Newspoll: 54-46 to Coalition

The weekly campaign Newspoll at least partly corroborates the Coalition swing indicated in all those marginal seat automated polls.

After a steady drip of Newspoll chatter over the past two hours, GhostWhoVotes finally reports the headline figure: 54-46 to the Coalition. The primary votes are 34% for Labor (down one), 47% for the Coalition (up one) and 9% for the Greens (down two). Tony Abbott has now comfortably surpassed Kevin Rudd on net approval, his approval rating up three to 41% and disapproval down one to 51%, while Kevin Rudd is down three to 35% and up two to 54%. Rudd however maintains a 43-41 on the head-to-head preferred prime minister rating, down from 46-37. A question on best party to manage the economy has both parties down three points, Labor to 33% and Liberal to 45%.

UPDATE: And now the weekly Morgan multi-mode poll. This one records only slight shifts on last week, but last week was Labor’s worst result yet in this evidently Labor-leaning series since Kevin Rudd’s return, and the movements this time, slight as they may be, are in the Coalition’s favour. Labor is steady on the primary vote at 36.5%, with the Coalition up half a point to 44.5% and the Greens down one to 9.5%. Distributing preferences as per the previous election, the Coalition lead widens slightly from 51.5-48.5 to 52-48. On respondent allocated preferences, it’s out from 50-50 to 51-49 in the Coalition’s favour. State breakdowns are available at the above link.

UPDATE 2: Essential Research bucks the trend in having Labor at 50-50, up from 51-49 a week ago. Both major parties are up a point on the primary vote, Labor to 40% and the Coalition to 44%, with the Greens steady on 8% and others down two to 8%. There is also a question on most trusted media outlets for election coverage, which as usual shows public broadcasters far more trusted than commercial ones, and papers which had traditionally been broadsheets more trusted than tabloids. Four times as many respondents (28%) had “no trust at all” in the Daily Telegraph as “a lot of trust” (7%). The Australian, recently heard hectoring the ABC for being too biased to be trusted as a host of leaders’ debates, scored well below the Fairfax papers. Also featured are results on firmness of voting intention and party and leader attributes, which you can read all about here.

UPDATE 3: Now newcomer automated pollster Lonergan makes its first entry in the national polling stakes (UPDATE: Not quite – turns out they did one just after Rudd’s return), and it’s about in the middle of the overall trend at present in having the Coalition’s two-party preferred lead at 52-48. On the primary vote, the Coalition leads 44% to 35%. Lenore Taylor of The Guardian provides the following further detail:

It found Labor’s primary vote in Queensland was 34% compared with the Coalition’s 50%. In NSW, Labor’s primary vote trailed 33% to 47% and in Victoria 32% to 44%.

It also found the Coalition’s lead was bigger with men (46% of the primary vote compared with 35% for Labor) than women (42% to 34%).

The only age bracket in which Labor was in the lead was 18- to 24-year-olds, where it attracted 42% of the primary vote compared with 37% for the Coalition. The Coalition was slightly ahead among 25- to 34-year-olds (39% to 34%) but strongly ahead among 35- to 49-year-olds (44% to 33%) 50 to 64-year-olds (44% to 38%) and the over-65s, where the Coalition leads 53% to Labor’s 30%.

UPDATE 4: And now AMR Research, an online pollster which has published two previous federal voting intention results that were broadly in line with the national trend, echoes the methodologically similar Essential Research in finding a result of 50-50. The primary votes are 38% for Labor, 41% for the Coalition and 10% for the Greens. There are also a series of head-to-head responses comparing Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott on various attitudinal measures. The poll was conducted between Friday and Sunday from a sample of 1134.

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.

1,764 comments on “Newspoll: 54-46 to Coalition”

Comments Page 3 of 36
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  1. “@OwenJones84: Morning Australia! Here in Britain we’ve tried the whole conservative government thing. Results are in: it sucks. Might wanna give it a miss”

  2. @River/92

    Your forgetting that all Liberals do is run attack ads, they maybe constistant, but not any better than so called mean Rudd/Labor.

