Newspoll and ReachTEL: 52-48 to Coalition

ReachTEL has opened the election campaign polling account in very short order, while Newspoll has published a poll following its normal Friday-to-Sunday schedule. The two concur on two-party preferred, with the latter finding Kevin Rudd taking a hit on his personal ratings.

As we enter the first full day of the September 7 federal election campaign:

• Newspoll, conducted between Friday and Sunday, has the Coalition’s lead unchanged on its poll of a fortnight ago at 52-48, from primary votes of 44% for the Coalition (down one), 37% for Labor (steady) and 9% for the Greens (down one). Equally worrying for Labor is a significant drop in Kevin Rudd’s personal ratings, his approval down four points to 38% and disapproval up six to 47%. However, he still leads Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister 47-33, down only slightly from 50-34 a fortnight ago. Abbott has had remarkably constant personal ratings from Newspoll since Rudd’s return: after three successive polls at 35% approval and 56% disapproval, this time he’s down one to 34% and steady at 56%. Full tables from GhostWhoVotes.

• More current still is the result from ReachTEL, which conducted an automated phone poll of 2949 respondents for the Seven Network in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s election announcement. This too showed the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred, compared with 51-49 in the ReachTEL poll of a week ago, from primary votes of 37.5% for Labor, 45.7% for the Coalition and 8.2% for the Greens. ReachTEL continues to find Tony Abbott doing well on preferred prime minister, this time leading 50.9-49.1, which is bafflingly at odds with other pollsters (notwithstanding the methodological difference that the survey is only deemed completed if all questions put to respondents are answered, hence the totals adding up to 100). On the question of effective management of the economy, 60.7% favoured the Coalition compared with 39.3% for Labor. While the sample on the poll is certainly impressive, it’s considered better practice to conduct polls over longer periods.

• The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been updated with these two poll results and some further state-level data that has become available to me, and while the 50-50 starting point from last week slightly blunts the impact of two new 52-48 data points, there has nonetheless been a weighty shift to the Coalition on the implied win probability calculations. On the seat projections, the latest numbers find air going out of the Labor balloon in Queensland (down four seats), together with one-seat shifts to the Coalition in New South Wales and Tasmania. However, the projection of a second gain for Labor in Western Australia, which I looked askance at when it emerged in last week’s result, has stuck. I will resist the temptation to link this to unpopular recent actions of a state government which is flexing its muscles during the early stages of a four year electoral cycle, at least for the time being.

Tomorrow will presumably bring us the regular weekly Essential Research online poll and the Morgan “multi-mode” result, at around 2pm and 6pm EST respectively. The Poll Bludger’s regular guide to the 150 electorates will, I hope, be in action by the end of the week.

UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research has two-party preferred steady at 51-49 to the Coalition, from primary votes of 38% for the Labor (down one), 43% for the Coalition (down one) and 9% for the Greens (steady). The survey finds only 44% saying they will definitely not change their mind, with 30% deeming it unlikely and 21% “quite possible”. Respondents were also asked to nominate the leader they most trusted on a range of issues, with Tony Abbott holding modest leads on economic management, controlling interests rates and national security and asylum seeker issues, and Kevin Rudd with double-digit leads on education, health, environment and industrial relations. Kevin Rudd was thought too harsh on asylum seekers by 20%, too soft by 24% and about right by 40%, compared with 21%, 20% and 31% for Tony Abbott.

UPDATE 2 (Morgan): Morgan has Labor down half a point on the primary vote to 38%, the Coalition up 1.5% to 43%, and the Greens up one to 9.5%. With preferences distributed as per the result at the 2010 election, the Coalition has opened up a 50.5-49.5 lead, reversing the result from last week. On the respondent-allocated preferences measure Morgan uses for its headline figure, the result if 50-50 after Labor led 52-48 in the last poll.

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.

2,158 comments on “Newspoll and ReachTEL: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  1. Good evening people. All the polls are pointing in the right direction, people are seeing Krudd as the fool he really is. Only five weeks until we have a brand new Conservative government!!(for the next fifteen years!)

    Labor promising more money on child care and cars? With a $30 billion black hole? Puh-lease!!

  4. Today TAbbott said “I want to say to the Australian people, I have more respect for your money”

    A few examples of that respect from this term of parliament:

    Tony “Travel Allowance” Abbott claimed travel, accommodation and other expenses for his “volunteer” fund raising on the pollie pedal each year

    And claimed travel, accommodation and other expenses while participating in fun runs, ocean swims and bike rides

    And claimed travel, accommodation and other expenses while “volunteering” in remote indigenous communities

    TAbbott also claimed over $12000 in travel, accommodation and other expenses to attend just 4 major sporting events: the boxing day test, the Australian open tennis final, the AFL grand final and Bathurst V8 race. http://tinyurl.com/lh27xz7

    And further research shows TAbbott also seems to enjoy a day at the races. During this parliamentary term he has made a number of visits to the track. But surprisingly TAbbott also claims these are for work purposes. So unlike most punters TAbbott always backs a winner as he receives allowances in respect of his travel, accommodation and other expenses. He has claimed over $24000 in travel, accommodation and other expenses to attend 4 horse races, often taking (and claiming expenses for) his family: the Melbourne cup, Victoria derby x 2, and Birdsville races. http://tinyurl.com/n2t7bck

    So that’s how much respect Tony “travel allowance” Abbott has for taxpayer funds.

