UPDATE (Essential Research and Morgan): Essential Research is still at 50-50, although Labor has been up three points on the primary vote over the past fortnight, the most recent move being one point to 39%. The Coalition, Greens and Palmer United are steady at 43%, 8% and 3%. There are also personal ratings and further questions which you can read about at the bottom of the post. Morgan has the Labor lead narrowing from 53-47 to 52-48 on respondent-allocated preferences, and from 52.5-47.5 to 51-49 on previous election preferences. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up a point to 40.5%, Labor steady on 37%, the Greens down one to 10.5% and Palmer United up 1.5% to 4.5%.
GhostWhoVotes reports the first Newspoll for the year has Labor leading 51-49, compared with 52-48 in the final poll of last year, which was conducted from December 6-8. Labor has dropped three points on the primary vote to 35%, but the slack is taken up by the Greens, who are up three to 12%, with the Coalition up by one point to 41%. The results also support Essential Research’s finding that a good deal of air went out of Bill Shorten’s honeymoon balloon over the break, his approval rating down five points to 35%. More to follow.
UPDATE: James J in comments serves up the personal ratings, which have Tony Abbott perfectly unchanged at 40% approval and 45% disapproval, Bill Shorten respectively down nine to 35% and up eight to 35%, and preferred prime minister effectively unchanged at 41-33 in favour of Abbott, compared with 41-34 last time.
UPDATE 2: Dennis Shanahan’s report on the results for The Oz.
UPDATE 3: Questions on ABC bias produce similar results to the recent ReachTEL poll, with most considering its news “fair and balanced”, but Coalition supporters more likely to feel aggrieved than Labor ones. Eighteen per cent felt the ABC biased to Labor versus 7% biased against, which naturally enough produced a mirror image when the question was framed in terms of Coalition bias (7% biased in favour, 19% biased against). Results for the Greens were hardly different than for Labor, with 15% thinking it biased in favour, 8% biased against, and 48% balanced. Tables showing breakdowns by party support here.
UPDATE 4: Essential Research’s monthly personal ratings have both leaders heading south, with Tony Abbott down six on approval to 41% and up four on disapproval to 47%, and Bill Shorten down five to 30% and up two to 34%. Better prime minister is little changed at 40-30 in favour of Abbott, compared with 42-31 a month ago. As is usually the case when a party’s position improves in the polls, Labor has improved across the board on the question of party most trusted to handle various issues, the biggest changes being a drop in the deficit on “political leadership” from 23% to 13% and economic management from 26% to 19%. A question on various types of industry assistance finds strong support for drought relief, private health rebates and tourism development grants, but strong opposition to fuel rebates for the mining industry. Interestingly, automotive production subsidies score a net rating of minus 11%.
Waiting to see if that 35 for Shorten comes with more increase in negatives or dunnos but neither is good news for him. 35 is the sort of rating Simon Crean was polling at a roughly similar stage.
I’m no Shorten fan, but a 9 percent drop in his satisfaction over Summer when he’s done nothing? Really? A little odd!
Nice little jump for the Greens, happy to see that. Perhaps the extreme heat and fires bringing climate change to people’s minds? Not good for Abbott longer term if so.
Trouble with the spinmeisters and their targeting of Shorten is of the ALP changes to someone who really does connect with the punters.
Goodbye Rabbott in that case.
@Mod Lib/47
Why would I watch some politicians mouth run off, while ABC get’s hit with the strap by Abbott & Murdoch?
Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?
Oh right, this is a political blog, my mistake.
I don’t think Shorten is going to be your Messiah, leading you out of the current electoral wilderness.
The ALP needs to disassociate from and criticise the union movement.
Voluntarily shackling yourselves to the wagon as it wheels uncontrollably towards the cliff aint smart. Then again, you are beholden to your masters, I guess, and the ALP is the best party the Unions could buy.
35% hardly in Nelson’s 7% territory.
[Yesiree Bob
Posted Monday, February 10, 2014 at 11:10 pm | PERMALINK
Trouble with the spinmeisters and their targeting of Shorten is of the ALP changes to someone who really does connect with the punters.]
I think Plibersek is a very good performer, she just needs to hide her contempt a little better. Australians prefer mocking your opponents (see Turnbull) to hating them (see Gillard).
[zoidlord
Posted Monday, February 10, 2014 at 11:10 pm | PERMALINK
@Mod Lib/47
Why would I watch some politicians mouth run off, while ABC get’s hit with the strap by Abbott & Murdoch?
Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?]
