Nielsen: 53-47 to Coalition in Queensland

More mixed messages from Queensland, along with one very clear one – here comes Clive Palmer.

Two new polls out today from Queensland, one being another of Newspoll’s composite marginal seat jobs, the other a statewide Nielsen survey of 1014 respondents. Taken together, the two continue a confounding pattern throughout this campaign of localised polling from Queensland painting a grimmer picture for Labor than polling conducted statewide. The Newspoll survey targets 800 respondents in seven of the state’s eight Labor-held seats – Moreton (1.1%), Petrie (2.5%), Lilley (3.2%), Capricornia (3.7%), Blair (4.2%), Rankin (5.4%) and Oxley (5.8%) – the odd man out being Kevin Rudd’s seat of Griffith (8.5%). The combined primary vote results are 38% for Labor (down from 42.4% at the 2010 election), 42% for the Coalition (up from 39.8%), 8% for the Greens (down from 11.0%) and 12% for “others” (up substantially from 6.8% – hold that thought). On two-party preferred, the result is 51-49 in favour of the Coalition, a swing of 4.7%. Importantly though, this has been determined based on preference flows from the 2010 election. Hold that thought as well.

The Nielsen poll as published in the Fairfax papers comes with a headline two-party preferred figure of 53-47, which is at least superficially encouraging for Labor in that it suggests a swing of 2% from 2010. Unlike the Newspoll result, this comes from respondent-allocated rather than previous-election preferences (hold that thought still further). However, the real story the poll has to tell lies in the primary vote figures. Labor is at just 31%, down from 34.6% in 2010, but the Coalition is also down slightly, from 46.5% to 45%. The Greens are on 8%, down on 10.9% at the 2010 election but at the high end of what they’ve been getting generally in Queensland in recent times (perhaps reflecting an improving trend nationally which is perceptible on the BludgerTrack charts). However, the really interesting result is that the Palmer United Party is on 8%, putting into the shade Katter’s Australian Party on 4%.

This cannot dismissed as one freak result, as it has been corroborated by other polling. Roy Morgan has twice had occasion over the last week to trumpet this phenomenon going on beneath the surface of its “others” result. The first poll, published on Friday, had the Palmer United Party at 4% nationally and 6.5% in Queensland. The second, published yesterday, maintained the 4% national result while finding the Queensland figure up to 7.5%. I’m advised that Essential Research also had the party at 4% nationally in its polling this week and at 9% in Queensland, after it barely registered in previous weeks. In fact, the three sets of Queensland polling I have seen over the past few days have all turned in remarkably similar results for Labor, Coalition, Greens and “others” alike.

A clearer picture emerges if the totality of polling from Queensland is plotted out since the return of Kevin Rudd. The chart below maps out the trend from 37 such polls from seven different pollsters, with the usual BludgerTrack accuracy weightings and bias adjustments applied. Black represents the combined “others” vote.

The starting point is a landslip in Labor’s favour after Gillard was deposed, which appeared to consolidate for a fortnight before entering a long and steady slide. Then came the announcement of the election date at the start of August and a two-week period where Queensland appeared to buck the national trend of the time by moving to Labor. This may very well have been a dividend from the recruitment of Peter Beattie, however much media reportage and individual seat polls might have suggested that there wasn’t one.

A new phase then appeared to begin a fortnight ago with the sharp rise of the “others” vote. This has coincided with an onslaught of television advertising from Clive Palmer which has seemed almost to rival that of the major parties. Whereas Palmer’s earlier advertising looked like it belonged on Vine rather than network television, his current efforts appear rehearsed and properly thought out – perhaps even market-researched. Most importantly, the substance of their message – tax cuts which pay for themselves and pension schemes that boost the economy by $70 billion – may well be striking a chord in offering voters the ever more scarce political commodity of “vision”, hallucinogenic though it may be in this particular case.

The other point to be noted about the surge in the “others” vote over the past fortnight is that it looks to be coming more at Labor’s expense than the Coalition’s. For one thing, this has significant implications for the party’s prospects of actually converting votes into seats. Mark Kenny of Fairfax’s take on the Nielsen result is that while it is “almost certain Mr Palmer’s party will not win a seat in the House of Representatives, it is in with a chance of gaining a spot in the Senate”. However, I’m not so sure about this on either count.

