GhostWhoVotes reports the latest Nielsen has come in at 57-43 to the Coalition, up from 56-44 last month. On the primary vote, Labor is down two points to 29%, the Coalition is up two to 49% and the Greens are up two to 12%. The lead Tony Abbott opened up as preferred minister in the last poll has widened slightly, from 49-43 to 50-42. His personal ratings are unchanged at 43% approve and 53% disapprove, with Gillard down one to 37% and up one to 59%. Gillard has however gained on Kevin Rudd as preferred Labor leader, up four to 35% with Rudd down five to 57%. Full tables including state and age breakdowns here. Nielsen also finds 52% opposing the proposed tax on high-earning superannuation accounts against 45% in support, and has head-to-head leader attribute ratings that generally have the two leaders fairly close together, with the notable exception of “has confidence of party”.
We also had in this morning’s News Limited tabloids a Galaxy poll which had the Coalition lead at 54-46, compared with 55-45 in the last such poll which was conducted in the immediate aftermath of Labor’s leadership crisis three weeks ago. On the primary vote, Labor was up a point to 33%, the Coalition steady on 47% and the Greens steady on 12%. The poll also found 45% saying they would more trust Tony Abbott on superannuation policy than Julia Gillard, against 34% vice-versa; 57% supporting cuts in “middle class welfare” to fund schools and the National Disability Insurance Scheme against 36% opposed; and 46% saying Gillard better represented “blue-collar workers” against 39% for Abbott.
UPDATE: Essential Research has Labor up two points to 34%, the Coalition down one to 48% and the Greens steady on 9%, with the Coalition’s two-party lead down from 56-44 to 55-45. The monthly personal ratings have Julia Gillard down two on approval to 34% and steady on disapproval at 56%, with Tony Abbott steady on 37% and up one to 52%. Abbott leads on preferred prime minister for the first time since September, moving from 39-39 to 39-37. The government’s superannuation policy gets a similar result to Nielsen’s, with 40% supportive and 46% opposed. Labor’s broadband policy however is much preferred to the Coalition’s, by 54% to 23%. There are also questions gauging awareness of Julian Assange and what contribution he could make to parliament (32% broadly positive, 50% broadly negative).
UPDATE 2: The weekly Roy Morgan multi-mode poll, whose bouncy sample size is back up to 3835 after falling below 3000 a fortnight ago, is largely unchanged on last week, with both parties up a point on the primary vote (Labor to 32% and the Coalition to 47.5%) and the Greens up half a point to 10.5%. Labor has narrowed the gap from 56.5-43.5 to 55.5-44.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, but previous election preferences are steady at 56-44. The polling glut will continue in an hour or so when Channel Seven goes to air with ReachTEL’s first ever national poll (UPDATE 3): Or rather, not. My guess is that Seven’s chosen to hold off on it for another night.
UPDATE 3: Channel Seven has now come good with the ReachTEL result, which has the Coalition leading 57-43 from primary votes of 31% for Labor and 50% for the Coalition. Tony Abbott leads as preferred prime minister 62-38 among men and 52-48 among women. The government’s superannuation policy is opposed by 43% and supported by 33%. Forty-six per cent support the National Broadband Network against 40% for the Coalition’s broadband policy. The sample on the poll was 1924. Full results here.
[A lot of people don’t see the point of
“uniting” behind flakes who stand for nothing.]
Clearly in your futile whinge-a-thon you’ve missed the real achievements of this govt.
JV
Well I wouldn’t listen to you. I cannot remember the last time you said anything positive on here, even to say the sun is shining or your goldfish is smiling.
If you picked up a half-pound gold nugget in a creek bed, you would complain that it was heavy to carry.
Centre
You don’t prefer the nutters and shooters, yet you are to prefer them on the ballot paper. Right.
Are we allowed to ask who is commissioning the ReachTel poll? Is it Seven News?
And is anything happening about Newman’s push-polling comments?
William,
There will be a monthly release on Seven but not necessarily a National poll. For example, the first in the series was a Western Sydney poll. I’ll ask the powers that be tomorrow about the state breakdowns.
I understand that Jones and Hadley are conducting a take-no-prisoners airwaves blitzkreig in Western Sydney to take seats of Labor.
oops
take seats from the ALP.
Well, that blows my, “leave the country to improve the polls” theory.
Puff
I’m an enthusiast of policy based on best experts and ethics. I often speak about that. I can’t help it if the government continues to do stupid shallow things, apart from what it’s forced to do by the minority agreements – like carbon and teeth.
