Newspoll quarterly aggregate: January-March

The latest Newspoll quarterly aggregates have Labor down three points in Victoria, two in New South Wales and Western Australia, and one in Queensland and South Australia.

Tomorrow’s Australian will bring Newspoll’s quarterly aggregate of its polling from January to March, with breakdowns by state, age and metropolitan/country. GhostWhoVotes has thus far provided us with the national aggregates plus two-party results for each state, which suggest the swing against Labor has been spread fairly evenly:

Two Party Preferred: ALP 46 (-2) L/NP 54 (+2)
Primary Votes: ALP 33 (-2) L/NP 46 (+3) GRN 10 (-1)
Gillard: Approve 32 (-5) Disapprove 56 (+5)
Abbott: Approve 34 (+4) Disapprove 55 (-4)
Preferred PM: Gillard 40 (-5) Abbott 39 (+6)

Federal 2PP in NSW: ALP 46 (-2) L/NP 54 (+2)
Federal 2PP in VIC: ALP 51 (-3) L/NP 49 (+3)
Federal 2PP in QLD: ALP 41 (-1) L/NP 59 (+1)
Federal 2PP in WA: ALP 43 (-2) L/NP 57 (+2)
Federal 2PP in SA: ALP 49 (-1) L/NP 51 (+1)

More to follow.

UPDATE: Full tables here.

UPDATE 2 (2/4/2013): Essential Research has Labor dropping two points on the primary vote for the second week in a row, and this time it’s taken two-party preferred with it, the Coalition’s lead blowing out from 54-46 to 56-44. The Coalition is up two to 49% with the Greens steady on 11%. Also covered are the attributes of the major parties and leaders, with Labor’s and Julia Gillard’s ratings bad and getting worse across the board, most notably with a nine point increase to 82% in the number thinking Labor “divided”, while the Liberal Party records much the same results as a year ago, but with divided down five to 32%. Readers may be shocked to learn that more think Julia Gillard “aggressive&#148: (up nine to 55%) than Tony Abbott (down six to 49%). Enthusiasm for an early election has increased, with an eight-point increase since the end of January to 43% and a four-point drop in those thinking the government should run a full term to 47%. There’s also some interesting material on social class and where the parties fit in.

UPDATE 3 (2/4/2013): The fifth Morgan multi-mode poll offers more evidence that Labor’s position has further deteriorated in the wake of last fortnight’s abortive leadership ructions, with Labor down half a point on the primary vote to 30%, the Coalition up 2.5% to and the Greens up half a point to 11%. The Coalition’s two-party lead is out from 57-43 to 59-41 on respondent-allocated preferences and from 56-44 to 57.5-42.5 on previous election preferences.

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.

940 comments on “Newspoll quarterly aggregate: January-March”

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  1. Barry O Farrell cut Transit Officers roles to be taken up by Police.

    Due to fare evasion as a result cost so far $11 million.

  2. Natalie d

    New England is a different seat than Lyne.

    Tony Windsor has been fighting off the Nationals for years and yes some may be angry with him but the question remains can the Nationals find a candidate that is better than Windsor.

    Lyne should be an easy gain for the Nationals.

    Regarding super i think i wrote that yes looking at pollies pensions may have its merits but will only have a small benefit to the budget.

  3. [Andrew Elder ‏@awelder
    Crean has never actually been a backbencher. In cabinet from day 1, no wonder he can’t behave like a backbencher and just STFU.]

    Is this true re never been a backbencher?

  4. natalie d

    explain —

    1. what is wrong with pollies’ pensions at the moment;

    2. What you think would be reasonable.

    Until we know what you’re concerned about, it’s difficult to answer your question.

    Oh, and btw – JWH did change pollies’ pensions, when Latham made it an election issue. But then he changed it back (at least to some extent) when he won control of the Senate. Do you think the Howard government was wrong to do this? Do you think Latham’s scheme was better than Howard’s?