Clive Palmer himself is running in the smartly chosen Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax, where the retirement of Alex Somlyay relieves him of the burden of having to take on a sitting member. The first task facing Palmer is to outpoll Labor, who scored 27.3% in 2010. Gouging votes directly at their expense will make that task a lot easier, as presumably will the fact the Greens (who polled a weighty 18.0% last time) are directing their preferences to him. Palmer’s next hurdle (inappropriate as athletic metaphors might be in his case) would be to overcome Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien, which might not be so easy given Alex Somlyay’s 49.5% vote in 2010. Some credible seat-level polling from Fairfax would be very interesting to see. As for the Senate, lead candidate Glenn Lazarus faces the complication that James Blundell of Katter’s Australian Party has done better out of preferences, standing to directly receive (among other things) Labor’s surplus after the election of its second candidate.

The other point to be made regarding a movement from Labor to the Palmer United Party relates to the issue of deriving two-party preferred results from primary votes in opinion polls. This is always a slightly vexed question, as for most voters the act of vote choice runs no deeper than simply deciding “who to vote for”, be it a party or its leader. If that choice is for a minor party, the question of preference allocation – secondary though it may be for the voter concerned – is the thing that really matters with respect to determining the result. Since the decision is often driven by a how-to-vote card the voter does not see until they arrive at the polling booth, and is in many cases entirely arbitrary, there is limited value in an opinion pollster asking the voter what they propose to do.

For this reason, it has become standard practice over the past decade for pollsters to instead allocate minor party preferences according to how they flowed at the previous election. Only Morgan persists in favouring respondent allocation, with Nielsen conducting both measures while normally using the previous election preferences for its top-line results. Not coincidentally, the primacy of this method has emerged over a period in which the minor party landscape has remained fairly stable, with the dominant Greens being supplemented by a shifting aggregation of smaller concerns, most of them being right-wing in one way or another. However, it was always clear that the utility of the method would be undermined if substantial new minor parties emerged, particularly on the right. For example, the result of the 1996 election would have offered no guidance in allocating votes for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation when it exploded on to the scene a year later.

So it is with the Palmer United Party, at least so far as Queensland is concerned. It might have been anticipated that the party’s conservative provenance would have caused its preferences to behave much as other right-wing minor parties to emerge out of Queensland have done over the years, but the Nielsen poll throws that into doubt by finding that 62% of Palmer United Party voters (together with 55% of Katter’s Australian Party voters) intend to give their preference to Labor. It should be borne in mind here that these sub-samples are extremely small, and consequently have double-digit error margins. Eighty-six per cent of Greens voters said they would preference Labor, which is well above what’s plausible. Even so, it’s perhaps telling that the most recent national Nielsen poll, published the weekend before last, had the Coalition’s lead in Queensland at 55-45 on previous election preferences, but only 52-48 on respondent-allocated preferences – an enormous difference as these things go.

Taken together with the trends observable in the primary vote chart above, it would appear that the last fortnight has seen Labor lose votes in Queensland to the Palmer United Party, and that this pool of voters contains a much larger proportion of Labor identifiers than the non-Greens minor party vote in 2010. So while the recent rise of the Palmer United Party might not be good news for Labor in absolute terms, it may cause two-party preferred projections based on the normal pattern of minor party vote behaviour to be skewed against them. This certainly applies to the BludgerTrack model in its present form, for which I might look at adding a Queensland-specific fix (with the qualification that anything I come up with will of necessity be somewhat arbitrary).

UPDATE: AMR Research has published its third online poll of federal voting intention, conducted between Friday and Monday from a sample of 1101, and it has Labor at 34%, the Coalition at 44% and the Greens at 10%.

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.

1,555 comments on “Nielsen: 53-47 to Coalition in Queensland”

Comments Page 28 of 32
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  1. AussieAchmed

    Gillard was a lot of different things to different people depending on political preference

    But she never stood staring at a reporter for 30 seconds just nodding her head not answering the question.

    She never walked away from a ‘door stop’ while reporters were still asking questions.

    She never said “shit happens” in relation to the death of a soldier.

    she never refused to appear on programs like qandA
    ————-

    Gillard just betrayed a whole nation of people, was happy to be labelled as a liar, and paid for it with the worst polling statistics on average over a 40 year period.