I’m free of the morbid obsession of “Labor must win” because it’s ‘Labor’. I don’t reckon that title means anything any more; the incumbents are wholly misusing that name for the sake of their own careers.
This won’t help a lot.
[David Gonski criticises Labor’s school funding reform and questions major cuts to tertiary funding ]
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/david-gonski-criticises-labors-school-funding-reform-and-questions-major-cuts-to-tertiary-funding/story-fncz7kyc-1226620288084
Diogenes – Seven has commissioned both tonights Victorian poll and tomorrows Federal poll.
jv
Hey, I want the Greens to lose the balance of power in the Senate for two reasons;
1) they’re economically incompetent, and
2) it would fast track Labor winning government again if the Coalition were given full rein to do as they please (remember workchoices).
My objective, unlike the Greens, is winning 😡
*night 🙂
j.v.
[like carbon and teeth.]
Oh yeah – those things Labor tried to do between 2007-10 and which weren’t supported by the Greens….
Nick (ReachTEL)
Given that this is an allegedly psephological site, can you tell us about the evidence about robopolling vs human telephone polling in Australia or in general?
My understanding from the US is that the results in robopolls are generally as reliable as in person polls.
Centre
Was it the Greems working with Garnaut to get the biggest economic structural change in living history worked out that convinced you of incompetence?
zoomster
Yes they were. The CPRS was a crock, as Garnaut said. What we have now is what he wanted.
[66
jaundiced view
zoomster
Yes they were. The CPRS was a crock, as Garnaut said. What we have now is what he wanted.]
Not long from now, we will have neither the CPRS or the current set-up. Now that is what I call a crock.
There is always one poll that seems to buck the trend. All the other polls indicate a small shift back to Labor and Nielsen comes up with their worst result for Labor for quite a while. On balance I think you have to go with the majority and feel the position is closer to 55/45 at present.
The headlines tomorrow will be sobering though.
post 65
Hilarious
j.v.
oh, shifting ground, now.
Far from being forced by the greens, Labor had already tried to get carbon pricing through Parliament. So there was no need for the Greens to force Labor to do anything – there was a need for them to support Labor to do something.
Far from being forced by teh greens, Labor had been trying for years to get a dental scheme, targetted at those on low incomes, through Parliament. This was blocked by the Greens, because they wanted to preserve Howard’s crock of a scheme, which was massively over budget, badly targetted and had been repeatedly found to be massively rorted.
Thatcher would have won with preferential voting and would probably have won the 2PP as well. However the majorities would have been smaller. The seat haul would have gone down in 1983 not up as the Conservative vote actually dropped 1.5%, it is not remembered for that because of the greater division in the opposition splitting their votes and that the war saved them from a massive defeat. Only under a plurality system could the vote splitting have increased their seat share, any other system proportional or preferential would have cut the Conservative seat haul.
Under a preferential system Major would probably have lost in 1992.
I answered the phone poll exactly the some as if it was a person asking the questions. I can’t see why it would make a difference, but then again I am predisposed towards answering polls.
P.S. I don’t think Nielsen is a rogue because its not that far from the other polling. Galaxy for a while has been showing results slightly favouring Labor based on the average for all polling mainly because they have the Greens higher than average and others lower than average and when you take preference allocation into account that is to Labor’s advantage. It’s just one of those unexplained things that happens with polling at times.
So I’m going with 55/45.
zoomster
The dental scheme was a condition of the minority governemnt agreement the Greens struck with Labor.
The CPRS revisionism line you run has been run here many many times by you and your party compatriots. However:
1. Rudd refused to negotiate with the Greens right through the process. The focus was on wedging Turnbull.
2. The Greens opposed the high compensation levels, and the target. Both these things could have been worked through, as they eventually were with the govt accepting Garnaut’s position, as the Greens had long before.
JV,
Like I said, if you found a half-pound gold nugget in a creek bed you would whinge that it was heavy to carry. Which is fact-based as a half pound nugget would be heavy to carry out of a creek bed.
Puffy
[I answered the phone poll exactly the some as if it was a person asking the questions. I can’t see why it would make a difference, but then again I am predisposed towards answering polls.]
Some people argue that you are more likely to give a socially acceptable response to a human than an automated poll.
So a question like “Should all asylum seekers be sent to Afghanistan as human shields?” would get a more honest response with an automated pollster than a human pollster.
JV
So you skate over the surface of the Greens making poor people, especially the unemployed, suffer tooth ache and decay for years, and all the social and health effects of this, because the elitist bahstards in Da Greens wanted a pure scheme. I know someone who has suffered dental ill-health for years but could not get into the rorted dental scheme that asthmatic millionaires could and did use.
