Morgan has published its first multi-mode poll since the election, and Essential its second online poll (the latter will henceforth publish on Tuesdays rather than Mondays). Even if you doubt the value of voting intention polling at this point of the cycle, the results are of interest with respect to the Labor leadership. If you don’t doubt the value of voting intention polling, the results are of interest in pointing to a weak Coalition honeymoon.
Starting with voting intention:
• Essential Research has the Coalition lead at 51-49 on the current two-week rolling average, combining results from 1042 respondents in this week’s survey from Thursday to Sunday and 844 from the week before. This leaves the Coalition two points down on a less than spectacular showing last time. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down a point to 43%, Labor up one to 37% and the Greens steady on 9%.
• The Morgan SMS, online and face-to-face poll of 2999 respondents, conducted from Saturday to Monday, has the Coalition on 43.5%, Labor on 34%, the Greens on 10.5% and the Palmer United Party on 4%. This compares with election results on current counting of 45.6%, 33.4%, 8.6% and 5.5%. This translates into a headline two-party figure of 50.5-49.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, but it’s a more comfortable 52.5-47.5 on preferences from the September 7 election (though I’m not sure exactly how minor party preference splits were determined given all the votes aren’t in). It is of course enormously unlikely that minor party preference allocations would have changed so dramatically over a fortnight, a further pointer to the dubiousness of respondent-allocation.
• Morgan has good news for Anthony Albanese, who is favoured over Bill Shorten 41% to 23% among all voters, 46% to 32% among Labor voters, 38% to 18% among Coalition voters and 48% to 12% among Greens voters. The gap is widest and narrowest and Albanese and Shorten’s respective home states of New South Wales and Victoria. The qualitative findings here are unusually interesting: “Electors who preferred Anthony Albanese often mentioned Shorten’s role in the demise of former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Shorten’s strong links to the unions, and also his links to the Governor-General as well as Albanese’s better policy expertise, experience and personality.”
• Essential finds Tony Abbott with similarly modest leads as preferred prime minister over both Albanese (37-31) and Shorten (37-32).
• Essential at least has had a bounce on personal approval, in net terms at least – his approval is up only one point since his last poll as Opposition Leader on September 2 to 41%, but his disapproval is down 13% to 36% (making for a big increase in “don’t know”.
• Essential finds 45% concerned about the lack of women in cabinet against 50% not concerned, with splits of 39-57 among men, 51-42 among women, 67-29 among Labor voters and 17-80 among Coalition voters.
• Also featured in Essential are questions on trust in use of personal information by various professions and organisations, and the value or otherwise of foreign investment in farm land.
UPDATE: Morgan has kindly provided me with its qualitative responses from the Labor leadership question, and I’ve run the responses through a word cloud generator. Note that in doing so I’ve merged together a couple of words like “don’t like”, “don’t trust” and “prime minister”. You can get a considerably bigger image by clicking on the images below.
First up, the 443 responses from Anthony Albanese supporters, for whom the primary reason for backing Albanese appears to have been Bill Shorten:
And now the 229 responses from Bill Shorten supporters:
National security matter. Loose lips sink ships.
zoid, the Indonesians don’t want Australians to know about the extent of their pothole problem. It’s embarrasing.
Does Three Star Campbell command AMSA?
BW
Campbell is on two weeks holiday.
Boerwar:
Perhaps. He reportedly has oversight of around 16 agencies, so it’s possible AMSA is one of them.
But it does in places. You can be 40KM of the southern coast of Java and still be in territorial waters. 40KM is not enough information, you need to know more, you need to know where it was, information we may or may not get.
So what do we have.
-Possible to be 40KM of coast and still be in territorial water.
-SMH saying permission was given to enter territorial water.
-A policy that would have to be changed for it to be otherwise.
In summary a situation that can be missrepresented on first brush because people not in the know assume 40KM is outside territorial waters. I would say that those that don’t think it through are suckers.
I am not saying SMH is right, but I am saying they are more likely to be right and I would not be assuming they are wrong.
Whatever happens with the refugees trying to get to Australia.
My family and I are thankful for Australia’s Refugee Policy in the early 1950’s.
And I feel that I understand their desperation. Been there.
confessions
This report was linked in that twitter feed as well
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/lebanonnews/lebanese-migrants-reported-missing-at-sea-near-indonesia
frednk
Thanks.
victoria:
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that.
Pratt’s lead over Ludlam is down to 1500 at the final count. However it seems that Ludlam is far more exposed to BTL leakage so would want to end up, I guess, about 1000 or more in front.
v
If right then they are the first reported boat deaths under Abbott’s watch.
It is all getting very messy.
Boerwar
Could well be
Dio
‘BW
Campbell is on two weeks holiday.’
Fair dinks? Well, there goes turning back the boats in week one.
victoria:
Apparently 19 being reported dead. Given they pile people into those boats, it could’ve been worse.
Confessions
Another report gives differing number
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/99942
Because it’s Friday Friday, gotta get down on Friday
You’ll have to wait till Monday for the Scott Morrison Operation Sovereign Borders update.
This is latest tweet from George Roberts
vic:
Sounds like more to come then.
Just reposting from yesterday:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/labor-and-greens-should-not-complain.html
Labor And The Greens Shall Not Complain About Family First
Points out that ALP and Green preferences will cause the election of FF’s Bob Day to the Senate (assuming he gets up) so complaints about Day from either party deserve short shrift.
v
The comments line in that Naharet link are different from Bludger comments.