    Gillard promised on over 165 separate occasions that there would be a surplus, this being after promising there would be no Carbon Tax, and failed to deliver.

    Gillard not only lost to a guy who was personally dismantled by his own party and who also despised him, but refused to go back to him despite the public regarding
    Gillard as one of the most disliked PM’s in history.

    Q&A… you have to be kidding right? An audience apparently made up of Labor/Lib/Greens but just happen to clap to every left response given to them. The ABC are a joke.

  2. zoidlord

    @Hash Convicts/1353

    So keeping a dirt file on Gillard now are we?
    ——-

    First your failed response on the NBN, then expecting others to take the moral high ground when you cant do it yourself, and now your inability to link a relevant response to a post made. Would it be better if I become incoherent with my responses, pick and choose the bits I want to respond to, and completely disregard any relevance the response has based on satisfying the ‘post police’ because its not like comments aren’t regurgitated on this forum… just lol.

  3. [ Gillard as one of the most disliked PM’s in history. ]

    No, I think that title probably still belongs to John Winston Howard – you remember, the one who lost his own seat while still serving as PM?

    On a more general note – What is it with all the LNP cockroaches on PB tonight? We appear to have the full gamut in attendance – climate deniers, history rewriters, religious nutters, plus a goodly assortment of economic, technological and scientific illiterates.

    Has Menzies House finally been connected to the NBN or something?

  4. Ok Hash C is the latest liberal idiot to infest this site.
    Such is life.
    And Abbott’s blank stare at Mark Riley for 80 seconds counts for naught, as does his “never trust me unless it’s written down”, his cash for clunker boats stupidity, his ridiculously unfair PPL, his flat out stupid direct action farce. And ad nauseum.
    But hey sheep do what sheep do.

  5. Player One

    Gillard as one of the most disliked PM’s in history.

    No, I think that title probably still belongs to John Winston Howard – you remember, the one who lost his own seat while still serving as PM?
    ———-
    And when compared. Howard was the second longest serving PM the country has had, won 4 terms of government in succession (11 years), and was rated (last year) by the people as the best PM the country has had.

    In contrast…

    Julia Gillard, never voted in by the people and never throw out by the people, became PM by deceiving the very voters who helped her reach a hung parliament, then dealing with the Greens and ultimately paying for her deceit by being thrown our by her own party.

    I will leave it at that.

  6. zoidlord

    Trying to claim that I had a failed response on NBN….

    That’s just too funny.
    —–

    So again, what server outside of AU will output to 1000s of customers downloading at 100MB/sec and sustain this under load?

    Should be easy to answer? Unless of course….

  7. @Hash Convicts/1363

    Abbott is not voted in by the people either.

    Nelsen was there first, after Howard lost in 07.
    Then came Turnbull, lasted till 09.
    Then come along Abbott by 1 vote, wanted leadership.

  8. Henry

    Ok Hash C is the latest liberal idiot to infest this site.
    ————

    So I’m guessing your the idiot that is facing an election loss, so this apparent ‘idiot’ can come back on Saturday and laugh at you. Gee must suck to be on the side of the fence that are going to show this s**t era of government the door.

  9. A poll on the Daily Telegraph website rating Howard as the best PM ever Hash C is not exactly genuine. Liberal trolls and all that.
    Get it?

  10. [ Howard was the second longest serving PM the country has had, won 4 terms of government in succession (11 years), and was rated (last year) by the people as the best PM the country has had. ]
    Do you reckon Rudd will be shown just as much love and kicked out of his seat at the election?

  11. @Hash Convicts/1364

    Bittorrent, Video, Cloud Computing, Telehealth…

    Your excuse is that, we shouldn’t build it, that’s like saying we shouldn’t have kept Telstra, so sell it.

    Yet, a few years later, we now want to build it, but your guys, want FTTN which, under law, requires compensation.

    Unless you get Telstra to build it.

  12. Hash Convicts@1366

    Henry

    Ok Hash C is the latest liberal idiot to infest this site.
    ————

    So I’m guessing your the idiot that is facing an election loss, so this apparent ‘idiot’ can come back on Saturday and laugh at you. Gee must suck to be on the side of the fence that are going to show this s**t era of government the door.

    Douche bag alert.

  13. zoidlord

    Abbott is not voted in by the people either.
    ———-
    Ahh sorry at what point did Abbott gain control of government in Australia? Ahh it didn’t happen did it.

