are clearly shown to be wrong you come back guns blazing!

    Previously it was Rua criticising my predicting abilities when I was 1 seat off at the last election and Rua was 10 seats off (or off by a 20 seat margin depending how you look at it eh zoomster? :))

  48. bemused

    Gee, last time we had this conversation – and the time before that, too.

    So now you’ve gone from published polls (even if internal ones) to guesstimates based on the last STATE election.

    At least mine were real numbers.

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