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”

Comments Page 40 of 44
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  1. ShowsOn@1925. Thanks. That’s one of the weirdest things I have seen for a long, long while.

    That said, Bernadette Black is kinda cute in a sort of Detective Eames sort of way.

  4. Thank you Aristotle, but I wasn’t entirely aware of that myself. If they think I’ll be making a regular habit of being up at 6am, they’re probably in for a disappointment.

  5. [I suspect most of you are aware, but if not, William will be on Radio National Breakfast with Simon Jackman during the campaign.]

    Thanks for this, I wasn’t aware.

  6. Psephos
    Interesting family history. I note the effect on your views of the Vietnam War, which drove me as well to the Labor party at the time. However I don’t believe that to be relevant today. You could fill a book with the sins of either party over the years and I’m surprised that you could still base your vote on the Vietnam War. If you were in the USA would you then only ever vote Republican today because Nixon ended US involvement but Democratic Presidents got the US into the war. Strange logic from one of PB’s intelligentsia. I think it’s pretty scary what Rudd is currently doing with OUR money and country (not his), don’t you?

  9. Indeed, William.

    I heard Fran Kelly mention that today in her sign off after the interview, so I assumed it was already determined.

  10. [ think it’s pretty scary what Rudd is currently doing with OUR money and country (not his), don’t you?]

    Nope. Rudd and Swan saved this country from catastrophe in 2008. Abbott, Turnbull and Hockey have been grossly irresponsible and dishonest about economic policy and I wouldn’t trust them with a piggy bank, let alone the national economy.

  11. [Is she better or worse than Tony Abbott? I’m not sure.]

    I’m not convinced she isn’t taking the mickey out of youth. It seems like a total parody of a youth worker.

  14. @MIck77/1956

    I hear Abbott is using Tax Payer money but not funds from his donors,

    Perhaps your attacks could use some balanced view point.

  15. Boat people. Tribute. William, if he ever eats out, would have been a beneficiary of Jean Mahe’s tutelage of various chefs in later years in Perth.

    The (Bridgewater Adelaide) Mill’s chef, Le Tu Thai is nothing short of brilliant.

    A Vietnamese boat refugee, that started out as a kitchen hand at 16, he is now easily one of Australia’s best chefs.

    I love a feel good story of hardship and success and Le Tu Thai’s story is one of those that truly tug at your heart.

    He was originally from Vietnam, and fled Saigon with his sister, leaving his Chinese parents behind in 1978. After arriving off Australia’s northern coast, they were relocated from Darwin to Adelaide.

    Le started working in 1979 washing dishes in a a French restaurant, and the rest is history as they say. The chef of L’Epicurean (Jean Mahe) , took Le under his wing and he moved from kitchen hand to chef.

    He cemented his reputation at the Mill, and continues to surprise and delight through his ever-changing menu. The food at the Mill is definitely French, but Le uniquely weaves his Asian heritage into the dishes.

    http://southaustralianfoodie.blogspot.com.au/2010/01/restaurant-bridgewater-mill.html

  17. william

    you are best keeping above the fray and withhold insults such that you are supposed to moderate. my punctuation and wisdom and insight can have absolute precision and if i take exception to green’s presumptuous current judgments then i will. i hope your doctorate progresses – you moonlight too much here for a serious student

  19. I live in the Franklin electorate.
    There are Bernadette Black posters all over the place.

    There isn’t a single ALP poster within cooee.

  20. Z
    [I hear Abbott is using Tax Payer money but not funds from his donors,]
    What are you talking about? Labor is in government not LNP (yet)

  21. [I live in the Franklin electorate.
    There are Bernadette Black posters all over the place.

    There isn’t a single ALP poster within cooee.]
    The ALP should just burn that video to DVDs and drop them in letterboxes

  22. Picture this:
    a paraplegic, studying at uni, receiving PBS medications, living on super investments, relying on Medicare and consulting with his Dr daily over the NBN…..and still he votes Liberal.

    What a fuckin’ fucked world.

