Morgan: 54.5-45.5 to Labor

Morgan offers the first federal poll since the Christmas/New Year break, and while the Coalition is up, it’s unclear if this marks an improvement in its position or a correction after a rogue result last time.

Roy Morgan breaks the New Year polling drought with its regular face-to-face plus SMS polling compiled from surveys over the two previous weekends, in this case with a sample of 2622 (Morgan typically gets about 3000, so this might be seen as an insight into the challenges of polling over the holiday period). It is a better result from the Coalition than the previous poll conducted in early December, which had a rogue-ish 57.5-42.5 headline lead to Labor, compared with 53.5-46.5 at the poll in late November. This time the Labor lead is 54.5-45.5, from primary votes of 38.5% for both the Coalition (up 3.5%) and Labor (down 2.5%), 9.5% for the Greens (down two) and 2% for Palmer United (steady). When preferences are applied according to the 2013 election result rather than respondent allocation, Labor’s lead is 53-47, down from 56.5-43.5 last time and back where it was in late November.

UPDATE (Essential Research): Certainly no sign of any Coalition recovery in the debut Essential Research poll for the year, which being the first deviates from normal form in not being a rolling average combined two weeks of results. The poll has Labor leading 54-46 on two-party preferred, compared with 52-48 in the last poll of last year, from primary votes of 40% for Labor (up two), 38% for the Coalition (down two), 10% for the Greens (steady) and 2% for Palmer United (steady). Also featured are Essential’s monthly personal ratings, and here at least there is better news for Tony Abbott who reverses a slump in December to be up five points on approval to 37%, with disapproval down two to 53%. However, Bill Shorten is up four on approval to 39% and down six on disapproval to 33%, so perhaps this is festive cheer talking. Shorten remains ahead on preferred prime minister, although his lead has narrowed from 36-31 to 37-35. Further questions relate to penalty rates, and bode ill for the cause of deregulation. Eighty-one per cent support penalty rates as a basic principle with 13% opposed, 68% would oppose cutting them with 23% supportive, and only 18% believe encouraging employment would be the more likely result of doing so, compared with 63% for business making bigger profits.

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.

1,970 comments on “Morgan: 54.5-45.5 to Labor”

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  1. Three enlightning articles I’ve read on CH. The first two explain the mag, the last one AQ’s strategy.

    http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends
    [On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends
    11 janvier 2015 | Par Olivier Tonneau

    Three days ago, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Mohamed, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described as islamophobic, racist and even sexist. Countless other comments stated that Muslims were being ostracized and finger-pointed. In the background lurked a view of France founded upon the “myth” of laïcité, defined as the strict restriction of religion to the private sphere, but rampantly islamophobic – with passing reference to the law banning the integral veil. One friend even mentioned a division of the French left on a presumed “Muslim question”.

    As a Frenchman and a radical left militant at home and here in UK, I was puzzled and even shocked by these comments and would like, therefore, to give you a clear exposition of what my left-wing French position is on these matters.]

    http://junkee.com/the-problem-with-jesuischarlie/48456
    [The Problem With #JeSuisCharlie
    By Chad Parkhill 9/1/15

    In the wake of the armed attack by self-proclaimed Islamic fundamentalists on the headquarters of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which left ten of its staff and two policemen dead, a global solidarity movement has spontaneously emerged across social media, grouped under the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie.

    ……………………

    This may sound so obvious as to be almost redundant, but it bears repeating: Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine, therefore its satire doesn’t make much sense outside of the French context.]

    http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
    [Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris
    By Juan Cole | Jan. 7, 2015

    The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.]

  2. [How much will get shaved off the 53-47 adjusted figure to allow for the Labor bias?]

    About 1.5%.

    [Did this in fact eventuate?]

    Overall preference flows in total were almost identical to last time. However, the Greens’ share of the total non-major party vote was lower, so it would seem preference flows were a bit better to Labor this time. By must rough estimate, if you’d done a perfectly accurate poll on the primary vote before the election and applied 2010 preferences to it, Labor would have come out at 51.6% rather than the 52.0% they actually scored.

  3. Thanks sohar.

    I have been wondering whether Morgan might be on to something in asking electors to nominate their second preference. With the Abbott government being so unpopular it wouldn’t surprise me if their preferences took a hit at the next election.

  5. Next time you hear the Blood Oaf telling us “they hate us for our freedom” think of this as yet again…

    [GAZIANTEP, Turkey — A U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed at least 50 Syrian civilians late last month when it targeted a headquarters of Islamic State extremists in northern Syria, according to an eyewitness and a Syrian opposition human rights organization.

