ReachTEL: 53-47 to Coalition

This morning brings a ReachTEL national automated poll consistent with the result of the last such poll a fortnight ago, and also with the overall polling trend.

A ReachTEL automated phone poll of 3500 respondents, conducted on Monday and released today by Channel Seven, has the Coalition leading 53-47, unchanged from the last national ReachTEL poll on August 10. The only primary vote provided at this stage is that Labor is down 1.2% to 35.7%. The poll also finds the Coalition paid parental leave scheme supported by 30% and opposed by 48.4%, Tony Abbott leading Kevin Rudd on ReachTEL’s idiosyncratic preferred prime minister measure by 53.6-46.4, 41.9% believing Labor made the right choice in replacing Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd against 40.5% for the wrong choice and 74% expecting the Coalition to win the election.

We also had yesterday a Galaxy automated phone poll of 575 respondents from the northern Adelaide fringe seat of Wakefield courtesy of The Advertiser, which is presumably treating us progressively to polling from South Australia’s most marginal seats. This one showed Labor’s Nick Champion leading his Liberal challenger Tom Zorich 55-45, suggesting a swing to the Liberals of between 5% and 6%. The primary votes were 45% for Champion and 35% for Zorich.

Further raw material for tea-leaf reading from The Australian, whose lead story yesterday essentially consisted of an account of where its reporters believe things to stand. This was consolidated into a “call of the card” laying out which seats might change hands and with what likelihood. Those of you who might wish to write this off as a contrivance of Murdoch propagandists can feel free, but since the aggregate findings sit pretty well with BludgerTrack, I’m inclined to regard it as welcome intelligence as to how the campaigns are seeing things.

UPDATE: BludgerTrack has since been updated with big-sample state breakdowns provided to me by ReachTEL, so some of the numbers cited below have changed quite a bit.

Where BludgerTrack presently counts eight losses for Labor in New South Wales, The Australian’s list sees six as likely if you include Dobell (which I do) plus one strong chance and two possibles. Aside from Dobell (margin 5.2%), the seats listed as likely losses are Labor’s five most marginal: Greenway (0.9%), Robertson (1.1%), Lindsay (1.2%), Banks (1.5%) and Reid (2.7%). However, the picture of a uniform swing breaks down with Werriwa (6.8%) being rated a strong chance and Kingsford Smith (5.2%) and McMahon (7.9%) as possibilities. So while Labor has fires to fight all over Sydney and the central coast, it appears set to be spared in its seats further afield, namely Eden-Monaro (4.2%), Page (4.2%) and Richmond (7.0%). There also appears to be inconsistency in Sydney to the extent that Parramatta (4.4%) and Barton (6.9%) are not listed.

In Victoria, The Australian’s assessment is well in line with BludgerTrack’s call of three Liberal gains in having two listed as likely (Corangamite on 0.3% and La Trobe on 1.7%) and another as a strong chance (Deakin on 0.9%). Labor’s next most marginal seat in Victoria, Chisholm (5.8%), is evidently considered a bridge too far. The only seat featured from South Australia is the “strong chance” of Hindmarsh (6.1%), but BludgerTrack is not quite seeing it that way, the swing currently recorded there being lower than what most observers expect.

Redressing all that slightly is a list of seats which Labor might gain, albeit that it is very short. Brisbane (1.2%) is rated a “likely Coalition loss”, and despite what published polls might say Peter Beattie is rated a strong chance in Forde (1.7%). The Western Australian seat of Hasluck (0.6%) is also listed as a possible Labor gain. However, a report elsewhere in the paper cites Labor MPs saying hopes there have faded, while Andrew Probyn of The West Australian today relates that Liberal polling has them leading 53-47 from 46% of the primary vote against 36% for Labor and 9% for the Greens.

Queensland and Western Australia also have seats listed on the other side of the ledger, especially Queensland. With Queensland we find the one serious breakdown with a BludgerTrack projection, one which in this case I have long been noting as problematic. The Australian lists Moreton (1.2%), Petrie (2.6%) and Capricornia (3.7%) as likely Labor losses, to which are added the strong chance of Blair (4.3%) and the possibility of Kevin Rudd indeed losing Griffith (8.5%). However, the latter seems a bit hard to credit if neighbouring Brisbane is to be deemed a likely Labor gain, and Lilley (3.2%), Rankin (5.4%) and Oxley (5.8%) left off the chopping block.