    The vote was close because there were two good candidates, from a Liberal perspective some were happy, some were not. You are not going to please everyone everytime.

    With Rudd/Gillard, what can you say? What a dysfunctional bunch they are. Gillard voted in by a caucus majority, Kev voted out, deceiving her way into government only to be thrashed so badly in the polls that Labor decided to oust her while the going was good.

  14. Henry

    Douche bag alert.
    —–

    Aww having a little hissy fit because I don’t play to your political tune? Don’t worry Henry, you can have all the dummy spits you like and call me all the names you want. I do hope people don’t describe douche bags as those who live in a political dream world.

  15. @Hash Convicts/1371

    Now who’s doing the deceiving?

    The coalition party are not releasing their policy and costings, and using the media to frighten voters into believing the Labor Goverment is no good anymore.

    Heck our TV stations banned an advert.

    Continued negativity in Politics for the past 6 or so years, and you get this result.

    Don’t blame me, I don’t vote for Coalition Party.

  16. Hash Convicts@1372

    Henry

    Douche bag alert.
    —–

    Aww having a little hissy fit because I don’t play to your political tune? Don’t worry Henry, you can have all the dummy spits you like and call me all the names you want. I do hope people don’t describe douche bags as those who live in a political dream world.

    No hisssy fit at all princess.
    Watching you implode is rather funny though.
    One for the PB ages.

  17. I thought you could connect to more than one server at a time, and some companies are building data centres around the world including here in Australia! Yes there is internets in Australia! In fact you can have multiple devices connected to multiple servers in one home! Its not like the telephone!

  18. @Hash Convicts/1364

    Bittorrent, Video, Cloud Computing, Telehealth…

    ——-

    Nothing you have described there could sustain 1000 users on 100MB/sec.

    Bittorrent? So your saying that the standard home connection which at your best would be 100/MB sec would be sufficient… ROFL! Your kidding right? Private tracker? How many people are on a private tracker? Hmm? 10? 50? 1000 users? What all downloading at the risk of being outside of an encrypted connection and being busted?

    Video, Cloud Computing, Telehealth…

    Servers, servers, servers… They all require massive server requirements to sustain an output of 100MB/sec to 1000s of users at the same time, then there is the distance between connection. I am talking about places like Rapidshare, Fileserve and places that have the ability to even come close to this type of constant load.

    Sorry you have to do better than this.

  19. TP # 1317

    Quite. One thing to look forward to is the squeals of “journalists” as they lose their jobs. As you’ll recall Solzhenitsyn had very black lines about Stalinists who “perished comically” in the 30s purges

  20. Henry

    No hisssy fit at all princess.
    Watching you implode is rather funny though.
    One for the PB ages.
    —-
    Aww because it looks like the ‘princess’ reference would be another symptom of the hissy fit. Ahh laughing? Are you laughing at me? Or perhaps its the other way around.

    Don’t worry Henry, Saturday wont hurt a bit. 😀

  21. You idiot Hash C, if you think the coalition’s fraudband goes anywhere near labors NBN then you are really a fool.
    What’s the upload speed on Mal’s folly? Lol.
    Copper? Are you serious?

  22. @Hash Convicts/1377

    Oh dear.

    You do realise that there is more than one person in a house right?

    And nobody uses Rapidshare etc, because most people use bittorrent and usenet.

    Here I give you a tip, BitTorrent, Usernet, Private Trackers, Seed Boxes.

    Then try doing that, while someone in your house is uploading a large 500-1Gb video to youtube, playing a video game.

    Then someone watching 1080 Movie from Netflix (which soon to be 4K resolution).

    That’s where the power is on Fibre networks.

    I know plenty of situations where people complain about someone using their bandwidth, it only takes 2 people, let alone the whole family.

  23. Hash Convicts@1379

    Henry

    No hisssy fit at all princess.
    Watching you implode is rather funny though.
    One for the PB ages.
    —-
    Aww because it looks like the ‘princess’ reference would be another symptom of the hissy fit. Ahh laughing? Are you laughing at me? Or perhaps its the other way around.

    Don’t worry Henry, Saturday wont hurt a bit.

