GhostWhoVotes relates that the latest Newspoll has Labor leading 52-48, up from 51-49 last fortnight. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 36%, and the Coalition down one to 40%. More to follow. UPDATE: The Australian report relates that Bill Shorten’s approval rating is up three points to 36%, which is the first time a poll has moved in his favour in quite a while. UPDATE 2: Full tables here; to fill in the blanks, Shorten’s disapproval is steady at 43%, Tony Abbott is up two on approval to 40% and steady on disapproval at 50%, and Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister nudges from 42-36 to 43-36.
Today’s Morgan result, combining its regular face-to-face and SMS polling from the last two weekends, was the Coalition’s worst since the election, recording a 1.5% shift on the primary vote from the Coalition (to 38%) to Labor (38.5%), with the Greens down a point to 11% and Palmer United up half a point to 4.5%. On 2013 election preferences, this gives Labor a 53.5-46.5 lead, up from 52.5-47.5 a fortnight ago, while on respondent-allocated preferences the shift is from 53.5-46.5 to 54.5-45.5. Morgan has also been in the business lately of providing selective state-level two-party results, which are presumably based on respondent-allocated preferences. From this poll we are told Labor had unlikely leads of 56.5-43.5 in Queensland and 52-48 in Western Australia, together with leads of 54.5-45.5 in New South Wales and 55-45 in Victoria, and an unspecified “narrow” lead in South Australia.
UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research has Labor back up a point on the primary vote after it fell two last week, now at 37%, with the Coalition up one for a second week. The Greens and Palmer United are at 9% and 4%, with others down a point and the other loose point coming off rounding. Respondents were quizzed about the attributes of the major parties, which provides good news for Labor in that “divided” is down 14% to 58%, and “clear about what they stand for” is up 8% to 42%. Those are also the biggest movers for the Liberals, respectively down 6% and up 7%, although they are still performing better than Labor on each at 50% and 32%. The worst differential for Labor is still “divided”, at 26% in favour of the Liberals, while for the Liberals it’s “too close to the big corporate and financial interests”, which is at 62% for Liberal and 34% for Labor.
A question reading “as far as you know, do you think taxes in Australia are higher or lower than in other developed countries” turns up the fascinating finding that 64% of respondents believed they were higher versus only 8% for lower, while 65% believed taxes to have increased over the last five years versus 9% for decreased. Forty-seven per cent believe the current level of taxation is enough versus 33% who believe they will need to increase. The poll also finds 50% opposed to following New Zealand’s example in holding a referendum on changing the flag versus only 31% supportive.
[So why did he lose his seat ?]
Because it was highly marginal.
[everything he thinks, everything he says and everything he does is pure evil.]
No. A lot of it is just retrograde stupid s$it.
[ Abbott has given the republican movement a big boost. Would help if Turnbull would find a spine ]
Meh! When he needs one, he’ll buy one.
Frodo Baggins@942
“Strangely Howard was and is very well regarded, even when he lost his seat.”
I vividly remember a telecast of an RFL Final (?), and Sir Rodent was picked out by the cameras. The angry BOOOO took me by surprise. It was then I knew he was finished.
[I wonder how long before Abbott tells us to move country, like how Malcolm Turnbull told us to move house?]
Maybe Abbott will send all the unbelievers to Tasmania from whence they will never escape?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJpznMaZ85c
My toughest assignment yet: booth-mapping Kennedy, with 101 booths.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2013/2013maps/kennedy.shtml
I always think of Kennedy as an “outback seat” and it looks that way on the map. But when you look closely you see that the great majority of voters live on the “Cassowary Coast,” in towns like Mareeba, Ingham and Innisfail. An increasing number live in suburbs of Cairns and Townsville which are encroaching into the seat. Katter’s “old bushy” image is increasingly anachronistic to these voters, which may explain why he got such whopping swings against him in all the coastal booths.
My brother in law and his wife are flying Malaysia to China next week. Make that supposed to be flying.
