Newspoll: 62-38 to LNP in Queensland

Following on from the Nielsen poll in New South Wales, the latest Queensland state poll result from Newspoll suggests a decline in Labor’s federal polling ratings since the start of the year has been more than matched at state level.

Newspoll’s latest quarterly result for state voting intention in Queensland, covering 1130 respondents from January through March, suggest the gains Labor made amid last year's budget cuts have faded away, returning them to the territory of last year's disastrous election result. The primary votes of 27% for Labor and 49% for the LNP closely reflect the election figures of 26.7% and 49.7%, and are respectively down four and up seven on the previous quarterly Newspoll result. The Greens are on 6% (7.5% at the election, 8% in the last poll), and it looks like Katter's Australian Party is continuing to cause Newspoll methodological trouble: the numbers are 3% for the KAP and 15% for “others”, which are respectively implausibly low (the KAP polled 11.5% at the election) and implausibly high (4.6% at the election). The two-party preferred score of 62-38 compares with 62.8-37.2 at the election and 56-44 in the last Newspoll. Campbell Newman is up five on approval to 42% and down three on disapproval to 45%, while Annastacia Palasczcuk is down one to 33% and up three to 33. Newman's lead as preferred premier is out from 45-29 to 53-21.

ReachTEL also published its latest monthly automated phone poll for Channel Seven last week, which slipped through my net at the time. This had the LNP up 0.7% to 47.8%, Labor up 1.3% to 30.2%, KAP down 1.4% to 10.1% and the Greens up 0.1% to 8.0%. On my reading of two-party preferred, Labor made a rounding-assisted one point gain on the previous month’s poll, putting it 59-41 behind rather than 60-40. Newman’s combined good rating was up from 38.4% to 42.3% with combined poor down from 46.9% to 43.8%, while Annastacia Palasczcuk was down on both good (from 24.1% to 21.0%) and poor (34.2% to 32.2%).

The following chart shows the two-party results recorded so far this term in both the Newspoll quarterly polls and the monthly ReachTEL polls, which find the latter’s results in encouragingly close proximity to the former’s.

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.

17 comments on “Newspoll: 62-38 to LNP in Queensland”

  1. For a Government that has had its issues and having introduced major changes to Government structures to turn around and score this result is impressive

  2. mexicanbeemer@1

    For a Government that has had its issues and having introduced major changes to Government structures to turn around and score this result is impressive

    Yes. A lot of people made a big deal of the polling dives early in Newman’s term but a new government making tough decisions (and making mistakes in the process) will always get that.

    They’re bound to be getting a huge assist from Canberra at the moment but even so I think some of the narrative that accompanied the earlier polling was mistaken.

    A logical approach to a first-term 60-40+ lead in polling is to spend some of it making life easier for yourself later on, especially as it’s very likely Labor will win lots of seats back next election but extremely unlikely the LNP will go near losing.

  3. Does anyone know exactly what Labor’s strategy for winning is beside waiting for Tony to say something like two thirds of Australians are lazy, or that he hates women? That seems like a poor strategy when you are in government and waiting for the opposition to mess up.

  4. William:

    Why does Bludgertack have a 13.4% swing in Tassie but only a 3 seat ALP loss?

    Bass, Braddon, Franklin and Lyons are all on <12.3% aren't they?

  5. Possum, who is working on a huge Megapoll (via reachtel) of state level QLD voting intentions seat by seat, doesn’t think Newspoll have it right there…

    [#Megapoll has KAP polling 3 points or less in only 8 seats. #qldpol—
    Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) March 29, 2013

    Newspoll refuses to fix its question methodology, which is why its Qld results end up so silly when we have 4 largish party votes #qldpol—
    Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) March 29, 2013

    @toddkirby The tiered system they chose for voting intention question doesn’t work when there’s more than 3 parties. WA & Qld both show it—
    Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) March 29, 2013]

  6. [Why does Bludgertack have a 13.4% swing in Tassie but only a 3 seat ALP loss?

    Bass, Braddon, Franklin and Lyons are all on <12.3% aren't they?]

    With the caveat that we're on the wrong thread – I am not simply using the "Mackerras method" of assuming uniform swings. I am a) weighting the swings for each seat according to their tendency to swing in the past, and b) calculating probabilities for each seat and adding them to produce statewide totals. In this particular case, Franklin hasn't been much of a swinger in the period covered by my calculation (going back to 1993), so I'm only calculating a 35% chance of the swing being big enough to knock it over.

  7. Leroy@7

    Possum, who is working on a huge Megapoll (via reachtel) of state level QLD voting intentions seat by seat, doesn’t think Newspoll have it right there…

    They sure don’t. Whatever they are doing wrong there they need to fix it.

  8. KB@4 is definitely correct to say that this is Fed influenced. With Newman still net negative and the Katter volatility I think this polling has plenty of room to move.

  9. The methodological errors only mean the difference between a Tarago’s worth of MPs and Tarago+Yaris combo.

  10. So much for the Newman effect helping the ALP federally

    I think we call safely say the Julia effect trumps the Newman effect significantly….if there is a Newman effect at all

  11. More of a mainstream media effect than anything else – if not for that, there wouldn’t be a Julia effect.

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