  5. Wow – have hardly peeked at this site for 6 months or more and with a bit of time tonight I see that it’s deja vu (all over again if you want). I remember being beaten up by the Gillard groupies when I declared time and again that Julia Gillard was unelectable and was a very dumb leader with mistake after mistake and said that the 45-55 or thereabouts would continue until election day, unless there was a change to Smith or Combet or M Fergo, not Rudd. No, she’s the one you Gillard groupies screamed: she’s so smart, Abbott is unhinging. Well I told you so and too late now… Sportingbet 1.08 LNP, 7.30 ALP. Anyway no point chewing over it; the question is whether there is any strategy that can save the furniture, for example fight the media, play with superannuation etc. I mean she’s just got better by the minute. Even ditching the perfidious Greens who she should never have supped with in the first place wasn’t her idea, they jumped ship first, hopefully into the drink forever. Crean should be given a medal for trying to save her, and the party, from themselves but now he’s villified her. I now expect the usual suspects to come back and say how she’ll recover in the real election campaign. She won’t and if you think so grab that $7.30 they’re giving away at Sportingbet.

  6. As for the pensions, I believe that both sides are bad in this respect.someone tell me why we need to keep paying politicians once they retire, or get booted out? Former pollies get payed triple figure sums for doing literally nothing. How’s that fair?

  7. natalie d

    [Fran – Labor is looking at changing super, they are not doing so with Polly pensions.]

    That’s not what you said though. You said Labor was “changing the superannuation of everyday Australians”. That’s not the same thing.

    Why are you moving the goalposts? Isn’t that trolling? Do you think people won’t notice?

  8. Fran – now you’re just splitting hairs. You are a Green voter, so no surprise there. Pedantic self-righteousness are part and parcel of being so. Are you having hot flsshes over the fact that the Green’s vote hasn’t risen at all since the election, in fact it’s gone, while the coalition’s is at 50.

  9. natalie d:

    [ I know people from NE, and most are ropeable at Windsor’s betrayal, like us here in Lyne.]

    I’m prepared to accept that you know people who are “ropeable” but that would have predated Windsor’s decision to support a Gillard government. They’d have been ropeable for years before that, surely.

    I’d say you have a causality problem.

  10. FB

    [in fact it’s gone, while the coalition’s is at 50.]

    Wasting your time.

    Sideways movements.

    And fairly inept ones.

  11. natalie d

    [Fran – now you’re just splitting hairs. ]

    On the contrary — I’m asking you to be specific in what you are claiming so that the claim can be tested. In what precise way is the government planning to vary superannuation arrangements, in your opinion? You can leave out Daily Tele cliches like “everyday Australians” and “polly pensions”.

  12. From Newspoll: “The Greens’ support is down in every state since the 2010 election.” This would normally be a double cause for celebration as it should boost Labor, but hasn’t done so. So I guess that most has gone to LNP or maybe to the Mad Katter, or it’s replaced 2010 ALP voters who’ve gone that way.

  13. Mick77

    You’re absolutely right of course. But the duffers here have taken some kind of pledge, a bit like a Masons secret handshake, where they won’t even respond to posts that question the omnisience of our dear leader Julia. It is actually parallel universe stuff, unless you care about the future of the country and the Labor party, in which case it’s the big bang gone horribly wrong.

  14. So there you have it. Asked a question that required specific information — the features of the variation to superannuation contemplated by the government — the troll, “natalie d” had no answer. All (s)he brought here were the trolling lines counterposing “everyday Australians” to “pollies” and their “pensions” formulated into a question as vacuous as that of any three-year-old.

    My question to her/him remains. Why do fools like “natalie d” bother? What do they get out of trolling? Do they really imagine they are fooling anyone or changing minds? It’s hard to believe that.

    I’d settle for a bogus answer if it were faintly credible or amusing.

  15. I’m not sure about your specific question Fran, but Simon Crean is absolutely correct in saying that it’s quite unconscionable to, in effect, retrospectively tax super contributions, no whatever what wealth bracket the target person might be in. The system needs certainty and stability. That’s the point the likes of Crean and Bill Kelty are making.

    Politically, it looks absolutely terrible for Julia Gillard to go raiding super to try to sort out the budget mess. It’s a gift to Abbott, just another to add to his surfeit from our Julia.

  16. Message to The Age

    You have loaded so much stuff or scrip or whatever on your page that it is slow, choppy and a place to avoid.

  17. Tks Alias. That theme just got so repetitive that it seemed pointless to point out JG’s many many failings … and that was 6-12 months back. And I think everyone else has now gone to bed!

  18. Some times I wonder if Gillard and her brains trust are deliberately trying to increase the maginitude of their defeat so only right wing factional warlords remain so they can take over the whole party.

    Hard to imagine anybody to be as stupid as they are acting now except it be deliberate.

