Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

After the last result gave Labor its biggest lead of any poll since the election of the Abbott government, the latest fortnightly Newspoll has come in closer to trend.

GhostWhoVotes relates that the latest Newspoll has Labor’s lead at 51-49 after a blowout to 54-46 a fortnight ago, from primary votes of 41% for the Coalition (up two), 35% for Labor (down four) and 11% for the Greens (up one). More to follow.

UPDATE: The Australian’s report, which just maybe reads excessive political import into what’s actually statistical noise. Although it could indeed be telling that Bill Shorten’s ratings have again gone down despite a better set of numbers for Labor on voting intention.

UPDATE 2: Leader ratings have Tony Abbott up two on approval to 38% and down two on disapproval to 50%, while Bill Shorten is down two to 33% and up four to 43%. Tony Abbott makes a solid gain on preferred prime minister, his lead out from 38-37 to 42-36.

UPDATE 3 (Essential Research): Essential Research is 50-50, after the Coalition hit the lead 51-49 last week. The Coalition is down two on the primary vote to 42%, while Labor and the Greens are steady on 38% and 8%, and the Palmer United Party up one to 4%. The monthly personal ratings have Bill Shorten up two on approval to 32% and up five on disapproval to 39%, Tony Abbott down one to 40% and steady on 47%, and Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 40-30 to 39-33. A question on Qantas shows respondents react negatively to the words “jobs being sent offshore”, 62% pressing the “disapprove” button despite the qualification of it happening improving the airline’s “profitability and long-term success”, while only 25% opted for approve. Fifty-nine per cent think foreign ownership would be bad for Australian jobs and 46% bad for the economy, versus 16% and 24% good. However, it would be thought good for Qantas profits by a margin of 48-19, and good for air travellers by 30-25.

UPDATE 4 (Morgan): The latest Morgan poll, conducted over the last two weekends from a sample of 2903 by face-to-face and SMS surveying, has a bounce in Labor’s lead from 50.5-49.5 to 53.5-46.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, which is a slightly more moderate 50.5-49.5 to 52.5-47.5 on previous election preferences. The Coalition is down 1.5% on the primary vote to 39.5%, Labor is up 1.5% to 37%, the Greens are up 1.5% to 12%, and the Palmer United Party is up half a point to 4%. Morgan has taken to including state breakdowns on two-party preferred, the latest set having Labor ahead 55-45 in New South Wales, 57-43 in Victoria and 51.5-48.5 in Queensland, while the Coalition leads 54.5-45.5 in Western Australia, 52.5-47.5 in South Australia and 52.5-47.5 in Tasmania.

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.

1,524 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor”

Comments Page 23 of 31
1 … 22 23 24 … 31

  1. Barnett and Abbott must be regretting the two-week cover up of the Buswell affair.

    If Barnett been honest with the people two weeks ago, by now the issue probably would have largely died down.

    Now it has become a live issue at the same time as the WA Senate campaign is in full swing.

  2. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/ukraine-and-the-futility-of-sanctions-ii/

    A US writer speaks of the futility of sanctions in the case of Russia
    Julie Bishop however has already signed up…even though it seems the British and the Germans may not join the project
    and Bishops will have to explain to the beef producers here why they will lose the Russian market…beef being a major esport to Russia(shades of the Indonesian matter)…and as there’s many other sources for beef the Russian could go to … it may be a lost market…for keeps

  5. Wilkie has just appeared on ABC 24 Capital Hill. He said wtte there was nothing improper about Gillard’s proposals regarding his future in Denison.

  7. deblonay

    a common experience! One man told me that she had refused several requests for an interview, and when he fronted her about it in the street she said that she didn’t need his vote…

  9. On the “Labor supporters” being pessimistic about the economy – of course there’s a lot of confusion about cause and effect here.

    If people were LNP supporters but then decided that the economy was tanking they might well abandon the LNP and start supporting the ALP. If the economy looks to be improving some of these “ALP supporters” may swing back to the LNP and be ‘economically positive LNP supporters’ again.

    Correlation is not causation.

