Newspoll: 57-43 to Labor

Newspoll matches Galaxy in the scale of the disaster for the Coalition, and exceeds anything seen previously with respect to Tony Abbott’s personal ratings.

The eagerly awaited pre-spill Newspoll concurs with Galaxy in having Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43, from primary votes of 35% for the Coalition, 41% for Labor and 12% for the Greens. The Coalition result is down three points on the last Newspoll of December 12-14, and one point lower than Galaxy; Labor’s is up two, and two points lower than Galaxy; and the Greens’ is steady, and one point higher than Galaxy. The previous Newspoll result was 54-46 on two-party preferred. Phillip Hudson’s paywalled report on the Newspoll result in The Australian can be read here; the tables are featured on The Australian’s website here.

Tony Abbott’s personal ratings are 24% satisfied and 68% dissatisfied, for a net satisfaction rating of minus 44%. In a history going back to 1985, the only occasions when Newspoll produced a worse result for a Prime Minister were when Julia Gillard recorded minus 45% in the poll of September 2-4, 2011, and in four polls under Paul Keating from August to October in 1993. Alexander Downer had two worse results as Opposition Leader near the end of his tenure in December 1994, and Andrew Peacock matched it in a poll conducted during the 1990 election campaign. Bill Shorten leads Abbott as preferred prime minister by 48-30, up from 44-37 last time, a result surpassed only by a 20% lead for Alexander Downer over Paul Keating during the former’s short-lived honeymoon period in July 1994. Shorten is up five on approval to 42% and down three on disapproval to 40%.

Head-to-head questions on the Liberal leadership find Malcolm Turnbull favoured over Abbott by 64-25 and Julie Bishop favoured 59-27, while Turnbull is favoured over Bishop by 49-38. The poll was conducted from Friday to today from a sample of 1178.

UPDATE: To follow today’s action as it unfolds, you could do quite a lot worse than to tune in to Crikey’s Liberal leadership spill live blog.

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.

1,041 comments on “Newspoll: 57-43 to Labor”

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  1. TrueBlueAussie@793

    William, my biggest issue with SMH isn’t just the amount of stories they write on Abbott(a couple every day) it’s also the fact the headline almost never matches the content of the article.

    It’s pure click bait for the twitter generation.

    As to my preferred online source of news surprisingly it’s The Guardian. At least they don’t pretend to be something they aren’t and stick with a story for longer than 10 minutes.

    Newsflash! Media outlet attempts to sell newspaper through headlines!

  2. Falling back on semantics is usually a sign that your position is weak, TBA. You might think that today’s vote wasn’t a vote on Abbott’s leadership but, to everyone else, the implications are as plain as day.

    Hmmm… Can’t read between the lines, even when it’s painfully obvious. Who’s dumb, again?

  3. ALAN – If you can lay your hands on guy rundle’s article in today’s crickey it explains wonderfully how the liberal party is a complete ideological mess. But that’s hardly surprising. When it ceased to become a mass-participation party it was easy for the freaks to take over and run a nutty agenda. Now the electorate is going to have to discipline them, savagely.
    Could someone tell me: what does the modern Liberal Party stand for?
    On the other hands, how interesting that, throughout all of Labor’s travails it was never about policies (because Labor is a coherent party). It was always about the polls.

  5. @800 – Don’t be deliberately bone-headed. Everyone knows this was a proxy vote.

    Apart from you?

    Are you Michael Kroeger?

  7. Without a challenger at all almost 40% of the liberal party wanted to remove Abbott from the leadership – that is not just a x would be better to lead than Abbott!!!

  9. The SMH’s big problem is that “newspaper” readerships out there are splitting up on ideological grounds. In the old days, when the SMH was the only game in town, they could cater to different political perspectives, because there was nowhere else to go. Now they are going to be increasingly forced to sell to a particular segment of the market (as the Guardian does).

  11. TrueBlueAussie@800

    “So the 39 wanted a leadership spill so thay could vote for Abbott? LOL”


    Totally conceivable. There are some people in the LNP who would like to see it go to a vote to put an end to the Turnbull ambitions and put the leadership thing to bed.

    I’m not saying everyone who voted that way did so for that reason but it’s a long bow to draw that calling for a vote means that they don’t support Abbott. It’s not proven.