They go o/s twice a year and always fly Malaysia Airlines. Said they find it the best.
[The usual suspects will take the bait while the Coalition gets to talk about things people actually care about.]
LOL except they aren’t. They are faffing about with culture war stuff like bullying the ABC, telling us that we have a right to be bigots, making a song and dance about anti discrimination laws, and now this knights and dames stupidity.
Meanwhile it’s left to Labor and others to do the heavy lifting of getting things focused on reality.
Frodo,
“Middle Australia has better things to worry about then whether the semantics of someones name has Sir or Dame in front of it”.
Yeah, but they might be asking why this is the Government’s priority when jobs are disappearing and there is a concerted attack on service provision.
“The usual suspects will take the bait while the Coalition gets to talk about things people actually care about”.
Yes, Tony is a successful stunt.
“Surprisingly Shorten was smart enough not to take the bait and started talking about jobs and other matters… the ALP appears to be evolving”.
Shorten is playing the long game. He wants to be PM.
[cud chewer
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:40 pm | PERMALINK
Is there no prospect for any sophistication of thought here?
Not while you continue to defend the indefensible on broadband Mod Lib.]
Is defend the indefensible like “Abbott the unelectable”?
[Jimmyhaz
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:42 pm | PERMALINK
Everything @913
Yes, I do have problems with opinion polls suddenly overriding the objective performance of a PM.]
By “objective performance”, do you mean your subjective opinion?
BH@958
Well, if they could find MH370 we’d all very much appreciate it.
William Bowe@951
Even so, an incumbent PM would, surely, quarantine him from defeat, no matter how slim the margin.
You would think.
@Mod Lib/961
Defending Abbott again, after saying “Where”?
Abbott has been unelectable for 6 years, plus all the years under Howard Goverment.
[925….confessions]
I don’t know about you, confessions, but for mine I think the voters of WA will be utterly mystified by today’s Abbottism. In common with the rest of working Australia, we have a lot of things to think about and attend to. Knighthoods is not one of them (wtf is a knight anyway!). He is going to look remarkably out of touch with daily life in the West.
[Is defend the indefensible like]
No, its more like spend tens of billions on a temporary network only to have to replace it with the inevitable fibre, costing more and only achieving needless delay.
*that* kind of indefensible.
[The general protocol is that the wife of a Knight is known as ‘Lady’ followed by the knight’s surname. There may be variations in particular circumstances. The husband of a Dame does not derive any style or title from his wife. ]
How fecking patronising, what if the “Lady” has kept her surname for her entire marriage, is she supposed to throw it away cos her husband has a gong? What bollocks.
Howard lost his seat because the Chinese voted solidly against him, because of his comments on Asian immigration, and because they liked Rudd. They swung back again in 2010, and refused to budge in 2013 even when Labor ran a Chinese-Australian candidate.
Most PMs would have muscled into a safer seat (or never have been in a marginal seat to begin with). Howard was different. He represented Bennelong and he wanted to stay there. He “went down with the ship” if you like, as he knew that if Bennelong went, he would no longer be PM anyway, and he would be resigning from whichever seat he had won which would have taken him to opposition benches on which his toosh would never unite again.
It was actually a demonstration of character that he stuck with Bennelong. He didn’t win the seat and then slink off and leave a by-election behind like other losing PMs.
I quite like how he did it actually….
Howard never lost his seat when he was lower than shark shit in the polls in the 80s. Why make excuses about the seat being marginal 20 years later. I notice a tennis professional has managed to restore Liberal fortunes.
Where has your hero gone Mod Lib? Malcolm Turnbull.
[zoidlord
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:49 pm | PERMALINK
@Mod Lib/961
Defending Abbott again, after saying “Where”?
Abbott has been unelectable for 6 years]
This is an example of what I meant by foolishness in an earlier post.
Unelectable means unable to be elected.
He was elected.
That means the 6 years of claiming he was unelectable were wrong.
