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”

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  2. Kevin Rudd claims to be a Christian while not believing what the Bible says. If he wants to be pro gay well he can be pro gay but he should not pretend it is what the Bible says or that he is being Christian in doing so.

  3. markjs@80. He was sounding like he wanted to do anything but answer Fran’s questions, and -being a pretty up-front sort of guy – he lacks the evasion skills of more hardened pollies.

    Your post raises one possible explanation: it’s not exactly clear what Abbott’s legislation removing the carbon price will look like and Butler was being careful to avoid promising to vote against something which is not yet in a tangible form.

    A more realpolitik explanation would be that Labor fears that, if they side with the Greens to keep the carbon price in place, then the Coalition States will get a licence to go for it with electricity price rises for 3 years and blame Labor and the Greens for them. You can see that this would be a tricky position for Labor. A Machiavellian view of things might be that Labor -if they lose – might be quite comfortable with a Coalition, or at least a right-wing, Senate majority. It didn’t do them too much harm between 2004 and 2097.

  8. Edi

    Two things. Christians know better than to take the bible literally including the new testament.

    Second I am not Christian I am agnostic.

  9. Alasdair Nicholson

    If Abbott is such a caring person who devotes his time to charities – why then does he claim travel allowance for every kilometre he rides on the charity bike rides?
    Why does he claim accommodation allowance for the hotels he stays in?

    Who pays for his minders like Credlin to accompany him?

    Why did he claim over $10,000 to charter a flight to an aboriginal community to conduct his charity work?

    Real carers donate their time.

    Abbott does these things on our time while getting his salary plus all the travel/accommodation allowances.

  14. “Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.” (Exodus 31:15)

    Anyone who derives a religious beliefs from a single eternal text is a probably a danger to themselves and others.

  15. I think Rudd will strike an authentic chord with last nights performance.

    Combine that with Abbotts complete FAIL on CO2 emissions and we ‘ll see a late swing back of modest proportions

    It’s hilarious reading Fairfax today: they have no idea whether their QLD poll is good it bad for Labor, so they went with ‘bad, but a bit good’.

    Me I’d tend to trust the primaries over the 2pp with a minor party rising.

  17. We have two Leaders who have flipped and flopped on pretty much all the major issues.

    Abbott and his “climate change is crap” to supporting Direct Action, although he seems about to flip on even that signature policy.

    Abbott and his “PPL over this Govt dead body” to proposing one of the most expensive PPL programs in the world.

    Abbott and his “no new taxes from a Govt I lead” to the introduction of a 1.5% levy (tax).

    Rudd and his change of heart on SSM.

  19. AA

    You can believe the change of heart on SSM. Remember what Rudd said to Keryn Phelps and then did not follow up.

    That shows a man wrestling with his conscience not a change for votes.

  20. guytaur No Kevin Rudd did not make that point last night.
    Also if religion should have no say in nations laws how can a Christian be Prime Minister. That is clearly religion having a say in nations laws. Kevin Rudd has not changed his mind on gay marriage because he has chosen not to allow his religious views to influence him, he has changed his religious views and those changed religious views are not having a say in what he does as Prime Minister. If you really do not what religion not to have a say in nations laws then you would not be supporting Kevin Rudd.

  21. William
    What an absolutely cracking analysis to head this thread – many thanks. And all of that while we were asleep! PUP’s apparent, relative success, shows what money can do when spent without limit. Perhaps it should be controlled because it’s dangerous although I’m not suggesting that Palmer is a dangerous crook/nut and as far as I know he’s just somewhat weird but very very rich.

    In 1977 in Israel a man named Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a recent immigrant from France to Israel, ran for the Knesset under the then very low threshold proportional rep system. His story is short and really fascinating for those interested. The guy was presumed to be shady at best, loaded with presumably ill-gotten gains, but he picked up on the national anti-France sentiment at the time based on non-extradition from France to Israel of one of the terrorists behind the Munich Olympic Games massacre. (And France itself wanted Flatto-Sharon extradited back to the “hated France” from Israel and this he avoided by winning a seat in the Knesset). He spoke barely a word of Hebrew and conducted all his interviews in French with a translator. His TV ads were backgrounded by music, speak overs in Hebrew and heroic poses and clips of him. Anyway, again this illustrates the danger of unrestricted amounts of money being available for (niche) campaigning in a democracy. He captured 2 seats in the 100 seat Knesset but because he’d run alone he couldn’t fill the second one.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmuel_Flatto-Sharon

  22. Typical Abbott: atfter 4 years of pretending he has the same emissions target he dumps it 20 minutes before the election

    What a shyster

  24. [Typical Abbott: atfter 4 years of pretending he has the same emissions target he dumps it 20 minutes before the election]

    Flim Flam Man.

