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 thoughts on “Morgan: 54.5-45.5 to Labor”

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  4. So Essential shows Abbott well into negative approval and the Libs solidly behind on TPP. Shorten ahead on PPM, Net approval, and ALP ahead on TPP.

    Where oh where is ESJ?? 🙂

  6. Where oh where is ESJ?

    Must be a busy time at HQ, what with all the various crisis meetings etc…. no time to brief the foot soldiers.

  8. MTBW@235

    bemused

    Rundle: so many questions from Sydney Siege, but no adequate answers

    GUY RUNDLE
    Crikey writer-at-large


    Crikey today!

    Unfortunately, I am not at present a Crikey subscriber.

  9. Essential

    – A majority of COALition voters support the payment of penalty rates.

    – A majority of COALition voters oppose cutting penalty rates.

    The COALition is pushing the brown stuff uphill on this one, it is out of touch even with the majority of its own supporters.
    Looks like the money from the vested industry groups is more powerful than the support of the voters.

  11. Craig Thomler
    Speaking to Liberal only voter this morning: “Medicare changes will kill the Coalition gov. I won’t ever be voting Liberal again” #auspol

  12. bemused

    Twenty-eight days ago, just after two in the morning, customer Katrina Dawson and manager Tori Johnson were killed when the hostage stand-off in the Lindt Cafe at Martin Place was broken as police stormed the building. The hostage-taker, Man Haron Monis, was killed in that encounter. Now we know that Dawson, previously assumed to have been executed by Monis, was hit and possibly killed by police bullets as more than 25 officers stormed in. Police had initially claimed that she had died of a heart attack in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

    Tori Johnson’s death is unclear too. Police claimed that the shooting of him by Monis had triggered their assault. It has been reported, however, that Johnson was shot after the police assault began, and that Monis’ first shot was a warning shot.

    We’re learning some other disturbing facts about the siege and its end too — that the police were unwilling to let Muslim community leaders speak to Monis, that they had no clear strategy over whether to give Monis an Islamic State flag or not (for which he had said he would release a hostage) and that police had no ongoing contact with Monis for hours at a time during the siege.

    It is the last of these that is most disturbing. The core imperative of any hostage negotiation is to maintain a connection with the hostage-taker, and establish a relationship with him (or, much less commonly, her). This is especially so when hostages have been taken not by professional criminals, but by those who believe that they have been “driven” to such an act, and have no other choice.

    Monis certainly believed that. The would-be IS representative made all the right noises about jihad, but he was exercised about a lack of recognition by a quintessentially Australian institution — the High Court, which had rejected his appeal over a conviction relating to a series of poison-pen letters he had sent to the families of Australian servicemen.

    Such men are desperate for recognition and a hearing, and Monis was certainly desperate. A domestic abuser, and possibly a wife-killer, he had veered from ostentatious anti-Australian jihadism to (literally) waving the Aussie flag and claiming that his poison-pen letters had been in the spirit of “helpful advice”.

    Though he was clearly not insane in a legal sense, Monis was obviously disturbed and narcissistic, the type for whom a substantial negotiation exists. Put simply, if a hostage negotiator can establish a personal relationship with such a figure, convince them that they genuinely understand their troubles, and recognise their legitimacy, the hostage-taker has a good chance of being calmed down, releasing hostages for less than they had asked for, or for nothing at all, and often having their resolve completely broken. Having steeled themselves to violent action by developing a sense of isolation and superhuman bearing, an apparently real connection with a human being can deflate that resolve rapidly.

    First part of the story.

  13. bakunin @ 225

    @216

    Expect, perhaps, if you happen to be Muslim

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Goldstein
    ” He is known for being the mass murderer

    2

    who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125.”

    Two of the suspects in the kidnap and murder of Palestinian teenagers in July 2014 had ultra-orthodox backgrounds:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_and_murder_of_Mohammed_Abu_Khdeir

    I read Reddit this morning that this guy in the 90s started off the whole tit-for-tat violence between Israelis and Palestinians. I didn’t read that much further into it, but that would have been terrible indeed if it’s true.

  14. A two point move in the essential poll is huge given it’s continuous stability and failure to react to day to day political issues.

    Similarly, the Morgan Poll which is far more Labor friendly as a rule showing a 3 point swing to the Government is also counter intuitive. Admittedly, Morgan does tend to be more volatile than other polls.

    I’d be treating these early year polls with an iceberg of salt at this time.

  15. raaraa,

    If the guy is 10,000 years old, then there might be some credence to blaming one person for the continuing and escalating violence in the Middle East.

  16. A two point move in the essential poll is huge given it’s continuous stability and failure to react to day to day political issues.

