Newspoll: 55-45 to Coalition

Newspoll has the Coalition’s two-party vote down three points, and personal ratings returning to equilibrium after unusually bad results for Labor last time. Essential Research and Morgan also have Labor up slightly following slumps last week.

GhostWhoVotes reports Newspoll has the Coalition’s lead at 55-45, down from 58-42 last fortnight. The primary votes are 32% for Labor (up two), 48% for the Coalition (down two) and 11% for the Greens (up one). Last fortnight’s spike has also come off in the personal ratings, with Julia Gillard up two on approval to 28% and down three on disapproval to 62%, Tony Abbott down four to 35% and up four 54%, and Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 43-35 to 40-37.

The weekly Essential Research has Labor up a point to 32%, the Coalition steady on 49% and the Greens down two to 9%, with two-party preferred steady on 56-44. Perceptions of the economy have improved (good up 10 points since a year ago to 45% and poor down three to 26%). Those who answered good or poor were respectively asked why the government wasn’t popular, and what it was that made them think that given low unemployment and inflation. Strong support was also found for taxing superannuation earnings and contributions of high-income earners, at 55% compared with 35% opposed.

Morgan has also come in earlier than usual with its weekly multi-mode poll result, which has Labor up a point on the primary vote to 31%, the Coalition down 2.5% to 46.5% and the Greens down one to 10%. That pans out to 56.5-43.5 on respondent-allocated preferences and 56-44 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.

2,005 comments on “Newspoll: 55-45 to Coalition”

Comments Page 3 of 41
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  1. steve777@85: for the Press Council, that’s a pretty damning finding. Normally, the Press Council will accept an argument along the lines of “I know thr documentary evidence doesn’t say anything of the sort but we had private off-the-record briefings that confirmed what we are saying.

    On this occasion, the Terror journo’s version of events is too lame and so extraordinarily unlikely that even the Press Council couldn’t swallow it.

    It’s reassuring to know that there are some limits!!!

  2. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    NewsPoll seems to be rather an unstable instrument, doesn’t it.
    Just look at Morriscum’s staement at the end of this article about a nut case “solutions” to the AS issue.
    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/devine-intervention-plan-to-use-cruise-ships-to-patrol-ocean-20130408-2hhd1.html

    Not much else to link this morning.

    Cathy Wilcox has an insight to Julia’s China negotiations.
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/cathy-wilcox-20090909-fhd6.html
    MUST SEE! David Pope hammers the Opposition and its NBN position. If only his journalistic colleagues wouuld do the same. After today’s release of Turnbull’s plan there should be plenty of facts around upon which to base some decent analytical work.
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/david-pope-20120214-1t3j0.html
    Ron Tandberg is clearly uncomfortable with the IPA gathering in Melbourne last week.
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/ron-tandberg-20090910-fixc.html

  3. Re Tony Abbott’s views re public transport. The Frenchs Forest/Forestville area of Sydney where Tony has long resided has always been remarkably badly-served by public transport.

    In Sydney, the train lines went in early and, until comparativelyrecently, successive governments felt it was both too disruptive snd too expensive to add in more lines (and one from Roseville through the forest area to the northern beaches was always an obvious idea, but Labor and thr Liberals both preferred to build roads).

    When trams were pulled and replaced by buses, the bus routes were rather bizarrely confined for the most part to the old tram routes. I’m not sure that there were ever any trsms out to the forest area. I certainly know that, on a couple of occasions when I have been in Sydney and needed to get out that way to visit someone, there seemed to be hardly any buses at all.

    So I suspect that Abbott’s problem with public transport is one of deprivation.

  4. And from the Land of the Free –

    The Repugs’ tactics are killing the country.
    http://americablog.com/2013/04/sequester-impact-aviation-airlines-airports.html
    Some cartoons on the NRA’s love of children.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/04/08/cartoons-of-the-day-the-nra-loves-children/
    ESPN reporter slams the odious Sean Hannity.
    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/espn-reporter-slams-hannity-and-fox-defend
    The cause of a lot a Acute Testosterone Poisoning among boys in the 50s and 60s has died.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/annette-funicello-dead_n_3038406.html

  5. [The independence of businessman David Murray has been called into question after a Liberal Party fund-raiser was hosted at his home, at a time when he was finalising advice for the state government on James Packer’s push for a Sydney casino licence.