Those posters were wrong. (I don’t blame them, as I would have thought they were right as well when Abbott first took the leadership, however, I didn’t take quite so long to realise what was really happening as I try to be objective 🙂 )
Its a testament to the ability of certain parts of the media to create hysteria, push lies (like the Ninety Billion Network – remember that one Mod Lib?) and generally run propaganda that even people like Abbott can be elected.
We’ve got a nasty case of buyers remorse and its going to be unsalvageable if the Liberals don’t start doing something the general public recognises as constructive.
I’d challenge the Liberals here to tell us what the Liberals are going to start doing that is positive, constructive, hell even creative?
Rather than just engaging in social engineering, culture war, and tearing down things like Medicare and wrecking the NBN.
zoid,
You mean Sir Malcolm.
[He didn’t win the seat and then slink off and leave a by-election behind like other losing PMs.]
Right! Those cowards Keating and Fraser refused to lose their seats when they lost the Prime Ministership.
[970…..Everything]
I’m also glad he lost. He deserved a thrashing and ’twas well-met.
@Mod Lib/973
Actually you are incorrect, It is correct to say unelectable for 6 years, word play is only in your book.
On the Knights and Dames “issue” (seriously searching for a better word), it’s obvious to me it’s borne out of the desire in the Coalition party room to irritate the progressive/republican element in society. That’s it. Normally I’d steer away from such a vapid explanation but it appears to be the only one that really makes sense with this lot.
More colonial-era, vaguely reactionary, intellectually bereft, purely symbolic monarchist piffle. And more to come!
[Psephos
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:52 pm | PERMALINK
Howard lost his seat because the Chinese voted solidly against him, because of his comments on Asian immigration,]
…comments made a decade earlier?
Huh?
William
[Funnily enough, one of the people who suffered from it was Julia Gillard. It caused her to do dumb things like oppose same-sex marriage and see in the Julian Assange matter an opportunity to beat the pro-American drum.]
I’d also give credit to Gillard for conviction on those matters, and I wouldn’t give her credit for much else, as I do to Abbott on his monarchism. And similarly I don’t think those two Gillard policies played any part in her demise and I can’t see that the re-introduction of knighthoods will play a part in Abbott’s political future.
[zoidlord
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:54 pm | PERMALINK
Where has your hero gone Mod Lib? Malcolm Turnbull.]
I think he is Minister for dismantling the Conroy White Elephant.
briefly:
The Senate blocked the repeal of the MRRT today. You’d think the coalition would let that be the talking point of the day in light of all those early voting across the state this week. But no, knights and dames and the return to an outdated honours system is what it’s all about.
Perhaps the Liberals will campaign on bestowing these ’eminent awards’ on Gina and Twiggy?
[Unelectable means unable to be elected.]
You’re quite right Mod Lib. He was elected. Your point? Oh, your point is you’re clever. I remember when you first came here and told us how much you hated Abbott and his extremism. How much you wanted Turnbull. You even told us you thought that Turnbull might get the job back still. You’ve forgotten you said that.
And you still defend the indefensible because ultimately you’re rooted in core beliefs. Unions are bad. Market is good. Seriously, you avoid talking about what you really believe in and why you continue to defend this government despite obvious incompetence such as fraudband. What is it that you personally believe in that makes you so partisan. That makes you want to defend these fools despite all that you see?
@Mod Lib/982
You do not know the meaning White Elephant.
Turnbull is creating a Disaster though.
briefly@966
You seriously underestimate Credlin and her sock-puppet.
For years, most migrants to WA have been from Britain (http://www.workpermit.com/news/2008-03-28/australia/british-citizens-immigrate-western-australia.htm).
Today’s royal brain-fart is directed wholly and solely at the WA election, and will no doubt be forgotten again soon afterwards.
fess,
Sir gina Rhinehart?
[Even so, an incumbent PM would, surely, quarantine him from defeat, no matter how slim the margin.
You would think.]