    It would be disastrous for pro-Abbott members to vote for the spill and then a contender ends up winning, or if the margins are close enough that it doesn’t give the leader much confidence.

    For example, John Gorton.

  12. TBA already has locked down the award for straw clutching posts of the year; nobody could possibly come close!

    What a complete mess and listening to QT not a thing has changed; just more of the same! I say keep digging!

  14. TBA

    Abbott opposed the spill motion and directed everyone on his front bench to vote against it. Therefore every vote for the spill was a vote against what Abbott wanted and thus a vote against Abbott.

  16. TrueBlueTosser

    [Totally conceivable. There are some people in the LNP who would like to see it go to a vote to put an end to the Turnbull ambitions and put the leadership thing to bed.]

    This enterprising hypothesis is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Abbott and his backers fought tooth-and-nail to stop the spill.

  17. [TrueBlueAussie

    Posted Monday, February 9, 2015 at 2:52 pm | Permalink

    “So the 39 wanted a leadership spill so thay could vote for Abbott? LOL”

    Totally conceivable. There are some people in the LNP who would like to see it go to a vote to put an end to the Turnbull ambitions and put the leadership thing to bed.

    I’m not saying everyone who voted that way did so for that reason but it’s a long bow to draw that calling for a vote means that they don’t support Abbott. It’s not proven.
    ]

    If that’s true, surely a STRONG confident leader would call a spill of leadership positions and put the challengers to bed.

  22. TBA

    so you like it at The Guardian where they headlines like “this result is not good news for pm” and “Abbott’s legacy is a hairball in the throat of body politic” and “How the real Abbott disappeared in 2013” and “tony Abbott is in trouble because he never let the junkyard dog go”

  28. [Totally conceivable. ]

    Yes, it can be conceived of, well done.

    Since this is pseph blog, why not try associating a probability with that assertion?

    Let’s start with a simple query: Is the chance that some in the LNP organised a “vote to put an end to the Turnbull ambitions and put the leadership thing to bed” greater or less than 0.1? Waddayoureckon?

  29. KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@809

    The SMH’s big problem is that “newspaper” readerships out there are splitting up on ideological grounds. In the old days, when the SMH was the only game in town, they could cater to different political perspectives, because there was nowhere else to go. Now they are going to be increasingly forced to sell to a particular segment of the market (as the Guardian does).

    I would think in the old days, there are a lot of smaller papers and there’s a fair bit of competition, before most of them got gobbled up or have closed shop.

  32. Just Me@826

    No confidence motion by Shorten.


    Did Abbott as LOTO ever actually call for one, let alone follow through with it?

    I believe it only got as far as suspending standing orders to start a vote on a motion. Don’t think any passed.

  35. Labor has thrown the gauntlet with a vengeance.

    Its going to be very hard for the anyone to spin for Abbott against these truths

  36. Warning for those with stitches…..

    I just bumped into a rusted on Liberal voter friend. He said he expected that Abbott would “take it all on board” and he expressed hope that Turnbull would now be made treasurer.

  38. @ 832

    Abbott used to ritualistically call for a suspension of standing orders (to move a no confidence motion) almost every Question Time. He timed it so it would occur right as Question Time cut to Play School.

    It looks like Shorten is copying the trick. Good on him. Although Question Time now cuts to “Bed of Roses” at 3:15, so he’s not going to catch quite as many parents with the trick.

  40. “@srpeatling: Hope PM doesn’t accidentally say it’s a good govt that has lost its way. That would be most awkward.”

  48. Pink Batts killed people????

    Please – the level of debate is that of a infant school.

    Here we go stopped the boats, carbon tax and attack Labor they have NOTHING this govt is a disgrace.!

  49. “@tim_chr: Abbott is accusing Labor of “not being man enough”. Is that because they have more than 2 women on their front bench? #qt”

  50. [Reminder – Abbott you are in Government not opposition.]

    Same old third-rate cliches. It doesn’t travel well in office.

    But then, I thought he was rubbish as oppo leader too. he just happened to be there when the ALP fell over. Got a totally undeserved reputation as an ‘effective’ opposition performer – when he was always just an also-ran.

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