No. However, I suspect you are going to tell me.
He sure aint no Hawke, thats for sure!
Abbott dissatisfied 45
Shorten dissatisfied 35
Keep it real 😆
The headline from the Australian:
[Shorten honeymoon over]
Always with the dramatics.
Following from a discussion in the previous thread (one of Fran’s ;)).
Does ethical absolutism admit the possibility of error in its beliefs?
It seems to me that if it does, ethical absolutism and ethical relativism are variants of a more general case where there is some probability – varying from case to case, depending on the confidence one has that one’s beliefs are correct – that another individual acting under their own ethics is in fact acting ethically.
A 100% certainty that one is correct would correspond to classical ethical absolutism, and a 50% (un)certainty to classical ethical relativism. Less than 50% would suggest you believe your beliefs are more likely wrong than right, which is kind of weird.
Ok, I just made that all up*.
* Though it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that someone else had already made it up. Or that I only think I made it up but really read it in a book** somewhere, sometime long ago and have forgotten.
** Probably a fantasy novel.
@Mod Lib/58
I don’t need to.
Everything@59
and Rabbott is no menzies, infact, me thinks ming would be spinning in his grave at how Howie and Rabbott have dragged his (your) party to the lunatic right wing fringe
We really do need MTPM.
My God… the Australian is a joke.
So, the PM is at -10 satisfaction, Shorten at even and the story is Shorten’s slump.
Let’s not forget that for Abbott as a newly elected PM to be at 41% and to have the Opposition Leader only 8% behind is AWFUL… and no amount of spin changes that.
By the way, since when do oppo leaders have “honeymoons” ?
Seriously, at least shorten has had some sort of “honeymoon”. Rabbott got diddly squat.
They are pretty bad numbers for Abbott. Losing the race and widespread dissatisfaction in the electorate.
@davidwh/65
Malcolm Turnbull died along time ago, during the fiasco that is long in history, when his college disowned him.
MT’s job is only there to destroy Labor’s NBN, and doing it proudly.
[So, the PM is at -10 satisfaction, Shorten at even and the story is Shorten’s slump.]
Yes, I thought people would get a laugh out of the headline for Shanahan’s article.
J341983@66
Really ? No kidding?
Does any one take the GG seriously any more ?
no ?
Thats right, the shit sheet is the national laughing stock.
Absolutely no credibility what so ever, you wonder why Mouldyoch even bothers anymore.
david, the problems with the Liberal party can not be so easily confined to a single box labelled “Tony Abbott” that they will even begin to be fixed by replacing it with a box labelled “Malcom Turnbull”.
[35% hardly in Nelson’s 7% territory.]
It kind of is, actually. Nelson’s 7% was PPM, not approval. His approval rating ranged from 29% to 40%.
For some reason the likes of Shanahan to the moderate liberals are giving themselves a hernia trying to bag Shorten.
*exited
Shorten’s rating means sweet bugger all (at this point)
Come to think of it, this Newspoll means sweet bugger all too
spur212@75
^^^^ That ^^^^
I know there is more chance of a Rudd third coming than a MTPM but nevertheless we do need that miracle.
Since 2006, the Prime Minister IS the government. If the PM’s rating is negative, it doesn’t matter how the opposition leader is doing. If the PM’s rating is overwhelmingly positive, there’s little the opposition leader can do
YB probably true but yet we all have been hanging out for a Newspoll.
Well plus or minus 1, the change to COAL and the ALP, are hardly here nor there, just noise.
But the significant thing is the +3% to the Greens .
12% is back into their old territory and whilst it may be a temporary flash in the plan that plus awfully close to 10% in Griffith would raise their spirits.
Same old same old an opposition beating the government in the polls same old same old
[Everything
Posted Monday, February 10, 2014 at 10:55 pm | Permalink
Having seen Shorten perform a bit more in recent times, he comes across as arrogant and smarmy.
I said some time ago I wouldn’t buy a used car from him, and I think many of my fellow Australians are coming to the same conclusion!]
ML
If you want to see arrogant and smarmy you need look no further than Tony Abbott. Compared to him Bill Shorten is an amateur.
33% is hardly in Nelson’s 7% territory.
[victoria
Posted Monday, February 10, 2014 at 11:07 pm | PERMALINK
Kezza2
I have family and friends in the Wallan Kilmore area. So far all okay.]
That’s great. I’m sure they’re counting their blessings while feeling badly for those who’ve lost everything. Just as we feel relieved that our friends are okay.
[Abbott is counting on the RC to cut Labor and Shorten down to size. The objective is to damage Labor for a generation.