@Sean/3168
So not more Transparent than Labor Goverment.
And still they will come, and still the mad right will believe being nasty is more of a deterrent than a pretty good chance of being dead.
Also, a niche issue, but for anyone interested in anti-discrimination law I’ve just updated my article on the situation in Tasmania as it has finally been resolved:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/nothing-to-see-here-just-future-of-free.html
The end outcome was excellent (indeed almost exactly what I proposed!) but only after ten months of dangerous nonsense until we got there.
Boerwar
Indeed.
frednk@3174
So what’s your solution frednk?
Barrie Cassidy says while Labor is busy electing its leader, Abbott is getting off scott free.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-27/cassidy-while-labor-looks-inwards-abbott-goes-untested/4983264
I think Cassidy is being unfair. Nobody is paying any attention to politics at the moment, and besides, Labor’s internal reforms will stand the party in much greater stead over the long term.
But this from the new Defence Minister must qualify as an absolute howler:
Boerwar:
The ABC’s Indonesia corro reported 19 casualties. He admits however, that he is still trying to confirm the actual number.
Just had a quick look at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia–Indonesia_border
This implies that Indonesia and Australia share a common border between Christmas Island and Java, which in fact lies closer to Christmas Island than Java. Given that its only 344 Kms from Christmas Island to Java, the further implication is that 40kms off Java is well within Indonesian waters.
The simple explanation is that the the Indonesian coast guard has very limited resources, and that the presence of the Australian Navy ship to assist with the rescue was with the full cooperation of the Indonesians.
Unless I’m misreading something here, there are no international waters between Christmas Island and Java. The rescue therefore must have taken place in Indonesian waters, hence the drop off of the survivors back to Indonesia.
BW
Yes, it was such an emergency he took holidays.
Diogenes@3181
Or he wants to avoid being part of the disaster as long as he can.
Outside
I don’t know but I suspect that seabed boundaries are not the same as territorial waters.
Hence my uncertainty Boerwar.
There are two concepts.
The 12 mile principle for sovereignty, which is ancient, and the 200km economic zone concept, which is more recent.
Any experts on law of the sea and international border issues are welcome to add their knowledge!!
BBC reporting bodies of AS floating in water off Indonesian coast including children
Dead children washing up on Indonesian beaches may change Indonesian attitudes to AS dying due to people smuggling
confessions
There is always a problem for armies when they move from war to peace.
Being ‘battle ready’ is fine but very, very difficult to maintain over time during peace time.
But ‘…not losing a fighting momentum…’ is bizarre. Does he intend to stoke up some fights in order to keep the momentum. Very, very strange.
As for maintaining ‘the interest of the troops’… Isn’t that what they are being paid to do?
The subtext here may be that he is trying to soothe the concerns of the ADF that the usual expenditure cuts following from transition to peace from war will not happen under his watch.
If so, he is being remarkably clumsy in his wording.
Awful if this is true
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/99942
Kevin
I appreciate your efforts in supporting free speech.
What do you think about the current federal government requiring their ministers to be vetted prior to any media engagement?
So, can we assume that MSM journos starved of their chookfeed by the Abbott Curtain will show some initiative and put this garbled mass of figures and sources through a professional sieve and come up with reality?
sprocket
There are around half a dozen different sets of figures floating around.
mh
‘What do you think about the current federal government requiring their ministers to be vetted prior to any media engagement?’
Provided it is carried out by qualified veterinarians, I don’t mind.
Boerwar:
‘Fighting momentum’ was an indeed bizarre thing to say.
Johnston gives the impression that he’s not the brightest spark around.
BW
The BBC report was breaking news on BBC World and was only a few minutes old.
I think it may be the one sprocket is referring to
sprocket
The naharet report has some strange things in it, including a photograph of a boat which is not a ferry and is not remotely like a prahu.
confessions
Yep.
meanwhile the people smuggler is sunbaking on a beach making sure he has all the Abbott and Morrison videos about how easy it is to get to Australia on his Iphone
g
Are there two boats or possibly three boats?
There was one reported for CI but there was some doubts about the credibility of that report.
There was the one involved in a handover of survivors involving an Australian warship.
Then possibly separately, or possibly the same sinking incident as the warship, there is a story about an Australian customs vessal wanting to hand over a small number of rescued people.
Did either of the Australian vessals pick up bodies? If so, what happened to the bodies? How many?
the photo looks like a Mediterranean AS boat landing in Italy ?
But I guess as the Abbott regime is no longer providing data to our local media, we have to rely on the foreign sources. Perhaps Abbott will cut our external internet links, and mandate Foxtel and http://www.news.com.au?
BW
Very good questions. We will have to wait for Indonesia to answer them because we know Abbott’s Secret Government won’t.
There are two incidents at least:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-27/navy-transfers-asylum-seekers-to-indonesia/4985674
Note that the claim that the Australian Navy set fire to one of the asylum seeker boats.
There was also a comment from the head of the Indonesian rescue service that he did not know why the Australians did not take the rescued people to CI.
It may be that the Indonesian left hand does not know what the Indonesian right hand is up to.
The second lot of people who have been picked up are offshore Timor – but it is not certain whether that is Timor L’este or Indonesian Timor.
If the Indonesias let that Australian boat in – or they refuse to send an Indonesian boat out to pick up the survivors, then we can surmise that the Java transfer was not Indonesian policy but an Indonesian stuff-up.
It the latter then there will be even more bad blood between Indonesia and Australia.