For that, AFAIC, The Greens can go to hell.
57
Dio
Yes, i reckon that is correct.
And for the Greens whinging about the ALP dumping the crappy Howard gov’t dental scheme, just to glean a few votes from the ALP wheat-field.
Evidence based policy, my left butt-cheek!
Puffy
Whether that would make a difference in something like primary vote is another matter?
Puff
Or, instead of keeping poor people waiting the govt could have adopted a vastly better scheme at the outset, rather than wait until the minority parliament to do it properly. For that, Labor can go to hell.
[74
jaundiced view
1. Rudd refused to negotiate with the Greens right through the process. The focus was on wedging Turnbull.]
I reckon this is half right. Rudd is G-phobic and refused to involve them. Instead, he thought he could rely on the LNP, showing that it is always a risk to put your fortunes in the hands of your sworn opponents.
Dio
I suspect answers about topics such as misogyny would be affected by the gender of both questioner and questioned.
And would this vastly better scheme be one of the Greens completely uncosted pie-in-the-sky affairs for which they would never have the responsibility of raising the money or make the cuts somewhere else to do it?
Thought so.
Hey Boerwar,
I need some of that stuff you did on the costs of The Greens policies. Somewhere in that dreamland you would have had dental. (I knew I should have bookmarked those posts.)
Puff
It’s underway, as a direct result of the minority agreement condition of the Greens. A great outcome. As I’ve said, minority government beats single party majorities every time.
Puffy
[I suspect answers about topics such as misogyny would be affected by the gender of both questioner and questioned.]
Good example. There is plenty of evidence that the questioner affects outcomes in a poll, esp if F2F.
A male respondent might give a female pollster the answer he thinks he “should” give, rather than what he actually thinks about misogyny.
[There is plenty of evidence that the questioner affects outcomes in a poll, esp if F2F.]
I should clarify that I’m not talking about political polls here, but opinion polls in general.
jaundiced view@87
Has that ever been a question in a poll: “Do you like minority government”? 🙂
Dio
I might feel a bit iffy about saying yes to misogyny to a male pollster in case he thought I was having a go at him.
[Could you imagine what the polling would be if Labor adopted Greens asylum seeker policy?]
Some Green voters would return to Labor, mostly in inner-city seats where their votes make no difference. A large number of Labor voters would switch to the Liberals, mainly in seats where their votes would make a difference.
From Greens policy on cost:
Denticare will:
• provide universal comprehensive basic primary (non-cosmetic) dental care for all Australians through the expansion of the currently established dental Medicare
provisions for the chronic illness dental scheme established by the Howard government;
• cost a total of $4.3 billion p.a. for basic dental care for the total population.2
1 Dental and Oral Health Policy Paper by Professor Stephen Leeder and Dr Lesley Russell, Menzies
Centre for Health Policy, September 2007)
2 ibid
be implemented over a period of five years (3) to cover the entire population – this will avoid initial cost-overload due to high levels of unmet dental need and ensure that the dental workforce is developed in line with the scheme;
• provide access to dental care for low income earners, particularly those on dental waiting lists, in the first phase of the scheme;
• establish clear clinical guidelines of best practice for dental diagnosis and treatment planning to ensure that all public funds committed to Medicare are justified on strict
clinical grounds;
• be consistent with the dental care items currently covered by the Department of Veterans Affairs;
• direct more funding for oral health promotion education programs;
• overcome the existing problem for public dental services of trying to treat almost half the population with less than 10% of the dentists.
3 Association for the Promotion of Oral Health ‘Briefing note on dental Medicare’ (2009) pp.2
http://greens.org.au/files/Denticare.pdf
Does anyone know anything about Andrew Elder? I followed him on twitter because I was under the impression that he was a serious commentator, but he seems to be a complete idiot. Maybe I was confusing him with someone else.
Meanwhile, reasons to be cheerful: Clearly Albo actually thinks VFT is complete WOFTAM and is trying under of same to achieve better central coast NSW services. Go for it mate.
lot of panic attack here tonight.
maybe just maybe it’ll take results like this or worse to produce some LCS (labor common sense)
there are no reasons to be cheerful
when was last only good result? that’s right 49 late last year – then the bad start and dip in january – hat wasn’t rudd – the polls have always been bad and there not mysogonist or msm delusion – look at handling of education this weeks – PR trainees at work.
greens are deluded anarchists – think they are meant to rule
tragedy is all policies of labor/green side. the alliance is great idea, in theory, better idea is labor big majority under rudd (as might have been, in a week or so)
i meant tragedy is all policies are on labor green side –
end of blog