Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

Newspoll records a solid shift in Tony Abbott’s personal ratings in the wake of recent war and terrorism talk, although the yield on voting intention is rather slight.

The latest fortnightly Newspoll has Labor leading 51-49, which is down a point on last time and equal with the time before (and also the same as the ReachTEL poll conducted on Thursday). Primary votes are 41% for the Coalition (up two), 34% for Labor (down one) and 11% for the Greens (down three on last time, back to where they were the time before). Tony Abbott has enjoyed a big hike in his personal ratings, up six on approval to 41% and down two on disapproval to 52%, and he has gained a 41-37 lead on preferred prime minister after being level at 37-37 last time. Bill Shorten is up one on approval to 38% and steady on disapproval 43%. Hat-tip to GhostWhoVotes, and of course The Australian.

Also out today was the regularly fortnightly Morgan poll, covering a sample of 2922 respondents from two weekends of face-to-face and SMS polling. This recorded next to no change for the major parties on the primary vote – the Coalition on 38.5% and Labor on 37.5%, both up half a point on last fortnight – but has the minor parties moving in accordance with recent trends, the Greens being up 1.5% to 12% and Palmer United being down half a point to 4%. The previous poll was the only one recently published which failed to record a lift for the Greens, no doubt because half the survey period predated the bipartisan commitment to send military forces to Iraq. Labor gains half a point on both the respondent-allocated and previous election measures of two-party preferred, respectively leading 54.5-45.5 and 53.5-46.5.

UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research is steady at 53-47 to Labor, with Labor up a point on the primary vote to 39%, the Coalition steady on 39%, the Greens down one to 10% and Palmer United steady on 4%. Also featured is a biannual gauge of attributes of the various parties, recording little change for Labor since March apart from a six point drop on “clear about what they stand for”, while the Liberal Party has weakened across the board, particularly with respect to “keeps its promises” (down nine points), “divided” (up eight points) and “looks after the interests of working people” (down six points). The poll adds further to a somewhat confusing picture on the public attitudes to the Iraq commitment, with 52% expressing approval for sending military personnel versus 34% disapproval. However, 51% say doing so will make Australia less safe from terrorism, versus only 15% for more safe. Questions on industrial relations laws indicate broad satisfaction with the status quo, 30% saying current laws balance the interests of employers and workers, and a fairly even 23% and 17% believing they favour employers and workers respectively.

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.

1,151 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. [ William Bowe
    Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2014 at 5:49 pm | Permalink

    I was actually rather puzzled as to why that Funniest Home Video ISIL put out the other day singled out the “spiteful and filthy French” ]

    Plus the French had just started bombing them as well.

  3. Thanks William. I thought it was so but couldn’t find explicit confirmation on your methods page so decided to hedge as an alternative to possibly violating my promise to release that critically important piece (ho ho) last night.

    Now edited.

  4. [ singled out the “spiteful and filthy French” for special vitriol. ]

    Apparently the French had already bombed them by that stage i think, and maybe they think the French shower less often than they do??

  5. By the way I suspect PB stats would confirm this too: there seems to be a very strong inverse correlation between interest in federal polling articles and Tony Abbott’s popularity. Maybe it would be different if I spammed on blogs with right-leaning audiences too.

  8. India’s Mars Orbiter Mission successfully entered Mars’ orbit Wednesday morning, becoming the first nation to arrive on its first attempt and the first Asian country to reach the Red Planet.

    All this was done with a budget of $74 million costing a mere fraction of the $671 million NASA spent on its MAVEN spacecraft, which arrived to Mars earlier this week. It should also be noted that India’s Mars orbiter cost less than the $100 million budget for the space thriller film “Gravity.”

    Meanwhile our scientists are cleaning floors.

  11. William Bowe
    [
    I was actually rather puzzled as to why that Funniest Home Video ISIL put out the other day singled out the “spiteful and filthy French” for ]
    Must be some Monty Python and the Holy Grail fans amongst the ISIS chaps.

  13. I read somewhere that the ISIS dudes were most peeved that the US and it’s allies chosen method of engagement was dropping bombs from on high.

    They were whingeing that their preferred method of engagement was fighting on the ground and that it was unsportsmanlike/weak/unmanly for the US to be doing what they are doing.

  15. guytaur@957

    KB

    Andrew Bolts would be a good start. Just remember you might end up with an invite to explain polls to the Bolt Report audience.

    I think I can only in good conscience spam on sites that I at least sometimes bring myself to read. Bolt’s isn’t one of those – I only go there when alerted to his latest usually nonsensical offering by righties or outraged lefties.

  16. Rudd seems to have a long memory

    [“Consistent with the past, Mr Rudd has no substantive comment to make on Ms Gillard’s latest contribution to Australian fiction,” the statement says.

    “The Australian people have long reached their own conclusions about Ms Gillard’s relationship with the truth — from the coup to the carbon tax.

    “They have also reached their own conclusions on Ms Gillard’s continuing efforts to reconstruct a justification after the event for her actions in June 2010, by trying to dress up personal political ambition as some higher purpose for the party and the government.”]

