Nielsen: 53-47 to Coalition; Newspoll: 52-48 to LNP in Griffith

Yesterday’s hard-to-believe automated phone poll showing Kevin Rudd in big trouble in his seat of Griffith has now been precisely corroborated by Newspoll, there’s more shocking numbers for Labor from Tasmania and Queensland, and the first national poll since the start of the week confirms an ongoing drift to the Coalition.

Mark Kenny of Fairfax reports the latest Nielsen poll, conducted from Sunday to Thursday from an unusually large sample of 2545, shows the Coalition leading 53-47, up from 52-48 in the previous poll a fortnight ago. On the primary vote, Labor is down two to 35%, the Coalition is up one to 47%, and the Greens are steady on 10%. Kevin Rudd’s lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister is down in the poll from 50-42 to 48-45. Rudd’s personal ratings continue to deteriorate, his approval down five to 43% and disapproval up four to 51%, while Abbott’s are stable with approval down one to 44% and disapproval steady at 52%. Full tables including state breakdowns from GhostWhoVotes.

Then there are these local polls:

• Yesterday’s Lonergan poll of Griffith just got a little less fanciful with Newspoll publishing a survey of 500 respondents, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, which corroborates its finding on both two-party preferred (Liberal National Party candidate Bill Glasson leading Kevin Rudd 52-48) and the primary vote (48% for Glasson and 37% for Rudd).

• There is also a combined Newspoll result from 1382 respondents covering eight LNP-held Queensland marginals (Brisbane, Forde, Flynn, Longman, Herbert, Dawson, Fisher and Bonner) showing the LNP ahead 60-40, suggesting a swing of about 7.5%. The primary votes are 32% for Labor (compared with 36.5% in the relevant seats in 2010) and 54% for the LNP (45.6%), with Tony Abbott leading as preferred prime minister by 49-39.

• ReachTEL automated polls of about 550 respondents from each of Tasmania’s five seats show Labor with an insignificant 50.6-49.4 lead in Franklin and well behind in Bass (58.4-41.6), Braddon (56.6-43.4) and Lyons (55.8-44.2), with Andrew Wilkie looking set to romp home in Denison with 43.7% of the primary vote.

• Nielsen also has a question on best party to handle paid parental leave has Labor leading 49% to 37% among women and 45% on 42% among men. On this point, Laurie Oakes relates Labor internal polling from UMR Research showed the Liberal scheme had 34% approval and 45% disapproval on Thursday, which exactly reversed the numbers from polling conducted just four days earlier.

BludgerTrack has been updated with Nielsen and its attendant state breakdowns together with the ReachTEL results, and it finds no let-up in what for Labor is a terrifying linear trend to the Coalition which had lift-off shortly before the election was called. It finds Labor continuing to shed seats in New South Wales, and in negative territory for the first time in Western Australia. However, the BludgerTrack endeavour is being confounded somewhat by a disparity between national and local-level polling, of which the latter is not accommodated by the model – most conspicuously in Queensland, where the BludgerTrack projection of two gains for Labor is entirely out of whack with the impression given by the headline-grabbing local polls. As Kevin Bonham notes in comments, this echoes the presidential election when Barack Obama did much better in state polling than high-profile national polls, the former of which collectively proved nearer the mark.

Despite the American precedent, I would be very wary about concluding that the glut of electorate-level polling we’ve seen recently is more likely to be correct than the major national polls, which have long established and generally very good track records. This was particularly easy to argue when the overwhelming majority of the electorate polling had been of the automated rather than live interviewer variety. However, this gets a lot harder to square now that we have Newspoll conducting a very robust-looking survey of Queensland marginal seats pointing to a swing against Labor of over 7%. By contrast, state breakdowns from national polling persist in suggesting Labor is holding its ground or better in Queensland while the game slips away from them elsewhere.

To illustrate the point, here’s a list of the Labor two-party preferred results and swings indicated in recent polling of various kinds from Queensland. As noted, it’s only the statewide polling that’s going into BludgerTrack. All results from Newspoll, Galaxy and Nielsen are live interviewer phone polling, ReachTEL, Lonergan and JWS Research are automated, Essential is online and Morgan is “multi-mode” (face-to-face, online and SMS).