    Opposition Leader John Robertson said Mr Murray’s association with the event raised ”serious questions” for Mr O’Farrell.

    ”It is highly inappropriate for Mr Murray, who has been charged with carrying out an independent assessment into the Crown proposal for a Liberal state government, to be holding exclusive Liberal Party fund-raisers on the side,” he said.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/businessman-criticised-for-liberals-fundraiser-20130408-2hh8w.html#ixzz2PuGkv155

    Good article and brings into light Murrays one sided criticism of labor government policies and his support for Costello

  7. BK@102. To a rational and informed person, Morrison’s statement appears quite bizarre (although I should say that I reckon the cruise ship idea has some flaws, as these are far from being the ideal ships from which to conduct search and rescue operations).

    Anyway, Morrison’s argument here is part of the highly successful L-NP small target strategy. Most people (with the exception of some Green-voting diehard bleeding hearts) accept that Rudd, Evans and co totally stuffed up asylum seeker policy and that Gillard, despite trying as hard as she csn, has not come close to fixing it.

    The situation has moved on and thr old Howard Government policy settings won’t work any more. But, in a poltical sense, there is nothing to gain and everything to lose for thr Libs were they to acknowledge that fact. They csn worry about this in government, not now.

    I might add that someone I know who has spoken to Morrison in detsil about this says that he seems to sincerely believe that adding TPVs and “turning back the boats” back into the mix will put a stop to it all pretty quickly because the “people smugglers will know that the Abbott Government means business”.

    That sounds a bit nsive to me. But it doesn’t detract from the point that Labor is in a policy and political mess of it’s own making. I might add that it appears that Rudd’s insouciance and stubborn resistance to change on policy re boat people played a large part in his downfall in 2010.

    Weirdly enough, I reckon that – if Labor had played its cards right since 2007 – they could have wedged the Libs on boat people. There are a lot of devout Catholics on the Lib side – Abbott and Hockey among them – who have always been very uncomfortable with the political position that Howard and Ruddock established in 2001. Ruddock, like Morrison, is a moderate who based his thinking on the matter on a sense of fairness and equity in terms of a notional “queue”. And Howard, of course, was always a politicsl opportunist.

    But the Catholic view of the world is emotionally inclined to welcome everyone who shows up on our doorstep. You can see Abbott, Hockey and some others struggling a bit with the current Lib policy position. They seized on the opportunity provided by the debate on the Malaysisn Agreement: in arguing that they could support this becsuse it was too cruel to asylum seekers (unlike, apparently, dragging them back out into the middle of the ocean and leaving them to the mercy of the elements) they could have their cake and est it too.

    The wretched High Court deprived Labor of the opportunity to exercise this wedge on thr Libs. I would have thought a referendum on the Malaysisn solution to coincide with the coming election was worth a try: it would probably have lost, but it would have created confusion in the voters minds about who was the.toughest on boat people. But it was probably too daring an idea, and it would have forced us to put up with far more of SH-Y on our TV screens thsn would have been good for our health!!

  10. “@SabraLane: Coming up on AM, the opposition’s Communications spokesman @TurnbullMalcolm on his alternative NBN policy.”

    News 24 usually shows as well.

  11. A tragic day

    Annette Funicello dead

    And apparently the womam who ensured that the extremists became main stream in N Ireland also died

  15. guytaur

    [Coalition being attacked by facts on News 24over unseen Broadband policy]

    Peter Ryan as usual sensible and down to earth on this.

    Talc is full of s#it.

  17. Ctar

    Voters ignorant of technology will see the point about having to put copper an inferior component to deliver Coalition Broadband.

    Talk about wasteful.

  18. WB@100: the Iraqi breakfast affair is one of those untidy loose ends in Australian political history. What on earth was it about?

    My theory is as follows. The current consensus among Labor historians was that some sort of cultish belief about the magical properties of Middle Eastern “petrodollars” was confined solely to the mind of one man: Rex Connor.

    I suspect that the story will come out one day that this belief was far more widespread among the upper echelons of the Labor Party at the time and even (some believe) parts of the Federal public service.

    I think it was primarily a strange manifestation of the reflexive anti-Americanism among some papers of the Australian political left. Hawke, Carr, Wheeldon et al were pro-US, which was relatively unusual at the time. The Christopher Boyce revelations show that the US was across all this and was possibly prepared to help a bit with the destabilization of Whitlam.