  19. Ah yes … as one troll vanishes into the ether, another appears, with another iteration of the last 50 or so posts he/she has made:

    [You’re absolutely right of course. But the duffers here have taken some kind of pledge, a bit like a Masons secret handshake, where they won’t even respond to posts that question the omnisience of our dear leader Julia … ]

    Again … if you really believed this, what would be the point of posting it again? Do you imagine that someone has missed your oeuvre? Perhaps someone has forgotten what you said yesterday or the day before or the day before that?

    I do note the comparison of PMJG to the late Kim Jong Il of North Korea. You’re obviously a sadder but wiser ALP stalwart, doing that schtick.

    Really, you’re not fooling anyone. All you’re really doing is wasting bandwidth. You’re a sad little buzzing insect the flapping wings of which emit only one tone.

    I don’t need to admire the PM to see that you are of no value to anyone who takes public policy seriously.

  20. Yes Mick77, it has gone rather quiet. Frankly, I could imagine further leadership questions arising in a month or two, if this current polling continues. How can any party just sit by and let this happen? As you say, the object should be to save those seats that can be saved, to create a base that gives Labor some hope at the next election or more probably the one after. At some point, the penny will drop like a nuclear bomb among those whose views prevail in federal labor: Julia Gillard is entirely unelectable (as you rightly note)

  21. Playing around with Superannuation may be the last straw and be enough to poison the well enough that it wont matter who leads them, an annihilation will come.

    AND what a gift for Abbott ffs who can simply come out with soothing rhetoric, attacking from the left..lol

  22. Alright, alright.. I seek your forgiveness Fran. I withdraw any suggestion that you’ve been imbibing.

    What do you mean you can see me for what I am?

    I am one of a very large number of people alarmed at the prospect of Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has been watching this horror show called PM Julia Gillard, who has been blithely and wilfully handing the nation’s top job to that clown Abbott, who has to do so little from now till Sept 14 to secure the job that it is utterly, immeasurably depressing.

  23. Quite right Thomas.Paine. Super might well be the last straw. I have this image in my mind of Gillard and her key people, Swan and so forth, sitting around playing Russian roulette with the future of Australia and federal Labor. “Hey stick this bullet in the gun and see what happens!” howls one of them as they slot the super slug in the revolver, and give it a spin.

  24. Fran @ 82 et al … who are you going on about, Alias or me? From skimming through your recent posts on this and previous topics I haven’t noticed much added value from one post of yours to the next, but that’s every poster’s prerogative. Anyway the name of the game now is to save deck-chairs so JG and the party have to be stopped from any more disasters and for that I admire Crean’s recent behaviour, at great cost to himself. I think it’s what Gillard groupies call disloyalty. Anyway G’nite and thanks for the brief stopover.

  25. alias:

    [What do you mean you can see me for what I am?]

    I mean that your words are paradoxical. When challenged you affect an air of distress at the prospect of an Abbott premiership and yet you come to a place dominated by those who really seek the return of the government and spend your time attempting to demoralise them and discourage them from acting in circumstances where it is absolutely clear that the party you say you support will be led by a leader you repeatedly brand unelectable and whom you compare with the leader of a criminal autarky.

    This is textbook concern trolling. No genuine ALP supporter would engage in it. They’d knuckle down and do whatever they could to get the footsoldiers out there banging on doors and talking up the regime. Or at the very leats, if they couldn’t bring themselves, in their “immeasurable depression” to do that, they would at least button their lip and do something else.

    The conclusion is compelled. You are hostile to the ALP’s re-election and feel that at 1 AM on a Tuesday nearly six months out, this is the best support you can render its enemies.

  26. Well you are wrong Fran. I genuinely fear an Abbott led government. However, I don’t buy the notion that out of some misguided sense of loyalty, it is appropriate to pretend everything’s going to be OK if we all just frown a lot, knuckle down and rally behind the leader. I mean it really is past that point, and I’m sure at some level you understand that.

    The situation calls for decisive action of some sort. The most obvious course seems to be gone, but it is simply unacceptable to blunder on with the present course under some delusion that this is helpful to Australia or to federal Labor.

    This is a crisis. Labor has been split. It is facing an unimaginable wipeout on Sept 14. As honest observers, out in the field, like Con Vatskalis in Darwin and Alannah MacTiernan in Perth, have stated all too plainly, the message they get by banging on doors in Australian suburbs, is that voters will not vote for Julia Gillard in the sort of numbers that would stave off a horrifying wipeout.