    It doesn’t have anything to do with me with major parties, they can go shoot themselves for all I care.

    I voting for someone else till further notice.

  3. I’m upgrading my Coalition seat count from my conservative 86 seats to a “how the hell could this happen?!?” 101 Seats

  4. Sean Tisme@36

    So despite popular unhinging here… the marginals and robopolls were correct and it was the Galaxy that was rogue.

    If the Newspoll is correct the Galaxy cannot be rogue. 2 points out isn’t rogue.

    As for the marginals it is not really possible to derive a 2PP from them because they are cherrypicked seats. But if they are close to correct then the 2PP should be expected to move to some degree.

  5. Paaptsef

    Me a problem gambler 😎

    Do you know how much I’ve won this weekend alone :kiss:

    If male I take that :kiss: back and give you this 😛

  6. gloryconsequence – well that would be good for the ALP if Abbott gets in and his deep austerity makes him unpopular and Turnbull does not replace him

  7. [quote]If Rudd had put his shoulder to the wheel and supported Julia for the last 3 years instead of whiteanting her then things may have been different.
    Disunity is death and it’s ironic that Rudd is now wearing the results of it when he has been the cause for the last 3 years.
    It’s not over yet but as it stands now Rudd has a massive shit sandwich coming his way.]/quote]

    Completely agree. A lot of people are blaming Murdoch but Rudd’s the biggest cause of this.

  8. [-the budget is back in surplus]

    Rather depends on what they do to get the Budget back in surplus. They will have a compliant media though, that will no doubt be tasked to bury that by the end of their second year in office.

    The big hope for the Fibs will be that we may be coming out of a period of world economic instability, so that they wont have to face any complex economic issues which are rather beyond them.

  11. Galaxy was sticky a few months back when other polls were showing a worse result for Labor. Not sure why but they don’t have a lot of your bounciness Kevin.

  12. [Completely agree. A lot of people are blaming Murdoch but Rudd’s the biggest cause of this.]

    There is some small consolation that it’s him taking the hit for the destruction he has wreaked.

    And if the swing is on then I hope he loses his seat!

  13. [I think though that the lesson from all this is that voters have quite a different emotional perspective on an elected national leader, and that Labor erred badly when they imagined they were playing much the same game in dumping Rudd as they were with sundry Premiers and Opposition Leaders]

    Yep. I for one remain glad that the public forced the ALP to admit this, through the non-too-subtle means of unmremittingly shocking polls.

    But that doesnt mean they were going to let the ALP off the hook for it,in the end.

    As Latho so memorably put it: the punters are always right. But like the customer, that doesnt mean they havent just bought a complete dud. Caveat Emptor on Abbott!

  14. River

    Murdoch has a lot to answer for. Hopefully the UK is and US is going to make that happen because Australia is certainly not.

  16. I’m not getting involved in the blame game (I will wait until after the election for that) but I think Labor have twice had the message that changing leaders doesn’t automatically make your problems go away and it takes more than selfies and hugs from schoolkids to win an election.

  18. guytaur @101

    ““@OwenJones84: Morning Australia! Here in Britain we’ve tried the whole conservative government thing. Results are in: it sucks. Might wanna give it a miss””

    Yeah, it must really suck for the UK to have one of the stronger economies in the EU after the wasteland that the labor party left behind.

  21. Bill Shorten wont be sleeping too well tonight. If it gets to 55-45, I think Gillard would have done better than Rudd.

    I said third man more than a year ago.

    Don’t blame me! 😉

  23. @morpheus/118

    I might add their debt still have not decreased under Tory Gov, not to mention their Wages and Quality of Life has decreased.

    So it’s ok for you to pick statistics when your not looking at the whole picture.

    On top of this, they have a rising bills and rising house prices.

  24. [Bill Shorten wont be sleeping too well tonight. ]

    Bill Shorten wants Kev’s job… but he needs the Labor Party to be electable next term thats why he dumped Gillard.