    There’s a lot of interesting history there which will perhaps all come out one day.

  21. @ashermoses: News Ltd’s unwavering cheerleading for the Coalition taken to new heights in today’s misleading front page Daily Tele..

    retweeted by Fairfax technology deputy editor @bengrubb

  22. Morning All

    Will be good to see a policy debate about the NBN today, two alternate plans which can be compared and weighed up. Question is will it all be too complicated for the media and how long will they stick with it???

    We’re not off to a positive start – Turnbull threw out the $90 billion figure on AM and wasn’t questioned about it all. Importantly they totally forget to mention upload speeds. I’m far from being an expert on this stuff but surely upload speeds play a crucial role. Currently I’m on Telstra HFC – I’m meant to get 100mb downloads, I get around 80mb which is pretty good, but I only get 2mbs up. I’m meant to be able to get the NBN by the end of June, if they make their deadline, with 100mb down and 40mb up available if I want to pay for it.

    I look forward to watching the debate unfold, although I won’t be here to do so and will have to do it by catching up.

    Interesting Slipper gets another 5 weeks – if he doesn’t enter a plea next time it’s automatically not guilty. May will be a big month for him

    Anyways, it’s off to work for me – have a great day all

  24. Morning all.

    ABC24 is announcing that the coalition will announce its “National Broadband Network Plan” today.

    There is only one party offering a National Broadband Network, and it isn’t the coalition!

  27. Sorry, I’ve now seen your post @123. Yes, it’s pretty dodgy “Broadband at half the price” would be more neutral.

  28. Morning all. This is not a good look twenty weeks out from an election. I think some on the Labor right are psychologically incapable of giving up factional battles until they are more appropriate. They seem blind to the link between this sort of behavior and voter sentiment. They won’t enjoy opposition.
    [Former attorney-general Nicola Roxon has lashed out at ”misogyny” within Labor ranks, after the release of an anonymous dirt sheet attacking a candidate in the preselection battle for the safe seat of Gellibrand.
    A dirt sheet on candidate Katie Hall, who is being backed by Ms Roxon, was circulated over the weekend ahead of local member votes on Sunday and Monday.]
    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/dirt-flies-in-gellibrand-preselection-20130408-2hhe7.html#ixzz2PuWai6iA

    So they pre-selected Craig Thompson yet want to oppose Hall? There goes the female vote, about the only voter segment that might re-elect Gillard.

  31. “@sortius: For years @TurnbullMalcolm has maintained his FTTN #NBN would cost $15b, now it’s suddenly $30b. I’d hazard a guess it’s closer to $60b.”

  32. Regarding the coalition policy announcement (I haven’t typed those words in some time!), because it is a techy issue most don’t understand, Labor would be smart to have someone credible and independent lined up to comment on it. Obviously, not Stephen “Hawking” Conroy.

  33. The Emperor pisses of farmers after a Wheatbelt tour with what highly patronising remark”

    [“I think farm representative organisations need to be a lot more articulate in presenting to Government what can be done and done simply, and maybe stop talking about issues like daylight saving and the like and concentrate on real farm issues,” he said.]
    …
    [Mr Park said it was years since WAFarmers had said anything about daylight saving.

    Asked about Mr Barnett’s daylight saving comments, PGA president Rob Gillam said: “That’s just rubbish.”

    He said the PGA had been waiting four years for the Government to act on a straightforward solution to excessive pastoral rents.

    Muntadgin Farming Alliance organiser Jeff Hooper, who met Mr Barnett during his Wheatbelt visit, said the Premier had “offered us nothing” in terms of solutions or financial assistance.]
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/16634511/barnett-remarks-rubbish-farmers/

  35. ”First of all, a mea culpa. Yes, The Tele was right to pick me up on the use of an old statistic to illustrate standards of literacy in our high school students. The figure was out of date and should have been checked.”

    Well done Garrett.
    Well done Daily Telegraph.

  36. [I think some on the Labor right are psychologically incapable of giving up factional battles until they are more appropriate.]

    Some in Labor certainly have an amazing capacity for shooting the party in the foot!

  37. Not a single mention in ABC news radio in the hour I listened this morning. Why is a 3 % shift on 2PP only newsworthy if the shift is in favour of the coalition?

    Someone should do a study on the reporting of poll shifts- i think it would find that the poll shifts towards the coalition get much more prominent coverage.