  25. Psephos
    And my somewhat trite comment on supporting Reps not Dems in USA? Isn’t it the same as still holding a Vietnam War grudge against the Libs? Nixon was elected on a pledge to end the war.

  27. [Thank you Aristotle, but I wasn’t entirely aware of that myself. If they think I’ll be making a regular habit of being up at 6am, they’re probably in for a disappointment.]
    I studied Method Acting at the Actors’ Studio. I am willing to play the role of Billy for a small fee.

    I have a regular amount of hair though, which may be a problem.

  29. Geoffrey at meaningless 1967.

    … a study of six hundred and seventy-eight elderly nuns analysed essays they’d written in their twenties and found that the sisters who had used the most linguistically complex sentences tended to have the lowest incident of Alzheimer’s, which is why I’ve added this unnecessary subordinate clause even though it’s been a long time since I was in my twenties ..

    Well that was the theory, or at least the pond thinks it was the theory, because a deep yellow fog sometimes licks and curls its way around the etherized patient on the table and slides along the window panes of the mind:

    http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/the-fog-settles-in-mind.html

  30. Wish I hadn’t switched over to Qanda in the lunch break. Hunt is completely distorting the truth, and Doogie has no capacity to run interference on him.

  31. Stephen Koukoulas ‏@TheKouk 1m
    The national accounts were not released last week. Greg Hunt wrong. They are released in early September #QandA

    =========================================================

    they really don’t know much do they

    Collapse Reply
    Retweet

  33. The Vietnamese boat arrivals are yet another false analogy to the current situation.

    * The numbers were nothing like the current influx. Between 1976 and 1983 there were just over 2,000 boat arrivals. We have had 45,000 since 2007, and 13,000 this year alone.
    * Australia took in 135,000 Vietnamese refugees from refugee camps and other sources. Boat arrivals were thus only a small fraction of the Vietnamese refugee intake, which was done in an orderly manner and on the basis of need.
    * None of the Vietnamese were brought by people smugglers.
    * Unlike our current arrivals, they “came directly” from the country where they were being persecuted, as specified by the Convention.
    * Nearly all of them arrived with papers, and those that didn’t had good reasons why they had none (usually, they had been robbed by pirates). None destroyed their papers. So we knew exactly who they were and where they came from.

  35. there u go again rose

    EXAGERATING AGAIN FROM THE TASMAN BRIDIGE TO OLD BEACH THERE WOULD HAVE TO BE 20 JULIE COLLINS SIGNS

    AND 5 BLACK

  36. Young liberal alert on QandA.

    Doogie doing alright actually, getting fired up nicely.
    Only getting polite, golf claps from the pro coalition young libs present.

  37. [And my somewhat trite comment on supporting Reps not Dems in USA? Isn’t it the same as still holding a Vietnam War grudge against the Libs? Nixon was elected on a pledge to end the war.]

    Nixon was one of the worst war criminals of modern times. He was directly responsible for the Khmer Rouge coming to power in Cambodia.

  38. Grunt is indeed a child. He looks like he should be at the toddlers’ end of the pool instead of trying to tread water with the big people.

  40. [EXAGERATING AGAIN FROM THE TASMAN BRIDIGE TO OLD BEACH THERE WOULD HAVE TO BE 20 JULIE COLLINS SIGNS

    AND 5 BLACK]

    Do the latter’s signs read “once you’ve had Black you’ll never go back”? Because one feels they ought to.

  46. I just did the ABC’s Vote Compass and found that with weighting both on and off I was right on the ALP spot.
    Not surprising, I suppose.

  49. Psephos
    [Nixon was one of the worst ******** of modern times.]
    Agree, and you can pretty well fill in anything you like in Nixon’s case but that’s exactly my point. He ended the Vietnam war (eventually), established relations with China, but that doesn’t mean that you or I would vote Repubs forever, but apparently that’s your (surprising) take on Australia’s Vietnam War history. Libs put us in, Labs took us out, which was easier for us than for the US, so never vote Libs again no matter what else has transpired in 40+ years.

  50. I just did the vote compass as a single 18 year female living in Lindsay. Tipped the scale to the far right. That should screw with the analytics…

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