  5. asylum seekers are a complex problem… Its ok. Kevin will hand em a tinnie of aeroguard send em to PNG and tell em to ave-a-good weekend…

  7. In my view the ABC don’t utilise Antony Green enough, esp outside of election campaigns.

    Would much rather listen to Green’s remarks about polls than those of Dennis Shanahan, who often appears on ABC to discuss the polls.

  10. Andrew must be rejoicing just like the rest of the silent majority.

    Judging by some of your posts, you’re clearly in a state of denial. I think next week you’ll have progressed to the stage of anger.

  11. @New2This/1905

    Think your going to far with the so called “jokes”, possibly offending PNG people.

    (pathetic really).

  20. Psephos: I looked at your family history page and it seems you come from quite a prominent families, your own Grandfather was a famous naval surgeon who was active in the Liberal Party, and you’re mother’s relations too were involved in WA State Politics. I just can’t fathom why you were drawn to the forces of Evil! Maybe you will see the light this year.

  21. smssiva@1900

    Bemused 1875

    I know of a particular case of asylum seeker from SriLanka. He applied when his father in law had been killed and his home bombed. His application took ten years to process. Whilst waiting he tried to flee to India in a boat but was stopped in high seas by the Sri lankan army and returned to Srilanka. To be fair the SriLankan army left him with provisions to survive in his village. However the rebels (Tamil tigers ) took those provisions away. He survived all that. He is now in Australia with his wife and his three children (through the normal refugee migration process)who are now grown up and married. Two of them are running a courier business and the third one owns a petrol station franchise. He could have perished in the ten years or his position in the queue could have been taken by somebody in a boat.

    The point, asylum seekers are a very complex topic and we cannot generalise.

    Yes indeed. And when you hear such stories you are glad they made it here.

    I know a few former Vietnamese boat people and they are a joy to know and they add a lot to Australia.

    The same would be true of untold tens of thousands of others. But the inescapable reality is that we cannot take them all and if we did we would be swamped and have all sorts of social crises.

    I really would like to make everyone in the world happy. But I can distinguish between such a pious wish and reality. Unfortunately, it seems Greens and some others can’t and see it as a viable policy.

  23. Seeing the pathetic efforts of a few new trolls on here, makes me long for the literary brilliance of Cedric Conan and Nostradamus.

  26. Aristotle: Nostradamus isn’t here because he doesn’t think he’s needed this time, one doesn’t have to be the world’s most sophisticated stage to figure out that Abbott will romp home on September 7.

  27. Let’s face it, the coalition are going to win the campaign hands down. They just do killer politics better than the ALP and they’ve got plenty of dumb fuck material that’ll work a treat on the punters. The Labor party are no match for this stuff. Nothings changed since Joolya got boned.
    The ALP couldn’t win a chook raffle if they held the only ticket issued.

  31. [ABC News ‏@abcnews 3m
    Study finds weather changes can contribute to erratic human behaviour http://bit.ly/1cqAdbS ]

    IIRC it was this study, linked to by Chris Hadfield on Facebook which led to him issuing a warning to commenters because the post was completely over-run by ignorant and belligerent AGW denialists.

    It’s bad enough that some of his posts are dominated by creationists.

  32. [Would much rather listen to Green’s remarks about polls than those of Dennis Shanahan, who often appears on ABC to discuss the polls.]

    Don’t think Antony is all that keen to discuss polls as he has often been misrepresented. It’s very common & once something is printed it seems to stick.

  35. Imputation at 1904

    That’s all great Imp but what’s the point if the ALP brainiacs running the campaign don’t know how to use this stuff?

  36. Miranda Boltt is a sort of conservative version of Meguire Bob, although Meguire doesn’t invoke long dead charlatans like Nostradamus to support his optimism.

  37. Antony Green has said numerous times that any discussions about polls and predictions prior to the last fortnight are enjoyable and entertaining, but moot.

    If Labor still trail 52-48 on trend on 23rd September then it is nigh impossible.

    Until that happens, it’s too close to call.

  40. [Psephos: I looked at your family history page and it seems you come from quite a prominent families, your own Grandfather was a famous naval surgeon who was active in the Liberal Party, and you’re mother’s relations too were involved in WA State Politics. I just can’t fathom why you were drawn to the forces of Evil! Maybe you will see the light this year.]

    Indeed, my paternal grandfather was a founding member of the Liberal Party and a delegate to state conferences in the 1950s, and my father was also a lifelong member. On my mother’s side my great-grandfather was a Liberal state MP and a Senate candidate in 1913. So far as I know I am the first member of my family (which in Australia goes back to 1822) to vote Labor, and I’m still the only one. (Some of the younger ones are now Greens.) The reason is of course the Vietnam War, which drove most of my generation of students to the left, reinforced by the events of 1975. That’s why I hate the Liberal Party and all its works, and why no matter how angry I may be at the weaknesses and failures of Labor (which I have been pretty frank about here), I will always back them against the Liberals. My views about Rudd are also well-known here, but I can’t think of a greater disaster for this country than Abbott becoming PM.

  48. I suspect most of you are aware, but if not, William will be on Radio National Breakfast with Simon Jackman during the campaign. A very welcome development.

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