  25. Morpheus – The economy is beginnning to grow, but is still not fully recovered and aignificant numbers of public sector workers are being sacked. UK wages are also rising at a rate well below inflation.

  30. [I think though that the lesson from all this is that voters have quite a different emotional perspective on an elected national leader, and that Labor erred badly when they imagined they were playing much the same game in dumping Rudd as they were with sundry Premiers and Opposition Leaders.]

    I disagree. I think the error was not the nature of the office but the fact that it was seen as unnecessary. Anecdotes about Rudd’s management style aside, Rudd’s position in the public eye, while taking a dive, was still seen as workable. I will get flack for saying it but I think he would’ve won comfortably in 2010.

    Baillieu, OTOH, became a poisonous disaster. It was abundantly clear he had to go. Same as when a Premier/PM gets rolled after being in for too long. By the time it happens, the public are basically pushing the knives in themselves.

    Opposition leaders are a different kettle of fish. They’re not actually in government, so voters don’t feel like they’ve had them foisted upon them and can decide whether or not they think that leader is worthy of being a Premier/PM for themselves.

  32. Sean

    Its a fact. Yes the trend is down. However PMKR is still in font of Abbott.

    A bright spot for PMKR. He is at least in front somewhere

  33. @AntonyGreenABC: Preliminary scan of Senate prefs, Greens lose seat to Libs in SA, gain 1 from ALP in both Vic and NSW #ausvotes

  34. Simon

    I think Gillard would have improved from 57-43, even if only as a dead cat bounce. Every federal election for ages has been close.

    Still I’m purely speculating that Gillard would have ended up about 54-46.

  35. Morpheus:

    [You obviously didn’t have any recollection of the QLD election and The Blight.]

    There’s negative and there’s stupid. Just making up stuff at the last minute looks stupid. Attack ads that touch longstanding concerns uncommitted voters may have do work. Just saying “gotcha you crook!” without the smoking gun is an own goal.

    It might have shifted a few more votes in marginals they might have held, but personally, whether you get seven seats or 13 isn’t much of a difference, IMO.

  37. William Bowe@100

    I don’t know about that. After 2010, we heard predictions that nobody’d do anything that audacious again. Since then, a first term Victorian Premier and first term NT Chief Minister has been rolled by their own party.


    I think though that the lesson from all this is that voters have quite a different emotional perspective on an elected national leader, and that Labor erred badly when they imagined they were playing much the same game in dumping Rudd as they were with sundry Premiers and Opposition Leaders.

    Yep, it’s the NSW modus operandai writ large.
    Arbib and Bitar have a lot to answer for.
    If labor lose, as is likely, then the answer is rebuild the base, re-define the core principles, remember where we came from and respect that, unify behind a new leader and then support them all the way.
    It’s not rocket science.

  38. [Its a fact. Yes the trend is down. However PMKR is still in font of Abbott.]

    guytaur, are you channeling Shanahan? 😛

  39. Carey 130
    [I think he would’ve won comfortably in 2010.]
    I agree, without the “comfortably” but at the time Labor were in govt and had a coupla bad polls. It was a recoverable situation but so hated was Rudd by his colleagues that they jumped on the excuse to oust him .. and the rest as they say …

  40. [Still I’m purely speculating that Gillard would have ended up about 54-46.]

    That was my prediction too. Not saying Rudd’s defeat will be that large (YET) but the fact is that Rudd looks like he’s failing to recapture what was lost under Gillard.

  41. River:

    [You say he didn’t lose much, I say he lost credibility.]

    Meh … that “northern myth” thing cost him credibility. But let’s face it — the real problem was that having done “PNG” he didn’t run on the regime’s record, which would have allowed the attack ads based on the Abbott precedent.

  45. Interestingly, in SA Labor, Greens and PUP have separated their preferences for the Mr X Party. They have preferenced X fairly highly(10 or so) but put his running mate very low (in the 40s).

  50. Diogenes – Fact is we shall never know, ALP supporters should just take the fight to Abbott now until polling day, and it is never over until the fat lady sings, just ask PM John Hewson!!

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