    The civilians were being held in a makeshift jail in the town of Al Bab, close to the Turkish border, when the aircraft struck on the evening of Dec. 28, the witnesses said. The building, called the Al Saraya, a government center, was leveled in the airstrike. It was days before civil defense workers could dig out the victims’ bodies.]

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/01/11/252671_us-airstrike-in-syria-may-have.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

  6. Darn, According to Kevin IPSOS had predicted as high as 75% to Labor in Vic – in 2010 it was 64% and ended up being 69.5%. If you add 64 and 75 together and divide by 2 you get 69.5. By that, I guess a good measure would be halfway between what happened last time and what people say now.

  7. Darn, scratch what I said earlier about Victorian preference flows. Thanks to Sohar pointing out KB’s numbers, I now see I’m in error. As KB rightly observes, the overall flow to Labor was not stable, but up from 64.0% to 69.8%. So applying 2010 preference flows to the 2014 election result actually gets you to 50.9-48.1, or a full point lower for Labor than the actual result.

  8. Thanks again sohar.

    I guess if we apply both William’s 1.5 bias adjustment and the preference adjustment to the 53-47, we end up just a tick under 52-48. (Unless of course I’m talking absolute rubbish).

  12. The period over Christmas and New Years is generally a slow one for economics and politics. But over this holiday period there were a few signals on the key economic battlegrounds for the next 12 months. And oddly, these signals seem to reinforce the perception that the government’s policies are unfair.

    http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2015/jan/12/welfare-gst-and-workplace-relations-are-the-governments-key-economic-battlegrounds

  13. Steve777@61

    In a national sample of 2,600 there would only be 50 or so Tasmanians, too small a sample to draw any conclusions.

    Indeed, and it shouldn’t be published without massive disclaimers. They may sometimes beef up the Tas sample then scale it down though.

  15. Caught about 10 seconds of Albrechtson’s interview with Howard on SKY — might have been longer, but I managed to change channels before I fell into a stupour…

  16. [confessions
    Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 at 9:12 pm | PERMALINK
    It appears Tony Abbott will try to expand the GST by replicating the campaign blueprint used by John Howard to introduce the tax in the first place. But what worked then might not work now, writes Paula Matthewson.    ]

    Have we seen any polling figures on how the public are likely to react to any attempt to expand, or lift the rate of, the GST?

  18. The average gap between Morgan’s last-election and respondent-allocated preferences started the term at about zero, rose gradually to about 0.6 points to Labor just before the Budget, shot up to about 1.6 in a few weeks after the Budget and has since dropped back to about 1.

    The danger in using the Victorian election as a test of respondent-allocated preferences is their baseline: that’s a comparison between preferences in Victoria in late 2010 and preferences in Victoria in late 2014. A similar change in preferencing happened federally between 2010 and 2013. Any difference in current federal intentions would be as compared to September 2013 rather than late 2010. Especially since the same change as happened in Victoria seems to have also happened in the 2013 federal election, it’s risky to suggest a similar change in federal preferencing has been added onto the 2013 one in a year and a bit.

    With the Morgans I slug their respondent-allocated figure 1.5 points. Sometimes I also modify it slightly based on the primaries; eg I’ve aggregated this one at 51.4 to Labor. (Not that it does anything yet as my aggregate is asleep until it has three new federal polls to work with, which may take a while as it can only eat one Essential at a time.)

  19. Darn:

    Not sure. If there hasn’t been already there’s sure to be polling in the wind on the issue.

    I’ve wondered about the timing of the GST chatter, so perfectly aligning with the Qld election that it looked for all intents and purposes to be a not so subtle whiteant of the Qld LNP.

  20. Darn

    Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 at 8:28 pm | Permalink

    Thanks again William. It gets better and better.

    So applying 2010 preference flows to the 2014 election result actually gets you to 50.9-48.1

    Better for whom? Certainly not average Australians, pensioners, students, disabled and unemployed. Not the manufacturing industry, renewable industry and we see need to see the full impact on Australia of the FTA’s

  22. Germany is running with renewables around 70% and the industry employs over 370,000.

    Australia should be a world leader in the technologies, particularly for solar. But sadly instead of being exporters will be importers of the technology

  23. AussieAchmed

    [
    Australia should be a world leader in the technologies, particularly for solar. But sadly instead of being exporters will be importers of the technology]
    Australia WAS a world leader in solar until the Rodent defunded it all. You will find in Germany , Japan , USA and China Aussie pioneers in the industry forced to leave the country due to this.