    Though not as huge as it would normally be, since it’s not a rolling average this week.

  17. William Bowe@266

    A two point move in the essential poll is huge given it’s continuous stability and failure to react to day to day political issues.


    Though not as huge as it would normally be, since it’s not a rolling average this week.

    What’s the reason for that William?

  18. Re the co-payment for GP visits, I recall Abbott in one of his many statements (lies) prior to the last election say that he was the best friend that Medicare ever had. Does anyone else remember seeing that?

  19. hey bludgers – merry new festivus or whatever it is.

    Possums are well and truly settled in the city of banyule. I recently witnessed a whole family of five traversing along the power lines from the house to the street. Last week, one huge possum was on the ground at the back of my place. When it saw me, it did a mad dash for the back fence and disappeared amongst the foliage. You can call the “possum man” to help. No idea what the cost though

    They’ve probably been settled there for a very long time.

    Years ago when i lived in melbourne I was eating a kebab from Lambs while sitting against a tree in the exhibition gardens. It was well after dark.

    I looked up at one point and was surrounded by possums. There would have been at least 30, maybe more. What was weird was the way they were arranged. They were like spokes on a bike wheel. All standing a couple of metres apart one behind the other in a very regular array of rows. It was really creepy. They were standing there on their hind legs, looking like nuggety little people with possum masks on, all staring intently at me and the kebab. I think they were trying to intimidate me into leaving it for them. As if.

    We actually had a wild possum befriend us back at home (i’m on holiday in Melb, well Sunbury, right now). It used to come in thru the cat entry at night when we weren’t around and probably ate the cats food – must have done it for years. we’d heard it in the roof for as long as we’d lived there. One night it woke me up sniffing at my face. I pushed it off thinking it was the cat, rolled over onto the cat and suddenly realised something else had been sniffing at my face. That woke me up with a start.

    After that it was a regular visitor to the house and even let us pick it up sometimes, or pat it. It was an old animal and probably struggled to get food from the wild so it ate/stole the cats food and started raiding our kitchen compost bucket.

  23. jules,

    The power wires in Greensborough are a veritable possum Highway. As people civilise the place by cutting down the old trees, the little critters use them as an alternative means of transporting themselves.

    At the Lower Plenty Hotel you quite often see them foraging for food on tables.

  26. guytaur,

    You should have heard the GP from Geelong this morning on Morning radio. Basically, he runs a number of clinics and solely bulk bills. Now says he will not be doing this as the Government has reduced his servicing rebate from $36 to $16.

    This will be an unmitigated disaster for the Government.

  27. GG’

    Yes made worse by the fact the odds favour the Senate disallowing the regulations meaning patients may need to be refunded and doctors reimbursed for lost income.

  32. Tweet from Mumbles. lol!

    And for the final word, we go to that noted defender of robust satire, sans fear or favour, @chriskkenny.

  35. I give up just listening to the 4pm news and heard that three men attacked a man out of his wheel chair and stole it.

    How low some people can go just amazes me.

  36. They probably wanted his autograph.

    Jess Millward @JessMillward9
    · 23m 23 minutes ago
    Gold Coast cartoonist Larry Pickering visited by police after publishing controversial image following Paris attacks. @9NewsGoldCoast

  37. Raaraa @ 263

    Goldstein almost certainly had this in mind when he carried out his murders:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre

    The problem with any feud, especially in the middle east, is that all the participants can easily find a justification for violence. If the Israel-Palestine situation is ever to be resolved peacefully, all parties will have to draw a line under the past. I doubt this is possible. But nothing else will ever work when you have multiple peoples arguing for the same land.

  41. GG

    Gee i am surprised. I thought Pickering was currently focussed on organising his posse to pester Shorten and “those allegations”. Apparently, they were preparing to go to canberra when parliament rose to confront Shorten and ensure that the media got on board. In much the same way they forced the matter with JGillard and the AWU stuff.
    My feeling is that the likes of Pickering is a proxy for Newscorp

  43. Australians voted for Tony, and they were silly enough to believe his ‘No Cuts’ pledge.
    They don’t have a right to complain. They must suffer the consequences.

  46. Its good that the Senate is blocking him, but in a way it would almost be better if they didn’t.
    This country needs a round of extreme aversion therapy.

  48. Updated 20 Feb 2014, 12:15pmThu 20 Feb 2014, 12:15pm

    Related Story: Health Minister flags Medicare overhaul

    Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared the Coalition Government will be “the best friend Medicare has ever had” after Health Minister Peter Dutton flagged an overhaul of the system.

  49. Jun 23, 2014 – “This leopard doesn’t change its spots – I want this government to be, likewise, the best friend that Medicare has ever had” – Tony Abbott, …

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