Morgan: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

The Christmas-New Year poll drought ends courtesy of a new result from Morgan, which suggests little has changed over the break.

Morgan has released what it describes as the “first major public opinion poll of 2014”, though it could just as easily have dropped the “major”. It provides no indication of festive cheer softening attitudes towards the new government, showing the Coalition down 1.5% on the primary vote to 39% with Labor also down half a point to 38%, the Greens up half a point to 10.5% and the Palmer United Party steady on 3.5%. That translates to a 53-47 lead to Labor on 2013 preference flows and 52.5-47.5 on the headline respondent-allocated figure. As has been Morgan’s form for a while now, this poll combines its regular weekend face-to-face polling with SMS component, in this case encompassing 2527 respondents from the two weekends past. The first Essential Research result for the year should be with us tomorrow.

UPDATE: Little change also from Essential Research, which opens it account for the year with a result from the polling period of Friday to Monday only, rather than its two-week rolling average. This has the Coalition leading 51-49, with the Coalition, Labor and the Greens each up a point on the primary vote to 45%, 38% and 8% respectively, with the Palmer United Party steady on 4% and others down two to 6%. Also featured are the monthly personal ratings, showing a slight improvement for Tony Abbott – up two on approval to 47% and down three on disapproval to 43% – and a softening for Bill Shorten, down four to 35% and up one to 32%. Preferred prime minister is little changed, Abbott’s lead shifting from 43-33 to 42-31. The poll also finds strong opposition to fees for GP visits, with 28% approving and 64% disapproving, and 47% support for Australia becoming a republic at the end of the Queen’s reign against 32% opposed.

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.

1,586 comments on “Morgan: 52.5-47.5 to Labor”

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  1. [davidwh
    Posted Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 11:21 am | Permalink
    @amworldtodaypm: Bill Shorten accuses Joe Hockey of hiding plans for big budget cuts. “They should just come clean…” http://t.co/HbL4ZZNxLn #auspol

    Poor Bill. Hockey has already said any cuts will be announced in the May budget. Bill just needs to be patient]

    David

    It’s not Bill’s job to be patient. As opposition leader it’s his role to get out there and scare the bejeezus out of the punters every chance he gets – the way Abbott so effectively did (remember Whyalla). Bill is showing at the moment that he has learned from the master very well and he’s doing a very good job IMO.

  2. david, so the government should just keep everything secret. The media would have a lot more *work* to do then! Then you could just repeat 1050 every time someone complained about it.

  3. davidwh

    Remember this from Abbott

    TonyAbbottMHR 6/7/11 “The PM is running away from scrutiny and if you run away from scrutiny you’re running away from democracy.”

  4. MTBW

    Matt Thistlethwaite has Kingsford Smith – Sam is in the Senate.

    BTw I had a great photo of MGM stars on the 20th Anniversary sent to me in an email. I Still can’t work out how to transfer it to the web so will send it to mari and ask her to email it on to you

  5. Abbott promised no surprises so by his own election mandate he has no right to provide any surprises at all and by his own standards he should probably resign in disgrace.

  6. Narns

    You are right of course and Dastyari is in the Senate.

    I will give myself a good slap on the wrists since it was my Grandfather who held Kingsford Smith 1949-1969.

    Let’s blame old age!

  7. [TonyAbbottMHR 6/7/11 “The PM is running away from scrutiny and if you run away from scrutiny you’re running away from democracy.”
    ]

    And running is one thing he is good at he must be a long way from democracy now.

  8. davidwh – I didn’t see Hewson’s comments, but while there is a point to be made (and I have complained about this in the past) about Rudd’s “announceables”, which were just plain annoying as hell and ultimately stupid politics, it’s quite a different matter to transparency in government.

    Governments have to do two things – they manage executive government and they run the politics to get themselves re-elected.

    How they run the politics is up to them as political parties – we don’t need to know all those details, and I take what you report Hewson was saying to imply that parties should be less about announcing shit every day and more about delivery.

    But the first part – running executive government – is not about the party in charge. It’s not a political thing, it’s how the government of the day – acting in our name – is carrying out day to day activities.

    No political party should be allowed to get away with putting up a concrete wall around government and saying “it’s the media’s job to find out what is going on behind this concrete wall, we’re not going to volunteer jack shit except what we feel is advantageous politically for you to know”.

    To not distinguish the political from the governance of the country is disingenuous.

  9. DN governments have always tried to keep some issues quiet. I’m not sure governments need to have a press release everytime they do something which is consistent with the policies and programs they have already disclosed.

  10. [1007
    lizzie
    Posted Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 10:14 am | PERMALINK
    My NY resolution is occasionally to say what I actually think. And I like Annabel, and Trioli. Makes a change from dour men who have no sense of humour.]
    Good on you Lizzie, I have been puzzled by the degree of hostility to them and share your views.

    I have also been enjoying the female fill-in program presenters on 774. They have had a lighter touch than the regulars and are not afraid to have a laugh.

