Newspoll: 9% swing in Sydney marginals

An 800-sample Newspoll survey supports an impression that Sydney alone stands to put victory beyond Labor’s reach.

Newspoll today brings a poll from a sample of 800 respondents from the five most marginal Labor electorates in Sydney – Greenway (0.9%), Lindsay (1.1%), Banks (1.5%), Reid (2.7%) and Parramatta (4.4%) – which suggests the whole lot will be swept away, and perhaps others besides. Labor’s collective two-party preferred vote across the five seats is put at 43%, which compares with 52.1% at the 2010 election. The primary vote has Labor down from 43.2% to 34%, the Liberals up from 42.8% to 52%, the Greens down from 7.9% to 7% and “others” up from 6.1% to 7%. On two party preferred, Labor is down from 52.1% to 43%. Tony Abbott is also given better personal ratings (47% approval and 46% disapproval) than Kevin Rudd (37% and 55%), and leads 46-40 as preferred prime minister. The margin of error for the poll is about 3.5%. Full tables from GhostWhoVotes.

UPDATE: Kevin Bonham observes in comments: “These five were all surveyed by Galaxy which averaged 48:52 in the same electorates, via robopolling, with a much larger sample size, last week. It’s not likely voting intention has moved anything like five points in a week. So either someone has a house effect or someone (most likely Newspoll) has an inaccurate sample.”

UPDATE 2 (Galaxy Adelaide poll): The latest Galaxy automated phone poll for The Advertiser targets Kate Ellis’s seat of Adelaide and gives Labor one of its better results from such polling, with Ellis leading her Liberal opponent 54-46. This suggests a swing to the Liberals of 3.5%. The samples in these polls have been about 550, with margins of error of about 4.2%.

UPDATE 3 (Morgan poll): Morgan has a “multi-mode” poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday by phone and internet, which is different from the normal face-to-face, SMS and internet series it publishes every Sunday or Monday. The poll appears to have had a sample of 574 telephone respondents supplemented by 1025 online responses. The poll has the Coalition leading 53-47 on two-party preferred with respondent-allocated preferences (54-46 on 2010 preferences) from primary votes of 30.5% for Labor, 44% for the Coalition and 12% for the Greens. Of the weighty 13.5% “others” component, Morgan informs us that the Palmer United Party has spiked to 4%. The Morgan release compares these figures directly with those in the weekly multi-mode result from Sunday night, but given the difference in method (and in particular the tendency of face-to-face polling to skew to Labor) I’m not sure how valid this is. Morgan also has personal ratings derived from the telephone component of the 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.

1,483 comments on “Newspoll: 9% swing in Sydney marginals”

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  6. Beware Mod Lib! The beginning is the end!

    Abbott is splashing cash like there’s no tomorrow, and keeping the CO2 compo to boot.

    This means he’ll fail to balance the budget – or create a lot of enemies when he backflips.

    I think it’s fair to say there’s one upside for the left: no one will put punters off voting LNP quicker or for longer than one Tony Abbott.

  7. Of course the press gallery got it wrong with Rudd’s comments on Coalition costings.

    But Mod Lib wants to blame Rudd.

    Fix the media, as it is, politics SUX!

  12. fiona do you understand Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey and Mr Robb are collectively embarking on a massive expansion of the welfare sector yet we do not know how much it will cost?

  13. Newspoll
    Dobell, Robertson, Kingsford-Smith, Page and Eden-Monaro

    53-47 to Coalition.
    Primary: Coalition 48, ALP 36

    This is a 2PP swing to the Coalition of 6.9 per cent.

  24. J341983@1466

    Lol combining those seats makes even less sense than the W.Sydney poll lol

    They are the remaining NSW marginals after excluding W Sydney so they do have some use. All the same I find these aggregated marginal polls frustrating when they include a mix of live seats and writeoffs.

  27. Do I recall correctly that this is the second time Dobell has been included in one of these grouped polls? Convenient much when we all know who has been in that seat?

  30. matt31@1477

    Do I recall correctly that this is the second time Dobell has been included in one of these grouped polls? Convenient much when we all know who has been in that seat?

    Yes, there was a previous Robertson and Dobell combined poll.

  33. Good Morning

    Well here is an admission.

    He knows costings are costing.

    “@latikambourke: OL Tony Abbott believes this is a ‘very close election’ and the polls will tighten. #AusVotes”

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