  24. [AussieAchmed
    Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 at 9:30 pm | PERMALINK
    Darn

    Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 at 8:28 pm | Permalink

    Thanks again William. It gets better and better.

    So applying 2010 preference flows to the 2014 election result actually gets you to 50.9-48.1

    Better for whom? Certainly not average Australians, pensioners, students, disabled and unemployed. Not the manufacturing industry, renewable industry and we see need to see the full impact on Australia of the FTA’s]

    Steady on Aussie. I’m on your side. I was suggesting that what William was telling us indicated that the Labor margin in the current polls may be better than first appears.

    As far as I’m concerned the sooner this bunch of misfits is removed from office the better.

  25. [Australia WAS a world leader in solar until the Rodent defunded it all. You will find in Germany , Japan , USA and China Aussie pioneers in the industry forced to leave the country due to this.]

    Yeah, but we’re leading the world in clean coal. Clean beautiful coal.

    Gangbusters!!

  27. [Australia WAS a world leader in solar until the Rodent defunded it all. ]

    Talk about politicising the economy. A leading tertiary future growth industry, ruined by the partisan idiocy of Howard and his followers.

    And they pretend to care about future generations and ‘debt’.

  28. lefty e

    The reasoning at the time was that $15 a barrel for oil was to be the “reality” forever and a day so renewables were a total “Why bother?” . The Seppos did the same.

  30. [And they pretend to care about future generations and ‘debt’.]

    They don’t pretend. They genuinely believe in the ‘old economy’ of yesteryear’s ‘technology’ and don’t see the point of clean energy from an economic future proofing perspective.

  31. Lousy reasoning when you have a climate crisis. I guess no-one tends to foresee the demise of their own position.

    Side note: they still managed to deliver us record high power prices for electricity, though that wasnt just the LNPs fault.

  32. And it’s worth noting that electricity prices have continued to increase, despite Abbott’s promise we’d all be better off, cost of living wise without carbon pricing.

    So where does that leave us now? In frickin numptyville.

  33. Achmed / William:

    [ I can’t recall when Labor got more seats in WA than the Coalition

    1990. ]

    Labor also nominally had 8 seats to 7 heading into the 2001 election (after the redistribution that created Hasluck). They lost Canning at the election, though.

  34. Diogenes

    I was for a while involved in clean energy , biogas and algae, a local coal fired power generator became interested in us.

    Out of formal meetings they were quite honest in admitting it was largely for cosmetic reasons rather than love of the environment. Greenwashing but hey we needed da moolah. The boss cocky engineer of the company was particularly scathing about the geosequestration option for “clean coal” . They had looked at that option before us.

    Removing CO2 from high volume gas flow is well known and developed. The LNG industry has been doing it for yonks. However the energy requirements are huge. The boss cocky engineer had calculated that it would use up over 1/3 of the power they generated to run such a carbon capture system.

    Then we move on to what to do to the captured CO2 . Where will you send it ? Coal fired power stations not likely to be near suitable geological structures.

  35. Diogenes@79

    Poroti

    I think between Howie, Rudd and Gillard we flushed about $500M down the toilet on the clean coal turkey.

    I was pretty annoyed about Labor falling for that one, but I suppose Mar’n was pushing it hard.

  38. poroti,

    [ Re Dutton. Perhaps a sign that Abbott is at heart insecure. Wary of giving the truly talented a chance to shine in case they became a rival. ]

    Blimey! They wouldn’t have to rate too highly to be a creditable threat to the Rabbott!

    He would probably feel insecure with around anyone less than 100 IQ! 😉

  46. A Brilliant article from the New Yorker on the Paris events and the problems for the west in re the long and destested history of colonialism in the islamic world over the past centuries
    Poroti and others may find this of note
    _____________

    http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_011015_Daily&CNDID=15965665&spMailingID=7412582&spUserID=MjY0MzU4NTA3MzAS1&spJobID=601158305&spReportId=NjAxMTU4MzA1S0

  47. Re GST

    Vic Premier Andrews made it clear yesterday that his govt will NEVER pass any legislation to permit any change in the CGT
    This would be required under Howard’s Act

    end of debate !!!

    but clever politics in Qland fior Labor

  48. 97

    Although the legislation requiring state consent can be changed without state consent, because the Commonwealth is not bound by such restrictive provisions. Even if state consent was required, which would mean a single sate could block change because of the equal taxation laws, the territories could still have their GST changed.

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