  10. According to this article in The Independent, today is the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web. It’s not clear to me, however, exactly what event on 12 March 1989 is being referred to. The first page on the World Wide Web didn’t come online until 6 August 1991. (It’s still online today: see link below). Perhaps someone who knows this history can explain what event is being commemorated.
    http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/25-years-of-the-world-wide-web-the-inventor-of-the-internet-tim-bernerslee-explains-how-it-all-began-9185040.html
    http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

  12. Centre

    It is funny how things work. Last Saturday The West Australian had a strong story with evidence that Barnett had been less than honest in reporting the governments dealings with James Packer.
    By Monday that story was pretty much forgotten.
    I just listened to the 11am radio news on ABC and there was no mention of Buswell.
    Unless someone cracks the wall of silence the buswell story has probably run its race. Labor will keep chipping away and the Tories will keep stonewalling, and you have to give Barnett credit for his ability to argue back is white.
    It is three weeks to the senate poll, who remembers on Election Day what happened in the campaign three weeks prior.

  14. zoomster

    If Mirabella gets a Senate seat, that would not be fair. It means she’s just run away to where she can’t be judged for her lack of response to voters.

  15. [It’s not clear to me, however, exactly what event on 12 March 1989 is being referred to.]

    From the article:

    [Sir Tim was a 34-year-old physics graduate working as a software engineer at Cern in 1989, when he wrote a paper simply titled “Information Management: A Proposal”.]

    I.e. the day he was given the go ahead to start writing code.

  17. Psephos

    [It’s not clear to me, however, exactly what event on 12 March 1989 is being referred to]

    IIRC this was the day Psephos when Tim Berners-Lee proposed in a document to create a system for world wide information sharing.

  18. Jenna Price unloads on Murdoch shills (inclusive of George Brandis) attempts to neuter the ABC, making some excellent points.

    [For the past six months – at least – Coalition politician after Coalition politician has sought to derail the national broadcaster, to threaten covertly its managing director, Mark Scott, to unsettle and derail its reporters.

    And those attacks have had a chorus of approval from the fankids of the right, from Andrew Bolt to free speech musketeer Chris Kenny (with his own pet hashtag, #theirabc) to Miranda Devine.

    Wrote Bolt in February: “Realise how unfair it would be to have the taxpayer-funded ABC completely in the hands of one political caste?”

    And: “Being slow to report claims that don’t suit you and fast to report ones that do is actually called bias, guys.”

    Miranda Devine last December attacked the prospect of Andrea Wills conducting the audit (although I can’t find a similar criticism of Gerald Stone and he praises the standards of the ABC in his report).

    Devine wrote: “The ABC’s attempts to address its ideological bias are hardly reassuring. To me, the idea of bias “audits” conducted by an ex-BBC staffer is laughable.”

    ]

    Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/governments-belittling-of-abc-the-worst-action-of-all-20140312-34lb8.html#ixzz2viUbIoux

  19. Psephos @1110
    The anniversary is of the publication by Tim Berners-Lee of his paper describing the WWW. As you say, the first web page did not appear until some time later. As far as I am concerned the WWW really began with the release of the first browser usable by non-experts, Netscape Navigator in 1994.

  20. Thanks, I suppose that must be correct. If so I think people are jumping the gun. I don’t think that should be the 25th anniversary of the web. The anniversary should be of the day it first came online.

  24. @sprocket_/1118

    Tax Payer funded broadcaster vs a Multi Billion dollar Tyrant, Media Tyrant?

    Who just happened to get nearly $1 million dollars, and bought a 4 story rich apartment in NYC ?

  25. Psephos

    Realistically, you can make a case for a whole bunch of different dates, depending on your view of causality.

    The first GUI-browser seems important to me, if only because of its key role in promoting information interchange. Maybe the setting out of the conventions for HTML were key, given the cross-platform implications of the technology?

    How about the advent of web-based mail or mail servers linked to the internet?

    Then again, until more than half the planet can directly access the web, do you have a WWW? Not sure.

  27. Market Confidence is down today…

    Add to this:

    Stephen Koukoulas ‏@TheKouk 1m

    The govt just borrowed $7 billion in a bond tender of a new 2026 bond. 4.375%.