  25. Edi

    Yes PMKR did say exactly that.

    As for secular society. A secular society does not discriminate. An athiest can be PM just as easily.

    To argue a person who believes in religion is barred from holding high office is astounding and not one I hold to.

    You do seem to have a rather black and white view of the world. Its not like that its full of grey.

  26. Abbot and his criticism of the Govt for not using drones, and the stance that the Libs will buy them and use them.

    Then yesterdays announcement that the Libs would hold off buying drones and his comment that such policy decisions could not be made from the position of Opposition.

    However, Mr Abbott backtracked from a coalition commitment to acquire three large surveillance drones, such as the US Global Hawk or Triton, at a cost of more than $1 billion.

    During the 2010 election campaign, the coalition described the drones as essential to regaining control of Australia’s borders.

    Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/no-cuts-promise-in-abbotts-defence-policy/story-e6frfku9-1226708807235#ixzz2dmTAWJSw

  27. yikes those queenslanders are a strange lot. They seem to swing wildly at the drop of a hat. Says something about the effectiveness of tv ad campaigns.

  31. guytaur

    Posted Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 9:22 am | Permalink

    AA

    You can believe the change of heart on SSM. Remember what Rudd said to Keryn Phelps and then did not follow up.

    That shows a man wrestling with his conscience not a change for votes.
    ——————————————————-

    Unusually I watched TV last night and saw QandA. Rudds response struck a chord with the audience and got the most applause of all his responses.

    I thought he was genuine in his response regarding SSM. There was a passion in it, a belief that he had made a good choice on his SSM stance

  32. guytaur. Rudd tried to make that point and failed. The Bible clearly calls homosexuality a sin alongside many other sins. If Rudd was claiming that is not true then he was simply wrong. His mention of slavery was a distraction, irrelevant to the question of what the Bible says about homosexuality. If Rudd is going to reject what the Bible says about homosexuality he should reject the whole Bible and stop claiming to be something he is not.

  36. On this day in 1901 the Australian flag flew for the first time atop the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

    On this day in 1939 England and France declared war on Germany over its invasion of Poland.

  39. guytaur.
    I am arguing that Rudd claims to believe the Bible but does not believe what the Bible says.
    I am also arguing that he is allowing his religious views to decide how he acts on this matter and if he allow his religious views to decide on this matter what is wrong with others with different religious views allowing those views to influence how they decide on this matter. You cannot allow one and not the other.
    I am not arguing whether the law should be changed or not. That is up to Australia to decide and if Australia wants to change the law then they can.

  40. Why??? Why the need to doctor/alter the entry?

    WIKIPEDIA BEFORE RECENT ALTERATION
    Early life and family
    Abbott was born in London, England,on 4 November 1957 to expatriate Australian parents.[5][6] On 7 September 1960, his family moved to Australia on the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme ship Oronsay.[7] His mother was an Australian citizen and his father had lived in Australia since 1940 when he arrived as a 16-year-old to get away from the dangers of wartime Britain.[citation needed] His father trained in dentistry and then returned to England.[citation needed]

    NOW WIKIPEDIA
    Early life and family

    Abbott was born in London, England, on 4 November 1957, to an Australian mother and an English-born Australian father. His father, Dick Abbott, grew up in a village near Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Dick and his parents moved to Australia during the Second World War.[8][9][10] On 7 September 1960, Tony’s family moved to Australia on the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme ship Oronsay.[11

  42. Edi_Mahin

    Posted Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 9:31 am | Permalink

    guytaur. Rudd tried to make that point and failed. The Bible clearly calls homosexuality a sin alongside many other sins. I
    ——————————————————-

    Where in the Bible does it say that?

  43. Itep

    [Great post William, a very interesting read – even if you were slightly mean in your reference to Mr Palmer’s athleticism.]

    In my youth it was considered de rigueur for the non-jumpers to push hurdles over with hands or walk around.

  45. Edi

    Now you are backtracking. Good to see. So you will not quote bible beliefs at people in the public square then. Unlike the pastor on QandA who did

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