  18. [Rob Oakeshott ‏@RobOakeshott1 4h
    People in Port Macquarie raising this qtn today – why is an Ironman race in Port Macq. at taxpayer expense ok, but visiting wineries not ok?]

  20. Diogs,

    When Rudd addresses his own conduct post the coup, then I’ll be interested in what he has to say on “efforts to reconstruct a justification after the event for their actions”.

    I am happy to accept Gillard’s personal version of events to date. No doubt there will be counter views and I’ll read those too. However, I’ll wait for a few more facts from Kevvie before I get overwhelmed with his whinges.

    Christmas might be one long readfest at this stage.

  21. Diogs

    As you know, I’m a neutral in this.

    The fact he’s still so bitter makes me think he could easily have been undermining Gillard all that time.

  22. Dio

    You are not taking into account the third person in that room and he true to form will not be writing any book and will never say what went on in 2010.

    Trust me!

  31. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-24/airstrikes-only-opening-move-in-fight-against-extremists.html

    [The U.S. opened its offensive against extremist strongholds inside Syria with a salvo of powerful weaponry, from Tomahawk missiles to F-22 Raptor stealth fighters making their combat debut.

    Now comes the hard part.

    For all the dazzle of precision strikes recorded on video and aired by the Pentagon, technology alone can’t overcome the challenges ahead. Among them: weak allies on the ground, an Iraqi nation riven with sectarian and ethnic tensions, a chaotic civil war in Syria and uncertain cooperation from Turkey, a key regional power.

    Defense and intelligence analysts said it will do little good if the U.S. defeats the Islamic State only to see a successor rise from the ashes, just as of the militants now in U.S. bombsights emerged from the collapse of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

    Al-Qaeda’s Heirs

    “Destroying stuff is the relatively easy part,” said Paul Pillar, a former intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the Central Intelligence Agency. “The really tough stuff is coming up with political solutions.”]

  32. Cameron letting the cat out of the bag: “she [the Queen] purred down the line”.

    [U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron was caught on microphone talking about the reaction of Queen Elizabeth II when he spoke to her about the result of last week’s Scottish referendum.

    The lapse, caught on a pooled television camera recording a visit to Bloomberg LP’s headquarters in New York today, is a breach of protocol by Cameron because communications between the prime minister and the queen, who is the head of state, are traditionally kept private.

    “The definition of relief is being the prime minister of the United Kingdom and ringing the queen and saying ‘It’s alright, it’s OK.’ That was something,” Cameron told Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York who is the majority owner of Bloomberg. “She purred down the line.”]

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-23/cameron-slips-over-queen-purring-in-breach-of-protocol.html

  40. [Google (GOOG) will stop working with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council because of its stance on climate change. Responding to a caller’s question on Diane Rehm’s National Public Radio show, the tech giant’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, said his company had funded ALEC in support of “something unrelated. … I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake, and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.”

    ALEC pushes model state bills on issues ranging from supporting charter school expansion and right-to-work laws to inhibiting lawsuits over asbestos or drug-testing. The group claims more than 2,000 state legislators and almost 300 corporations or private foundations as members. Right now, Google is one of those members. After Schmidt’s comments, Google confirmed it would not be renewing its membership once it expires at the end of the year…

    Google isn’t the first to succumb to such public pressure. Microsoft (MSFT) confirmed last month that it had left ALEC, and the progressive group Common Cause says corporations including Coca-Cola (KO), Bank of America (BAC), and General Motors (GM) have done the same. The Center for Media and Democracy, a foundation-funded progressive nonprofit, says at least 80 corporations have publicly dropped their ALEC affiliations since 2011, when it launched its ALEC Exposed website to track the group’s activities and the name-brand companies that help fund them. Common Cause and CMD were among 55 organizations, mostly labor and liberal groups, that sent a letter to Google earlier this month urging it to dump ALEC.]

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-23/google-cuts-ties-with-alec-over-climate-change-lying#r=lr-sr

  42. Seriously nasty and ungracious words from Rudd tonight. He should watch how he behaves or else someone in the Press Gallery might be tempted to break rank and spill the beans on some stuff that has been hidden up to now.

  43. meher baba@992

    Seriously nasty and ungracious words from Rudd tonight. He should watch how he behaves or else someone in the Press Gallery might be tempted to break rank and spill the beans on some stuff that has been hidden up to now.

    What are you talking about? Any link?

  48. [Seriously nasty and ungracious words from Rudd tonight.]

    I don’t know what you’d expect. His vindictiveness and petty spitefulness has been on display for at least 4 years now.

  49. Bemused@997. “Is that all”!!!???!!!

    I can’t recall ever seeing one former politician dump on another from the same side in that way: it leaves what Peacock had to say about Howard for dead.

    I thought it was a hoax story when I first saw it.

  50. Meher

    We see things differently. If someone had dumped on me just as JG has just done, I think I would not have been so restrained as Rudd was. He simply stated the obvious which everyone other than 10 or so people on PB understand.

    Gillard has done a Latham and it does her no credit.

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