In Western Australia, Labor’s possible gain of Hasluck is balanced by a possible loss of Brand (3.4%). This tends to confirm my suspicion that BludgerTrack, on which Labor’s numbers in WA have soured considerably recently, is erring slightly on the harsh side with respect to Labor. Bass and Braddon are listed as likely Labor losses for Tasmania, with Lyons (12.3%) only rated a possibility and Franklin (10.8%) not in play. Powered by what may have been an exaggerated result from ReachTEL on the weekend, BludgerTrack is calling it three losses for Labor in Tasmania with only one seat spared. The Northern Territory seat of Lingiari (3.8%) is rated by The Australian as a possible loss, while BludgerTrack has it as likely.

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.

1,413 comments on “ReachTEL: 53-47 to Coalition”

Comments Page 25 of 29
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  1. AA

    AAA credit rated should have been the ALP slogan 🙁

    Actually the ALP slogan should really have been:

    AAA credit rated / SHOW US YOUR COSTINGS 🙁

    What did we get? “A new way”…VOMIT !

  2. [Lefty E ‏@Lefty_E2 2m

    #KRuddMP #wrightgb @australianlabor Please say: ‘after all Abbott’s carry-on for 4 years – whats his main policy? A GREAT BIG NEW TAX!’:) ]

    Centre ,I know. – tweet them.

    Everybody – tweet them.

    Thats Rudd, thats campaign manager George Wright, and that ALP.

    Feel free to cut and paste, or modify.

  4. Abbott Paid Parental Leave = Factchecker
    The cost to investors

    According to the latest Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) costing of the paid parental leave scheme, the levy will cost investors $1.6 billion in the first year the scheme is fully operational, 2016-17.

    The revenue raised from the levy that year is estimated to be $4.1 billion. If investors received franking credits, the revenue estimate would have fallen to $2.5 billion.

    Investors will also be affected before the scheme is fully operational.

    Next year the impact will be $200 million and in 2015-16 it will rise to $1.4 billion.

    The total cost to investors from 2013-14 to 2016-17 is estimated at $3.2 billion.

    The PBO prepared the costing in response to a request by the Greens and used Australian Taxation Office data from collected company tax returns in the 2010-11 financial year, the most recent available

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

    Many investors are retirees and self funded retirees and people looking to retire. Well that could all be on hold, or with the reduced income they will be eligible for part pension and other pensioner benefits at a cost to the budget..making for an even bigger “black hole”.
    How big is your hole Abbott?

  7. Serious query. Is the heavy pro-Lib betting a manifestation of the same delusion that saw the republicans ignore all the polls and adopt an almost religious conviction they were going to win. I think a lot of Libs have indoctrinated themselves that after 3 years ahead in the polls they must beat an illegitimate labor govt.

  8. Actually, it should look like this: @ not # (Ive only recently started with twitter)

    [Lefty E ‏@Lefty_E2 2m

    @KRuddMP @wrightgb @australianlabor Please say: ‘after all Abbott’s carry-on for 4 years – whats his main policy? A GREAT BIG NEW TAX!’:) ]

  10. Abbott’s PPL is a GREAT BIG NEW TAX

    and the figures Hockey handed out today are a sham -typical sleazy backroom boy rubbish.

    Hockey should buy a new abacus because the one he has is crap.

  13. [@KRuddMP @wrightgb @australianlabor Please say: ‘after all Abbott’s carry-on for 4 years – whats his main policy? A GREAT BIG NEW TAX!’:) ]

    Tweet that! Or modify.

  14. 820
    meher baba
    [I know that the two Bobs (Ellis and Meguire), Clive Palmer and others of equal credibility are firmly convinced that the major polling companies deliberately rig their results. If that’s true – which I don’t believe in the slightest – then I think it’s a very strange thing for them to do because they use the accuracy of their political polling as a major selling point in hawking their services to advertising companies.]

    On the face of it you would think so. But the questions, the way they are phrased, and the order they are asked, are determined entirely by the commissioning customer. Newspoll, at least, have said this on the public record.

    Customers can also determine the sample size (mostly by the amount of funding they allocate), where the questions are asked, and to which demographic.

    All of which can be deliberately tweaked by a customer to favour a particular outcome, and in political polling it only takes a percentage point or two to make a big potential difference.

    In another context I have had to deal in serious detail with the thorny technical issue of trying to sort the statistical chaff from the wheat in volatile subjective self-report surveys, and it is usually a trivial exercise to shift such results at least several points one way or the other – and sometimes much more – by simply manipulating framing. I recall that Kevin Bonham had a look at this in regard to Essential’s (?) remarkable stability.

