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 41 of 44
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  2. [ 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… ]
    awesome

  4. ‘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.’

    But that’s Labor’s trouble in a nutshell.
    A Labor minister can be sitting right next to a Liberal toady sprouting tosh and they’re powerless, flatfooted and powerless to challenge or demolish.

    It’s why they’re going to lose government.

    Watching Barry Jones sitting next Alston this morning was a case in point.

    It’s sad.
    Really sad.
    Tories do bastards are us really really well.
    It’s why they’re going to win.
    Oh wait, I already said that.

  5. [That’s probably right but it was unexpected at the time.]

    It’s not “probably right”, it’s exactly right. And no, it wasn’t unexpected. The atrocities of the KR regime caused a flood of refugees into Vietnam, and the KR also attacked the Vietnamese along their border. The Vietnamese gave clear warnings that the situation was intolerable. Finally in 1977 there was a split in the KR regime and Hun Sen and other KR leaders fled to Vietnam, and the Vietnamese then (with Moscow’s permission) invaded Cambodia and put the KR dissidents into power.

  9. ShowsOn@1966

    Shows – WTF is she on?


    I don’t know, but I think she is trying to get me to sign up for Scientology.

    Is that a faction of the Liberal Party?

    As opposed to Scott Morrison’s which speaks in tongues.

  20. ‘Tony Abbott might be wise to refuse a debate on the economy, because there is little substance behind his claims on the budget and debt, writes Stephen Koukoulas.’

    And yet the ALp are unable to make the case.
    Go figure?

  23. [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.]

    I didn’t say I base my voting NOW on the Liberal record in Vietnam. In fact I’ve rethought the Vietnam issue somewhat in recent years. I said that’s what caused me to break with my family’s politics. I vote Labor NOW because Labor is right on the big issues NOW.

  27. [and put the KR dissidents into power

    And so he remains]

    Indeed. He’s now playing Beijing off against Hanoi very skilfully. These days Hanoi has the guns but Beijing has the money, and both Vietnam and Lao are crab-walking into the Beijing orbit.

  28. geoff kitney in the AFR nails it today Abbott could not show his face in public again if he loses and if he fails he will go down as one of the great political disasters of Australian politics. The pressure is enormous Abbott is nervous and is poised to stumble.

  30. @Psephos/2023

    My concern is the Liberals were that Telstra signed agreement with NSA in 2001.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Coalition Party “National Security” policy would extend on the Internet.

  33. Good evening’s work put in by Doug Cameron tonight.

    I think he may have persuaded a few undecideds. Maybe not to vote Labor but certainly not to vote LNP.

  41. [Mike Stuchbery ‏@MikeRStuchbery 5m
    This ad from the Christian Democrats is not a joke. #auspol #ausvotes #qanda – pic.twitter.com/C6Ucsk6xbg ]

    Unbelievable.

  42. Ether. T.P

    I have a faint recollection of it, nothing so grim.

    A friend has a life long phobia of tunnels or perhaps more strictly enclosed spaces, as a result of being forcibly subdued in early childhood for medical procedures with ether bathed cloths.

    Cannot do MRI or like to this day.

    Without full anaesthetic.

  45. Psephos
    [I didn’t say I base my voting NOW on the Liberal record in Vietnam]
    I don’t think your earlier post read that way but your latest post makes more sense, so thanks for clarification, however I still cannot fathom how any intelligent person can have any faith or trust in Rudd. He’s such an obvious and dangerous egomaniacal fake but to each his/her own. ‘Nite

  46. Peter Marin and Politifact check the claim by Penny Wong “The Coalition, to return the federal budget to as a good a position as the government’s, at minimum, would have to make $70 billion worth of cuts.”
    [But some $20 billion of it shouldn’t be there, and billions more are the result of guesses, not all of which will turn out to be right.

    Politifact rates the statement “false”.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/fact-checker/does-the-coalition-have-a-70b-black-hole-20130805-2r8po.html

    It’s a matter of trust.

  48. New2This@2000

    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…

    How clever of you. 😐

  49. MB
    I hope you are right. Rudd could do it, if he gets the strategy right.
    i am very nervous about his chances, and his ministers are not ‘branded’ with their portfolios. Is Bowen the Treasurer? Being at TAFe five days a week my life more resembles a worker than a political tragic, so I have seen little of them. I saw one Rudd advert tonight but I think Ministers should be doing adverts on TV too.

  50. William

    Channel Ten has picked up your observation about the Liberal advert.

    “@rhysam: “@chriskkenny: Ten news seriously made an issue of too many white people in an LNP ad…. #extraordinary” I know! Channel Ten. Total bias.”

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