    The ABC does not even pretend to be balanced these days

  39. meher baba #107

    A coalition government on taking power will announce that no A/S arriving without the passports used to fly to Indonesia and/or have spent 7 days in a 3rd transit country (Indonesia/Malaysia)prior to arriving by boat will ever, ever, receive Australian residency, only TPVs, while the coalition is in government.

    It will then be up to A/S if they are prepared to pay $12K plus to people smugglers with no Australian citizenship as the end product.

    Arrivals are now on track to exceed 3000 a month – ie 36K pa – by the time of election, may be more, as the people smuggler clients try to get here before a change of government. There is probably no-one here as informed as Morrison about how the demand/supply of how the people smuggler trade works which is probably why he is so confident.

  40. BTW, I know I will be described as being “negative” and a “whinger” but this headline shows how hard it will be for Labor to get as much traction on the NBN issue as many on here believe.

    Turnbull has a nice simple message to deliver: the NBN might be great, but it’s a Rolls Royce solution which will cost too much and take years to roll out. Meanwhile, I have a quick and dirty solution which will do the job fine. And you can trust me, I used to be in charge of an ISP and I know what I’m talking about.

    The cognoscenti know this is all crap, but it’s a hard story to tell. That ABC online expert guy struggles to tell it in less than a few thousand words. Conroy was tying himself up in knots last night on Lateline. If you can get through to them, most people will probably agree with the Labor view. But most voters will probably switch off before you have finished explaining it to them.

    If I were Conroy, I’d probably simply just keep saying that I’ve got all the ICT experts on my side and encourage the media to go and ask them about Turnbull’s policy.

    But, wherever the debate goes, it isn’t going to deliver hundreds of thousands of swinging votes to Labor on Election Day. IMO anyway.

  41. I think the DT article that was slammed by the
    Press Council was originally written by Dennis Shanahan in the Oz. The DT pinched it from him. At least I remember Dennis taking credit for it because he was at the conference concerned and defended his own reporting when questions were raised.

    Of course could have been lying, or the DT was lying. It’s hard to keep up with the dishonesty isn’t it?

  42. Bar Bar@139. It won’t be convincing. Past experience shows that the “you’ll never ever get permanent residence no matter how long you stay here” line is an empty threat unless you’ve got an identifiable place to deport them to sooner or later.

    Mass deportations to Kabul and Baghdad would seem quite reasonable to me, but you can be sure the courts will find a way to stop if. So the people will stay and stay and stay and then what do you do with them. Eventually, as quietly as you can, you give them permanent residency.

    This was the point of the Malaysisn solution. Somewhere to send them from where they won’t easily return. They can’t stay on Nauru forever. Or, I believe , on TPVs forever

  44. I also think the NBN will not be the vote winner Labor heavies imagine. It may cost votes. The problem is not speed/capacity or cost, of which most people do not understand. It is timing. It is badly behind schedule, as I dared to suggest here a few months ago before being told I was wrong. As a result, very few voters will have had any experience of it before the election. So the deluge of (publicly funded!) ads merely remind people of what they don’t have.

  46. [George Megalogenis ‏@GMegalogenis 4m
    RIP Margaret Thatcher. Her polls were worse than @JuliaGillard ‘s in early yrs. Today’s panicky MPs & media would’ve dumped her in 1st term.]

  48. ‘I also think the NBN will not be the vote winner Labor heavies imagine. It may cost votes. The problem is not speed/capacity or cost, of which most people do not understand. It is timing’

    A lot of people will be sucked in by shite like the Terrograph headline…you know, the Lineral party are going to give us our NBN but cheaper.
    Turbull was at it this morning, mis-management’ by Labor of the roll out.
    It’s their trump card. ‘School HAlls’, ‘pink batts’….and now ‘NBN debacle’…..it’s worked for them so far.

  50. shellbell

    Is Kitching Slanderyou’s partner?

    [”It is frustrating that every time a capable woman puts up her hand to run for office, she has to deal with false allegations about her sexual history. We might expect this misogyny and sexism from our Liberal opponents, but surely it has no place within modern Labor?” Ms Roxon wrote.

    Ms Kitching was accused of producing the sheet, which she vehemently denied.
    ]

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/dirt-flies-in-gellibrand-preselection-20130408-2hhe7.html#ixzz2PudwVa5e

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