    Are the pollsters themselves rigging the results? I seriously doubt it. But at least some of the commissioning customers, especially political customers, almost certainly are, and the pollsters know these results are problematic.

  15. Who are the main beneficiaries of the GREAT BIG NEW TAX?

    Pretty little rich leaches, I mean lawyers on the North Shore earning $200k a year 🙁

  16. I have a gut feeling we just hit peak Abbott.

    10 days. COME ON!

    Get out there and talk to people. Reasons for optimism:

    1. Lots and lots of undecideds
    2. Australia Insitute just found 18-24s swinging +10 to ALP since Rudd.
    3. PPL is a rolled gold D_O_G. What was that awesome quote from that bloke at Rooty hill?
    4.Signs of recovery in SA, plus no one really knows WTF will happen in QLD.
    5. Rudd is on a roll now. Messages are tightening – and he’s ot afraid to go a wee bit protectionist. We’re not allowed to say this but FACT: voters love that shit.

    COME ON!

  17. Centre

    Posted Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 8:52 pm | Permalink

    Who are the main beneficiaries of the GREAT BIG NEW TAX?

    Pretty little rich leaches, I mean lawyers on the North Shore earning $200k a year 🙁
    ======================================================

    Abbotts daughters???

  22. We have a carbon price.

    It’s an ETS.

    What does Abbott call it? A TAX!

    Abbott introduces hid PPL.

    What does he call to fund it?

    A LEVY! 🙁

    V O M I T !

  26. Audience in the venue voted it 45 votes KRudd to 38 votes Tabbott and 19 votes undecided.

    RUudd wins debate on all counts.

    NO DEFEATISM! NO SURRENDER!

  28. Today’s Mumble on the myth of PPM as an indicator of electoral success.

    [For a given vote in an opinion poll it’s better to have low satisfaction (and better PM) ratings than high ones, because high ones can mean the vote support is artificially inflated.

    The deterioration of both Rudd’s ratings and Labor support during the campaign is consistent with this vague thesis.

    Perhaps it would have been better for the government to wait longer and enter the campaign with low personal ratings. Assuming their vote support would have remained high.

    The odds are Abbott will register at least one better prime minister lead over Rudd by election day.

    But if the above graphs have told us anything, it would mean very little.

    Voting intentions matter most. Because votes decide elections. ]
    http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/better_pm_myth/

  30. [A LEVY! 🙁

    V O M I T !]

    YES. Gimme a break ALP: F*CKING CALL IT A GBNT!

    its bad for my health that you havent said this. Think of the children if my BRAIN EXPLODES!

  38. 1200
    Henry
    [Abbott only has slogans.
    He’s hopeless but he didn’t totally fall over so for him that’s a good result.]

    The value of that ‘positive’ for Mr A diminishes with each repetition. He still has to deliver something more than simply not fucking it up.

  39. CONFESSIONS 1232

    Many thanks but does that mean some are going to end up in The Great Barrier Reef these little Duckies LBD You had better see this 😀

    Lefty followed back good on you

    OK enough excitement for the day off too bed now

  40. CONFESSIONS 1232

    Many thanks but does that mean some are going to end up in The Great Barrier Reef these little Duckies LBD You had better see this 😀

    Lefty followed back good on you

    OK enough excitement for the day off too bed now

  42. “When the history of this Parliament, this nation and this century is written, 30 June 1999 will be recorded as a day of fundamental injustice – an injustice which is real, an injustice which is not simply conjured up by the fleeting rhetoric of politicians.It will be recorded as the day when the social compact that has governed this nation for the last 100 years was torn up.”

    Kevin Rudd

  44. ESJ:

    You really don’t want to get into a comment trawling exercise of the current leaders in the past, given you are a LIberal voter.

  45. 1216
    lefty e
    [I have a gut feeling we just hit peak Abbott.]

    I am feeling strangely optimistic. Though having just recovered from the flu, and had my first couple of fingers of nice whisky in a few days, might have something to do with it. 🙂

  46. “When the history of this Parliament, this nation and this century is written, 7 September 2013 will be recorded as a second day of fundamental injustice – an injustice which is real, an injustice which is not simply conjured up by the fleeting rhetoric of politicians.It will be recorded as the day when the social compact that has governed this nation for the last 100 years was torn up by the defeat of my glorious reign.”

    Kevin Rudd

Comments Page 25 of 29
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