  27. Anyway, am hitting the hay. Let’s hope Tony Abbott gets a major case of verbal diarrhoea or similar in days and weeks ahead.

  28. Fran – If people are really concerned about ALP’s success then they’d drop the idolisation of Dear Leader and her appalling decisions, which has been the theme here every time I’ve visited, for some misplaced ideological reason. I’m guessing that Alias has been pushing against that same theme. I’m happy to hypothesise what ALP can do to save deckchairs, namely lock away Gillard till 14 Sept and listen to Crean, and M Ferguson when he warns about class warfare. I’ll leave you to knock on doors – no-one can sell a dud and I’m certainly not a fanatical ALP supporter, at this juncture anyway. Does one have to be, in order to prefer a decent Labor party, free of the Greens? Really to bed now!

  29. natalie d

    What was the Coalition’s stance on superannuation when it was introduced, Natalie? Is it not true that if it were up to your party (lol The Nationals lol) and the Liberals we would not even HAVE a superannuation scheme?

    The answer to the above questions may illustrate why your whinging on the topic is ignoreable at best and transparently cynical at worst.

  30. Noted:

    Both “Mick” and “Alias” use the “Dear Leader” epithet, appear at the same time after most of the regulars have stopped and after “natalie d” has skipped, but not without taking up the “super” talking point.

    Coincidence? hmmm…

  31. Fran, I vote green and I think the ALP made a terrible mistake that was easy to rectify on numerous occasions. Believe it or not, some people, including myself, thought that rectifying this mistake was the ALP’s best chance to win. I am resigned towards the decision. I will obviously support and promote good ALP and Green policies, but writing a good word about most ALP power brokers and their puppets is not going to happen.

    For your benefit, I will restate that at a basketball game (Tigers vs Breakers) a year ago, Shorten, number 1 tigers fan, was presented to the audience. It was not a good reception to put it mildly. The mob spoke – these were basketball fans who generally have less head injuries and alcohol induced brain necrosis than cricket or footy fans.

    Rudd would have been a better choice because his electoral and polling success could not be beat. I don’t think he is super fantastic, I would vote Green even if he were in charge. The point is that the opportunity to move the apolitical centre back into safe territory looks like it is lost.

    Bilbo also gets rid of trolls pretty quickly.

  32. [ alias:

    What do you mean you can see me for what I am?

    I mean that your words are paradoxical. ]

    Oi! That’s my line.

    😛

  33. In among all the bad news in these figures, the general lack of confidence in Abbott among a large proportion of the population comes through strongly. This sense of unease is not going to go away as it is not superficial, but derives from an intuition about the true nature of the man: which is not, as many wrongly believe on here, that he is a nasty or mean bloke – he isn’t at all – but that he is a bit odd and rather out of place as the leader of the Libs in 2013. Even rusted-on Libs are concerned: there’s absolutely no sign of any 2007 “Kevin 07” hoopla about Abbott’s seeming impending victory, or even Howard’s “I’m a safe pair of hands”. It’s more along the lines of “Gillard’s gotta go, and we hope Tony’s going to be better than we fear.”

    Gillard’s disapproval rating is potentially softer, because a lot of ill-informed Rudd worship from left-inclined people underpins it. Most of these people will come back to Labor (or Labor via Greens) come election time. And because Abbott is strange, Gillard can also win some swinging voters over on the “devil you know” basis.

    But she needs desperately to get the focus off her and Rudd and onto Abbott. So why oh why the superannuation nonsense? Is it a clumsy attempt at a wedge? Or some silly class war nonsense?

    It’s time for Gillard to rule it out. Today. If need be, Gonski can wait. The Libs aren’t offering any competition on education policy. Tell Australians we can’t afford it. Make it into an election promise.

    Unfortunately I fear Gillard is too emotionally wedded to Gonski. It might prove to be her Waterloo. If the Budget prompts general outrage (much of it manufactured, but noisy) about super, and Gonski is seen as a fizzer (which seems to me to be almost inevitable), then Rudd will have another crack.

    What ultimately killed Hawke in 1991 was his acceptance of Brian Howe’s crazy scheme of applying a co-payment for Medicare bulk-billing to pay for Building Better Cities: an ill-defined initiative which didn’t resonate with the public and ultimately derided by the Libs and the media.

    I can see Gonski – funded by unpopular super tax changes – going exactly the same way.

    Stop it now Julia!

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