  11. Jackol #1065 I largely agree and expect this government will suffer if they do in fact try and erect that wall. I just think some of the hyperbole at present is overdone.

  12. david
    [I’m not sure governments need to have a press release everytime they do something which is consistent with the policies and programs they have already disclosed.]
    I agree with this and a debate over the usefulness of any specific information but that’s entirely different from the proposition at 1050.

  13. Apropos of nothing, if you hit a golf ball from the lawns of the Gosford Anglican Church in a SW direction, you’d hit Iguanas. I reckon a good 5 iron would get you there

  14. [This government is hiding facts the public has the right to know.]

    Guytaur in the case of boats unless there are valid reasons why they don’t want information freely available e.g. important in trying to manage a difficult relationship with Indonesia at present. Apart from that I am not even sure Aussies want to know about each and every incident involving UA’s. I think we have been overdosed on UA’s in recent years.

    What I think most Aussies want to know is that the government policies are stopping the number of boat arrivals.

  15. [Hewson had some interesting comments on the ABC this morning regarding the alleged government media blackout. Basically he said it’s to try and reverse the trend from the Rudd/Gillard era of rolling press releases where the government continually fed the media often with repeats of previous announcements re-hashed to appear new announcements.]

    davidwh I think Hewson meant to say ‘where the Opposition continually fed the med with repeats of slogans and mistruths rehashed daily to appear as new’.

    Hewson himself was all over ABC 24 and Sky ranting about the Rudd/Gillard Governments, often daily.

    I will give you that I am already sick to death of Labor saying Govt is hiding its plans and should come clean. I’ve started screaming STHU at that already. Apart from getting some new lines I’m quite happy with Shorten’s quieter, less aggressive stance.

  16. Surprise No 82. Despite Hockey announcing that the Government will be tough on business handouts on the basis that the handouts encourage inefficiencies, the Government intends to spend $420 million of taxpayer funds bailing out farmers who cannot manage their farms efficiently through droughts which are a normal part of Australia’s climate.

  17. davidwh –

    I’m not sure governments need to have a press release everytime they do something which is consistent with the policies and programs they have already disclosed.

    Information about what the government is doing, and current events that the government is responding to, should be available to the media and public by default.

    Transparency is about the workings of government being visible to all.

    Sure, there are corners of government that need to remain under wraps – spy stuff, some commercial-in-confidence negotiations – but the question should always be “is there a good reason why the public should not be fully aware of this information?”, and the stuff that we are not informed of (or where the information is not publicly available) should be as limited as possible.

    Now I don’t care what form that is. It doesn’t have to be press releases. If government departments just keep up-to-date websites with all this information available in easily searchable/sortable form, that’s perfectly fine.

    But it should all be there, with as few exceptions as possible. And it shouldn’t require FoI to get it (and there’s no indication that this government has any respect for FoI anyway).

    This is our government. It acts in our name. We need to know what it is doing. There have been too many cases of bad, corrupt things going on in the past where secrecy has prevented us from seeing what government is doing. It’s not good enough.

    Transparency is not something you can just glibly talk about without really practicing it in everything you do as a government.

    This government treated transparency as a slogan to bandy about in opposition, and now treat it with contempt.

  18. dwh

    So surprises no excuses. This secrecy on boats is not warranted at all. We get the information from Indonesia and People Smugglers know before the Indonesians do.

    The excuses for secrecy are transparently specious,

  19. david
    [What I think most Aussies want to know is that the government policies are stopping the number of boat arrivals.]
    Oh, and how will we know that?

  20. DN #1072 I agree there is a balance to it and the current government has the balance wrong. Having said that I don’t think the situation is a dire as some are making out.

    To the level that managing information is important in managing the Indonesian relationship then I have no problem with the government approach. However when it is only to manipulate the domestic political agenda then I agree it needs to be highlighted. I think there is a bit of both in the current situation.

  21. Boerwar
    There is a stable system in place that assures the occurrence of droughts at a reasonably known frequency. It is an actuarial fact.
    Farming practices and financial management should incorporate allowances for these largely predictable circumstances.
    If they do not or cannot, then the business is unviable,

  22. BH

    [ It does make one feel happy and gets the feet moving – or at my age I think it’s called stumbling ]

    I had a work mate who used to exercise at lunch time – He called it shuffling.

  23. [1074
    lizzie
    Posted Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 11:49 am | PERMALINK
    bemused

    It appears that occasionally we find something on which to agree. How nice ]
    You exaggerate our differences.
    I agree with most of what you post but am not going to endlessly post “yes, I agree” to everything. Nor can I be bothered with minor points of difference.
    That particular post of yours struck a chord.

    But I did omit to make an exception for dreary Sally Warhaft.

  24. Narns

    Not as silly as you think I do know that there was a redistribution and the seat of Kingsford Smith was first established in 1955 and Jim Cope got Watson.

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