I wouldn’t. Howard had been member for Bennelong for 33 years, and prime minister for 11. He wasn’t simply going to draw upon a new reservoir of personal support on top of that he had already built up over all that time. The swing was always going to be broadly in line with the statewide result, as it generally is for PMs once they’ve been in the gig for a while. Furthermore, I suggest that Howard was encumbered by the sense that he was going to lose the election and wouldn’t stay around afterwards, so voters might as well take the opportunity to spare themselves a by-election. That would also explain the above-par swing against Kevin Rudd in Griffith. Also working against Howard was Rudd’s popularity with the Chinese community.
If you want to ascertain how popular Howard was and is, polling that puts that question to people directly is of much more use than an electorate result in which myriad factors were in play. At the time of his defeat, Howard had a +6% net approval rating in Newspoll, compared with -25% for Kevin Rudd. Like it or not, as politicians go, he was rather popular. There were things about him people may not have liked, by they felt he was good at his job.
MICK 77 912 “CLOSET ROYAL LOVING LEFTIES”
___________________________
As William has said .”Mick77″ views on Royal Honours is” a delusion” but even by “77” usual standards of political horseshit this is a great effort
He should stick to more tangible delusions like Zionism, the Royals are a lost cause…
[I’d also give credit to Gillard for conviction on those matters]
I don’t think for one second that Julia Gillard was inherently opposed to SSM.
[the Conroy White Elephant]
And you ask us for rational discussion?
And you keep deflecting and avoiding the facts.
FTTN is temporary
FTTN will be replaced with FTTH in a few years.
This will cost us more overall.
Go on, keep avoiding. Keep indulging in your usual petty tactics.
[it’s obvious to me it’s borne out of the desire in the Coalition party room to irritate the progressive/republican element in society. ]
Except is was not put to the party room, this bit of foolishness is Abbott’s alone, like his PPL. I assume he will ask for forgiveness tomorrow.
AussieAchmed
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 8:44 pm | PERMALINK
How could anyone with any shred of empathy or compassion in their body, support a man(sic) who sees it as a good thing to take $211 a year from the children and orphans of our troops disabled or killed serving our country.
The man(sic) who parades around as PM is lower than a snake’s belly. (apology to snakes)
So true and I saw a red bellied black snake today outside my bedroom window, about 1 1/2 metres long, and it’s belly was very close to the ground 🙂
My darling wife who is more right than me thinks today’s decision to reinstate knighthoods is a joke. She is probably closer to middle Australia than I am although I am basically a confused mess these days.
Mod Lib is bent out of shape today, makes you wonder why?
From the UK:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26672617?ocid=socialflow_twitter
“”It’s less superfast broadband, more super-slow service from companies who are expecting people to pay for speeds they may never get.””
[It was actually a demonstration of character that he stuck with Bennelong. He didn’t win the seat and then slink off and leave a by-election behind like other losing PMs.]
No, he stayed past his used by date because he didn’t want Peter Costello to become PM. He put himself ahead of the interests of his party and the government that he lead.
It was selfishness of the highest order.
[979….absolutetwaddle]
twaddle, for Abbott, since he has eschewed matters of substance, Government can only be about matters of style. He does not believe Government either can or should try to do anything meaningful. It follows that the only thing that matters is looking important. It’s not for nothing that gongs are called “decorations” and gong-giving is called “investing” for that is exactly what it is: creating ornaments, each a splendid addition to the nothingness that Government will become.
William Bowe@988
Well, as Mungo McCullum (?) once quipped, he was the best ‘politician’ in Autralian History
[I think he is Minister for dismantling the Conroy White Elephant.]
LOL! No, you mean Turnbull is Minister for buying back access to the copper phone network that the previous Coalition government sold.
Mick77
[I’d also give credit to Gillard for conviction on those matters]
Actually it had the exact opposite effect. Who the feck in Australia believed that Gillard had a genuine philosophical opposition to SSM ? It screamed I’m a creature of the Labor Party’s Taliban wing and will do or say anything they want. Hey and I like Gillard . Imagine what those who were against her thought.