    No I’m laughing at you.
    Got it?
    😉

  24. Henry

    You idiot Hash C, if you think the coalition’s fraudband goes anywhere near labors NBN then you are really a fool.
    What’s the upload speed on Mal’s folly? Lol.
    Copper? Are you serious?
    —-
    Aww idiot now? What happened to princess. Your having another tantrum Henry, now comon, just admit your have no idea about Fibre to the node, server output capacity or the difference between the two types of NBN other than the garbage of every word you hang on from Labor.

    LOL who’s imploding now Henry. Bahahahaha!

  25. Hash Convicts@1384

    Henry

    You idiot Hash C, if you think the coalition’s fraudband goes anywhere near labors NBN then you are really a fool.
    What’s the upload speed on Mal’s folly? Lol.
    Copper? Are you serious?
    —-
    Aww idiot now? What happened to princess. Your having another tantrum Henry, now comon, just admit your have no idea about Fibre to the node, server output capacity or the difference between the two types of NBN other than the garbage of every word you hang on from Labor.

    LOL who’s imploding now Henry. Bahahahaha!

    Simple question – what is the upload speed of the coalitions internet policy?

  26. Get over it Sean … he’s hardly the first person to use the inconsistencies in the bible to criticise gay discrimination… especially since the guy’s question refers to the bible specifically.

    People really trying to create a scandal here …

  27. @Hash Convicts/1384

    Labor’s NBN is not garbage.

    It’s fact, deal with it.

    GPON split ratio of 1:32 vs FTTN of 200 users plus.
    GPON splitters does not user power vs FTTN cabinets does.
    GPON 1:32 Ratio at full speed while everyone on using 100Mbps is 76Mbps (not 78).
    Fibre bandwidth is unlimited, just change the hardware.
    FTTN is limited to 400 Meters max (250Meters max for G.Fast).

    FTTN with Fibre-on-Demand is more expansive than full GPON rollout.

    FTTN requires compensation from Telstra.

    Do you know what Fibre-to-the-Node is?

    It’s RIM, CMUX, type networks.

    It’s something that we already have – just a tad closer.

  28. 1010
    Psephos
    Posted Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 8:01 pm | PERMALINK
    Greetings, Bludgers.
    I returned today from the tropics to find that it’s just as warm here as it was there. Very strange.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Welcome back Adam. 🙂

  29. zoidlord

    Oh dear.

    You do realise that there is more than one person in a house right?

    And nobody uses Rapidshare etc, because most people use bittorrent and usenet.

    Here I give you a tip, BitTorrent, Usernet, Private Trackers, Seed Boxes.

    Then try doing that, while someone in your house is uploading a large 500-1Gb video to youtube, playing a video game.

    Then someone watching 1080 Movie from Netflix (which soon to be 4K resolution).

    That’s where the power is on Fibre networks.

    I know plenty of situations where people complain about someone using their bandwidth, it only takes 2 people, let alone the whole family.

    —–
    Ohh God you have no idea.

    Nobody uses Rapidshare, Filserve etc? Go and look at Warezbb, TehParadox and the millions of users that use them.

    Most people do torrents because it is easy and is also the easiest way to get busted sharing, hence the private tracker only being as good as the amount of people on it.

    Torrents are not encrypted, I have not used one in years, however I have been in Usenet for years and know they do not have the capacity to output in peak to 1000s of users are 100MB/sec.

    You know about 2 people complaining??? Huhh what? Where was the Liberal NBN setup for you to test again? It wasn’t was it, because it doesn’t exist.

    Your theory about more than one person in the home covers a 25/50MB connection, you know why? Because of this:

    Downloading from overseas (at best 20MB/sec) tell me another server that can sustain higher than this underload.

    Playing a game online (your kidding right? Under 500Kb/s)

    Watching a movie from netflix 1080p (About 5-8MB/sec)

    Uploading to Youtube (this depends on the server you connect to on Youtube and again the distance) connection dependent.

    There is nothing you have put forward that makes 100MB/sec worth the 17 billion price tag and risk of future upgrade other than it being viable in Aus.

  30. [FTTN is out of date before they start.]

    Costs a bit less, but friggin useless in the long run, and obsolete before its even rolled out…

    = SAVINGS!

  31. Come back you loser Hash C.
    You got some splaining to do.
    Ie, what is the upload speed of Mal’s #fraudband plan.
    And how is fibre slower than copper?
    Huh? Loser.

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