						SAMPLE	2PP	SWING
Griffith	ReachTEL	05/8		702	46	-4
Forde		ReachTEL	08/8		725	46	-3
Forde		Lonergan	15/8		1160	40	-9
Forde		JWS Research	15/8		568	40	-9
Brisbane	JWS Research	15/8		607	46	-3
Eight marginals	Newspoll	20/8		1382	40	-8
Griffith	Newspoll	22/8		500	48	-10
Griffith	Lonergan	21/8		958	48	-10
						
Statewide	Nielsen		7/8		280	47	+2
Statewide	Galaxy		8/8		800	44	-1
Statewide	Morgan		10/8		743	48	+3
Statewide	Newspoll	10-17/8		550	46	+1
Statewide	Morgan		17/8		876	46	+1
Statewide	Lonergan	18/8		345	48	+3
Statewide	Nielsen		20/8		504	45	0
Statewide	Essential	27/7-17/8	741	49	+4

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.

3,577 comments on “Nielsen: 53-47 to Coalition; Newspoll: 52-48 to LNP in Griffith”

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  1. Labor will be hoping like hell that if they lose, Krudd loses his seat – otherwise they will be in a right mess as under his new rules, it will take 65% of caucus to kick him out.

  2. [GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes 29s
    #Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 37 (+3) L/NP 47 (0) GRN 9 (0) #ausvotes]

    odd numbers…

  3. Bit boring… brings it into line with Nielsen. Now we’ll see what Morgan and Essential has to say tomorrow… see if we have a new polling consensus.

  4. GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes 3m

    #Newspoll 2 Party Preferred: ALP 47 (+1) L/NP 53 (-1) #ausvotes

    GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes 3m

    #Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 37 (+3) L/NP 47 (0) GRN 9 (0) #ausvotes

  5. So it is looking like an ’07 result rather than a ’96 result. Keating lost 54-46, Howard 53-47. Considering Abbott almost won in 2010 I would expect the ALP would have taken that earlier in the year

  6. Most people in Finance HR and other management roles tend to have Business, Finance, Economics, Accounting, Human Resources or Marketing Degrees.

  7. All these polls suggest that the people don’t have baseball bats at the ready for the ALP. They aren’t running to the Coalition so the Senate will be safe.

    Coalition will be in for two terms and it will change again.

  8. [Labor will be hoping like hell that if they lose, Krudd loses his seat – otherwise they will be in a right mess as under his new rules, it will take 65% of causcus to kick him out.]

    People keep saying this, but my understanding is there’s an automatic spill following any election defeat under the new rules.

  9. LL

    I was going to say ‘thanks for the CV’ but actually, if it is real, then it is a very unwise thing to do on the internet.

    That aside, I find it hard that someone so apparently educated could not understand my post.

    In George Orwell’s 1984, arguably the most sinister aspect of the novel is the chilling way that dissent is dealt with by the state.

    The suggestion that I was responding to is that “News Limited might be banned” in order to re-establish editorial political balance in society.

    My assertion was that the statement was typical of a “socialist” (or, perhaps more accurately, a Bolshevik socialist).

    George Orwell was most certainly a socialist in ideology but was repulsed by the similarity of fascist and socialist regimes in their exploitation of people and control of free speech.

    Indeed, his “reference” in my post was more closely connected with the novel 1984 than Orwell’s own political beliefs, though this was beautifully ironic.

    Nor am I a capitalist. A mistake easy to make when one has extreme views politically.

    Thus I am no sycophant of capitalism and was not forwarding a case for them, or by extension, the coalition or, by a stretch of that.. to Tony Abbott.

    I was merely stating how typical it was for someone espousing “social democratic viewpoints”, masquerading as socialism to posit the explicit desire to remove a voice from the media who does not agree with them. This does remind one very much of Stalin’s USSR or Castro’s Cuba or Franco’s Spain.

    To overcome a media set against you (just like the print media was from 1980-perhaps the mid 1990s against Centre-Right governments and politicians, in general) you need make a decent government and win the people.

    Once the people are soundly won, it is hard for a rag to continue abusing a government which is broadly popular and reasonably competent.

    The ALP in the last two terms have been, generally speaking, neither.

    Impressive CV. Well done. I still don’t understand why you didn’t get my point.

  10. bluepill,

    I knew exactly what you meant by the Orwell/1984 reference. But it’s important that you also realise that Orwell would have hated News Corp with a passion.

    He would want them taken through the ringer, for their management to be sacked, the ownership structure dissolved, and the entire thing to become a socialist worker’s co-operative. There is almost no doubt about that; one only has to read his opinions of the mass media to derive this opinion.

  11. http://election.crikey.com.au/cash-tracker/

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