Abbott and his cronies disgust me.]
You have to wonder at the LNP strategy. And I’m talking a co-ordinated strategy here.
There’s Newman in Qld doing everything he can to subvert the rule of law, as if that’s par for the course.
Then, in Canberra, we have the most secretive, shrouded, govt since Howard was a boy. And where everything’s turned upside down a la Alice in Wonderland.
It’s more than spin. It’s Aldous Huxley and War of the Worlds twisted into Orwell. It’s absolutely frightening.
When an RC into the abuse of children is dismissed as a witch hunt by Pell – and it wasn’t all bad, after all, they were really after their souls and not their bodies – and dismissed by Abbott as a Labor-led besmirchment of Australia’s character no less, then you have to worry about Abbott’s idea of a ‘fair’ Australila.
But when he institutes an RC against workers rights aka let’s obliterate any power workers have (collectivism) by saying of all things:
‘Sometimes a nation has to shine a fucking spotlight onto its depravities’ – meaning workers rights rather than the abuse of children, you then have to recognise that PR has gone far too far.
While we can all debate the merits of different policies, whether X is going to benefit rather than Y, and be bloody-minded in doing so, it is impossible to debate the constant demonisation of everybody who won’t conform to the State.
Abbott’s not content with the Murdochracy on his side, he wants every media outlet to submit to his ideas.
That’s Fascism writ large.
And Abbott can get stuffed. He’ll get burned just like every other bastard who has suffered hubris.
Bed time, Night all.
[33% is hardly in Nelson’s 7% territory.]
Now you’re talking. Or alternatively: 41% is hardly in Rudd’s 73% territory.
waznaki@83
The thing about that is that PPM is heavily driven by 2PP. Nelson was up against a super-popular Rudd, Shorten is up against a mildly unpopular Abbott. PPM is just not a very useful indicator.
For those interested I’ve looked at this netsat drop of 17 points in two months and I find numerous similar prior examples; it is not that rare. In terms of poll-to-poll drop it is the 12th highest ever for an Opposition Leader but that is a dubious stat given that the usual break is two weeks not two months.
K2, well said, here here
[It makes a lot of sense.
LNP up 1% – Boats
Greens up 3% – Boats]
Absolutely correct. The return of boats as an issue has helped both the Libs and the Greens at the expense of Labor.
Kezza2
[Abbott’s not content with the Murdochracy on his side, he wants every media outlet to submit to his ideas.
That’s Fascism writ large.
And Abbott can get stuffed. He’ll get burned just like every other bastard who has suffered hubris.]
I have no,idea what the Labor strategy is to combat Abbott and the murdochracy, but i hope,they have a plan, cos things are going to hell in a handbasket with this mob.
Anyhow night all.
Kevin mildly unpopular? 😉
@Psephos/89
+3 to Greens is that the far right of the boat issue isn’t working.
On ‘The Business’ on the ABC just now, several economists, experts and a Tarot Card reader gave their predictions for the value of the $A at the end of the year. My bet’s on the Tarot Card reader.
When experts of various kinds make predictions about the economy, by and large they seem to be hardly more accurate than if they had read goats’ entrails. Like the weather, the Market does whatever it is going to do and there are lots of people to explain after the event what happened. A vast machine at the heart of our society, understood and controlled by no one as it threshes its way across the country and the world. Should we be worried? I think so.
Perhaps if Abbott would agree to delay the election until 2017, we could go with Kevin 17?
davidwh@91
Yes, Abbott is only -5 at the moment with his party slightly behind. It’s not like the good old days when he was -36 in Opposition. He’s still intensely hated on the left of course but his ratings really aren’t that bad.
The long-term average netsat for a PM is -1.
But, in all seriousness, the ALP has till 2020 to find a leader to drag the party off the carcass of the Union movement, which is limping into a little dark cave as we speak, and out into the light of modern Australia.
@Mod Lib/96
I dunno, depends if Abbott invokes austerity or not by 2020.
51-49 to Labor still represents a massive loss of Liberal seats if an election were held now – a 4.5% swing away from the government.
[zoidlord
Posted Monday, February 10, 2014 at 11:53 pm | PERMALINK
@Mod Lib/96
I dunno, depends if Abbott invokes austerity or not by 2020.]
Removing middle class welfare is not quite the same thing as “austerity”!
spur212@78
So far Abbott looks little different – after five data points, variation in Abbott’s netsat is explaining 97% of variation in 2PP. This will go down – but possibly not that much.