  28. Fran, re your stand on preferential voting
    You said I think that you live in a safe Liberal seat, so that your decision to not vote makes no possible difference to the outcome. Do you think you would act differently if you were in a seat where the Green candidate had a chance of winning?
    Also (out of curiosity) do you turn up at a polling booth and lodge an informal vote, or do you not vote at all and risk a fine?

  29. Chris Bowen ‏@Bowenchris 4m
    Consumer confidence down again with further fall in the 12 month outlook. Is this the “instaneous adrenalin charge” Tony Abott promised?

    I would’ve thought Bowen would be spruiking Australia’s good economic position and calling out Hockey for his negativity rather than being negative himself.

    Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, either of them.

  33. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-11/police-investigate-crash-near-troy-buswell-house/5313474?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed ]

    From that article

    [Premier Colin Barnett said he was not informed about the crash until a fortnight later, on Sunday afternoon.

    Mr Barnett said Mr Buswell could not shed further light on the incident.

    “He said he basically didn’t have much recollection,” he said.]

    Surely the WA police will have to interview Buswell – whether or not says he remembers little or nothing of the drive home while drunk.

  34. I would’ve thought Bowen would be spruiking Australia’s good economic position

    It’s 6 months since the election, now is about the right time to start to pin ownership of bad economic news on the government.

  37. Magic Pudding

    [You said I think that you live in a safe Liberal seat]

    I used to live in the relatively safe Liberal seat of Bennelong. Now I live in the relatively safe ALP seat of Greenway.

    [so that your decision to not vote makes no possible difference to the outcome. Do you think you would act differently if you were in a seat where the Green candidate had a chance of winning?]

    If I were in Melbourne, where the Green was the favourite, I’d cast a vote, on the basis that I had a good faith belief that my preference would not endorse either a Liberal or an ALP candidate and therewith their policies. If the Green were defeated on preferences, I’d be disappointed but could say that my preference was merely an attempt to procure a greater good — a win to a Green, rather than an endorsement of the view that the ALP was the lesser harm.

    If the Green had only a rough chance of winning, I’d have a different view, because the good faith defence would not work. I could be confident that my vote would help elect someone opposed to the position of the person to whom I directed the primary.

  39. MP

    [Also (out of curiosity) do you turn up at a polling booth and lodge an informal vote, or do you not vote at all and risk a fine?]

    I always attend and cast a vote with the Green getting the primary. Ditto in the senate.

  40. “I don’t understand the role of government spending in an economy, but I’m going to recommend enormous, widespread changes to our existing social infrastructure in order to solve a problem that we have entirely made up.”

  41. [Rex Douglas
    Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at 2:59 pm | PERMALINK
    Chris Bowen ‏@Bowenchris 4m
    Consumer confidence down again with further fall in the 12 month outlook. Is this the “instaneous adrenalin charge” Tony Abott promised?

    I would’ve thought Bowen would be spruiking Australia’s good economic position and calling out Hockey for his negativity rather than being negative himself.

    Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, either of them.]

    Rex

    I am still living for the day when you say something positive about Labor. When/if it ever happens please pre-warn me. The shock may just be too great.

  43. MP – 1128

    interesting questions in general (not just for Fran). If one is dissatisfied with all candidates there are currently only 2 options; dont turn up or vote informal. I have thought for many years a third option, a protest vote box, would be interesting. It could be calamitous too if it were tallied.

  44. Fran –

    If the Green had only a rough chance of winning, I’d have a different view, because the good faith defence would not work.

    I know it’s not the point you are making, but if the Greens candidate is likely to come first or second then your preferences will not be counted. Only those candidates eliminated from the count get their voters’ preferences distributed, and that’s only for 3rd place and lower.

    So your purity test should be whether the Greens candidate is likely to be in the final 2 after all other candidates have been eliminated.

  48. “Perhaps he can start by asking whether there is anything else that happened that night, or in Mr Buswell’s recent past, that he should know about.”

    Remarkably this, addressed to Barnett, is part of today’s West editorial – methinks they know something we don’t yet!

  49. Darn

    *WARNING*

    The former Govt got us through the GFC with a AAA economy.

    They should be spruiking that… and calling out Hockey for his negativity.

Comments Page 23 of 31
1 … 22 23 24 … 31

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *