Nielsen: 52-48 to Labor

The latest monthly Nielsen poll finds Labor regaining the two-party lead, and the Greens at an all-time record high.

GhostWhoVotes relates that the monthly Nielsen poll in tomorrow’s Fairfax papers has Labor leading 52-48, after trailing 51-49 last time. The primary votes are 40% for the Coalition (down four), 34% for Labor (down one) and, remarkably, 17% for the Greens (up five). The latter is three points higher than the Greens have scored in any Nielsen result going back to the 2010 election (UPDATE: It turns out 15% is their previous record in Nielsen, and 16% is their record in Newspoll). Stay tuned for leadership ratings and state breakdowns.

Further results from the poll indicate strong opposition to the government’s policies with respect to the Racial Discrimination Act, with 88% disagreeing with the contention that it should be lawful to offend, insult or humiliate on the basis of race, as per the provisions of 18C of the act, and 59% opposed to George Brandis’s contention that people have the right to be bigots, with 34% supportive. Opinion on knights and dames is more finely balanced than might have been expected, with 35% supportive and 50% opposed.

UPDATE: The poll has Tony Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister down from 48-43 to 45-44, which equals the Newspoll of February 21-23 as the narrowest lead yet recorded (ReachTEL may or not be an exception, as I don’t track it due to its unusual methodology). Abbott is down two on approval to 43% and up one on disapproval to 50%, while Bill Shorten is up one to 43% and down one to 41%.

UPDATE 2: GhostWhoVotes has full tables. By far the most striking results are from Western Australia, where the Greens lead Labor 27% to 20% – remembering this is from a sample of 150 with a margin of error of 8%. The lesson I would take from this is that static from the WA Senate election is making federal poll results less reliable than usual just at the moment.

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.

1,024 comments on “Nielsen: 52-48 to Labor”

Comments Page 12 of 21
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  1. Interesting your position seems to be the USA can do no wrong, anything done by any other country is wrong, especially Russia. But say if the USA instigate and prosecute a coup of an elected government (something was confirmed by Nuland)… well that is ok. Don’t mention that (yet another US instigated change of govt for its own ends, but I guess you will deny them as well0

    So we have hardened US sycophants, no doubt from their mother’s knee, like a religion it cannot be challenged. Sycophancy like religious fundamentalism requires all sorts of defences in order to sustain the belief in their BS.

    But it is amusing to see the little boys here stewing in their ignorance.

    And if you had even a little bit of an independent brain you could go see for yourself… leaked phone calls as blatant as you like, US own politicians confirm the US meddling role and so forth. But of course the truth is treason in the land of religious ignorance.

    [Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine.]

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-eu-clash-on-how-to-install-a-puppet-regime-in-ukraine-victoria-nuland/5367794

  2. I hear Abbott and Hockey have come up with a new policy. It’s apparently to be called “PensionChoices”.

    The gist of it is that you can choose to continue to work and than receive a pension once you reach age 70 … or not.

    Your choice.

  3. “@ABCNews24: Barbara Keys from @unimelb: US options very limited. There’s no appetite in the US for military intervention in support of #Ukraine.”

  4. Boerwar@549

    Don’t forget that Putin is a crack shot, a gifted equestrien, a feeder of milk to a baby moose, a whale researcher, a snowmobile driver, a water bombing pilot, saviour of endangered tigers and archaeologist.

    Dismembering the Ukraine is going to be детские игрушки.

    Tiny Abbotts long lost twin Brother ?

  6. PO:

    Co-existing with PensionChoices is likely to be SuperannuationChoices. Same deal though: you can choose to retire at 65, but forget about accessing your super until age 70.

    Your choice.

  7. “@ABCNews24: Barbara Keys: There is a real deep-seated sense among Russians of longing to be a superpower again and Putin is feeding into that #Ukraine”

  11. Oooooh.

    I did so NOT say it was OK to invade a state. NOR did I say that it was OK to topple a democratically elected government by non-democratic means.

    Both have happened. But using either as a basis for resolving the by-now intractable situation in the Ukraine.

    A very brief look at Ukrainian history is that it has spent most of the past 1,000 years as part, sometimes several parts, of various other entities.

    The Principality of Hutt River has a more stable history than the Ukraine.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine

    The current Ukrainian Government totally lacks legitimacy in substantial (mostly eastern) sections of the Ukraine.

    There are various ways to define the problem.

    My preference is to be rational about it and recognise the most basic salient fact: lots of Ukrainians would much rather be part of the Russian Federation and lots of them would rather die than be part of the Russian Federation. In this important sense the US, the EU and Russia are essentially peripheral players.

    Killing people to make them stay Ukrainian or to stop them turning into Russian Federationists is, historially, a very silly option.

    The common sense solution is to organise referenda, district by district. Each referendum would have two options: the district to stay with the Ukraine or to go to the Russian Federation, possible as a new country: New Ukraine.

    Simple majority rules.

    There might need to be minor and practical rejigging of boundaries, etc, etc.

    Those individuals totally unhappy with the democratic outcomes would be facilitated to get on boats and sail to Christmas Island.

  12. [Hostility to Putin and the Russians is a poor guide to what’s happenong]

    I think you are dead right here. Hatred of Putin and Russia is the only thing informing many comments here, and desperation they can always refer back Stalin (Russia’s Godwin law).

    It is in the nature if you challenge the US actions you are a lover of Stalin, Putin, Russia etc.

    The US and Russia are as biggest thugs as each other… just that one pretend more to be about liberty democracy rule of law etc….

  13. guytaur [quoting TP]

    “The people protesting in the Ukraine that saw the President flee to Russia were not all CIA agents”

    Of course not. Some of them were Mossad!

  15. Poroti, Can-Nots just jealous that he doesn’t have a throbbing piece of metal of his own to put between his legs

  17. Vale Brian Harradine

    30 years a Senator after a career in the union movement, including being on the executive of the ACTU and being expelled for being DLP and anti-Communist.

    My memory of Harradine was when I was on staff at Parliament House, and I had taken my small kids in one day for lunch in the then subsidised cafeteria.

    Walking past Harradine in the corridor leading to the caf, he was in conversation with a group of suited men. He spotted my kids, broke away from the group, walked over and greeted the kids like he was their grandfather, making a fuss over their attendance and appearance.

    He seemed much happier with the kids than the suits. After all, he had 13 himself.

    The other abiding memory was when he said ‘I cannot’ to the GST, before. Meg Lees and the Democrats waved it through.

  18. bludgers might like to visit these sites for some data on global temperatures…

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

    This table is fascinating, showing temperature anomalies for each month, half-year and quarter since 1880 until March 2014. It is updated monthly. It illustrates that while 1998 was indeed a very hot year, it is fallacious to assert there has been no warming since then.

    The temperature anomalies in the months of February and June 1998 remain the highest for all February and June months recorded so far. However, in the remaining 10 months, the anomalies of 1998 have been exceeded in all cases in succeeding years, usually in more than one year, and 2010 is quite obviously the year with the greatest anomalies (highest temps) when considered as a single 12-month phase. Even so, in 2013 in 4 months the temperature anomalies exceeded those of the same months in 2010 and equaled the anomaly in another month, showing the warming tend is continuing.

    The data is just completely persuasive. Temperatures continue to increase. Assertions to the effect that warming has ceased are plain false.

  20. s

    Harradine’s main contribution was to help construct a few twists and turns in the economic blind alley of Tasmania’s cargo cult.

    The Van Diemanonians have reached the FFS! stage of the Cargo Cult: the bit where the planes stop dropping manna from heaven.

    It will be interesting to see how they cope now that the Australian Government is being run by Ultra Small Government Ideologues.

  22. Confessions

    There is no doubt Australia’s pension no superannuation system is out of synch. This was a question in the Fairfax money pages at the weekend:

    “My wife is 70, I am 76, and we retired two years ago. We have $850,000 in a self-managed super fund in pension phase and draw down $36,000 per year; our home is owned outright. Our combined Centrelink payment has recently been substantially reduced to $380, for reasons we don’t understand.”

    Now I don’t happen to think that a couple with that much money in superannuation should be getting an extra top up of $190. Week from the government, but the writer is complaining that the the pension has been substantially reduced!

    Somebody should tell these people that they won’t be able to take the money with them!

    But the Tories will know that they will interfere with this largess at their peril.

  26. I think that if Bronwyn Bishop can work past 70 then the rest of us should just follow her example.

    Mind you, she is showing distinct symptoms of early onset Alzheimers.

  27. Seems AWH was paying 2GB for advertising, advertising what we have no idea – yet.

    I assume the first question to BoF tomorrow will be “why did you approve AWH getting the contract bazza?”

  29. Hmmmm….

    Falsified documents as work arounds for the end-to-end supply chain accountability that was supposed to protect Australian animals from cruelty.

    Joyce is going to have to bend some more bananas to get round that one.

  30. While not drawing too long a bow, I would guess the position of America/the West vis-a-vis the Ukraine/Russia, is much the same as Britain and France vis-a-vis Germany and the Sudatenland in the late 1930s.

    When there is a large minority/majority who are happy to swap sides, there is not much the Western Powers can really do about it.

    The concern is, where next? Some of the Baltic states have large Russian speaking minorities who would be happy to belong to Mother Russia again.

    This brings us back to Poland – where once large numbers of Poles, before WW2 actually lived/worked in what is now modern Ukraine.

    I think the Russians would be happy to border Poland again but the Poles would be very, very nervous, especially if pressure were brought to bear on the Baltic states.

    The Poles are not for turning as they have had a long history of being dominated by either Russia or German.

    That is why the following joke – a Polish one, resonates…

    A Polish officer has the task of shooting a Russian and then a German. He shoots the Russian first and the German second.

    As he puts it: “Business before pleasure”.

    The beauty of this joke it works just a well the other way round with the German being shot first.

    Looks like the East-West thing in Europe is still an issue.

  32. By way of background it was the industry that voluntarily, summarily and suddenly suspended the live trade to Bahrain and Egypt.

    Some of you might recall the way in which the erstwhile Labor Government was excoriated by the very same industry players for doing the very same to the Indonesian live trade.

    The Industry has only recently unsuspended the trade so the current stuff is very, very fresh.

  35. Falsifying the documents is, of course, a criminal activity.

    It will be interesting to see whether someone ends up before the beak.

  37. Oh, the interview just hit an on water operational type situation… the CEO could not talk about the answer to a certain, rather pointed, question.

  39. Rossmcg@572

    I am in no position to question the veracity of your quote but as I understand it, once the draw-down phase of an account based pension comes into being, there is a requirement that once the age of 70 is hit, the draw down has to be 5% of the total per annum which would make the draw down for your two 70 year olds $42,000/43,000 pa.

    The real benefit of a part pension is the Health Card with the money being secondary for these souls.

  43. rossmcg:

    Need for reform aside, given any implemented changes are most likely to be ‘grandparented in, it won’t be the current crop of retirees, or even soon-to-be-retirees who are inconvenienced by legislative changes.

    It’ll be people my age who structured their retirement savings plan towards retiring at 60, or even earlier who will find ourselves now unable to access our super until age 70.

    How well those people accept any changes will rely on how well the govt sells the need for change, and whether people my age are even thinking about their retirement savings plans.

  44. @ rossmcg 572

    No kidding. Someone with nearly a million bucks in super and who owns their home outright is hardly the most needy recipient of the aged pension. I support the proposed measure to include privately-held homes in the assets test for the aged pension – it is, after all, true that aged pensioners who own their own homes have smaller expenses than those who are renting.

    Still, it’s going to be useful political ammo against the Abbott government – a broken promise it is, after all.

  45. [588
    Boerwar

    briefly
    Not to worry. It is not highly infectious.
    589]

    Yeah, I know. It’s a chronic condition though, persistent, like tinea.

  47. briefly:

    I love how the owners of the site feel the need to remind viewers they’re looking at earth.

    Cause I’m sure there are some out there who might they’re looking at the moon, or Saturn or something! 😀

  48. Maybe the Ukraine should once again simply be split between the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Teutonic Knights, the Jagiellonians, the Ottoman Empirians, the Belarussians, the Crimean Tartars, the Russians and the Golden Horde.

  49. Boerwar
    [

    briefly
    Not to worry. It is not highly infectious. ]
    Actually it is very infectious. It is just that National voters have a genetically acquired immunity and Liberal grandees in childhood receive regular vaccinations at their Private Schools incubators.

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