The latest quarterly reading of state voting intention in Western Australia from Newspoll, and the last that will emerge from the existing Newspoll organisation, shows Labor maintaining its 52-48 lead on two-party preferred. However, they are down two points on the primary vote to 33% while the Liberals and Nationals remain steady on 40%, with the Greens also steady on 14%. Labor leader Mark McGowan’s strong personal ratings have also taken a knock, with approval down four points to 49% and disapproval up five to 33%. Colin Barnett’s standing has also worsened, with approval down two to 36% and disapproval up four to 57%. McGowan maintains his lead as preferred premier, at 43-37 compared with 44-38 last time. Full tables from The Australian here.
Solid result at this point of the electoral cycle, I should think.
For Labor, that is.
The ALP in WA still haven’t bothered to learn the lessons of 2008, one of their most effective performers has gone to the backbench, the leader makes Shorten look exciting and still they have a narrow lead. Shows how bad Barnett is.
Time will tell…there is this Federal election in 2016 (perhaps earlier?) which may have an impact on the 2017 outcome in WA.
It is clear people are sour with Barnett, but then the LOTO is hardly getting lots of cheers either.
Looking at the chooks’ entrails I would be surprised if Barnett leads the Libs if things go badly for Abbott and even so, I would expect him to up stumps not too far away in any event.
The questions to McGowan tend now to be couched in the “Well, what will you do in government?” rather than “If you should win government?” types.
What Sandgropia really wants is iron ore prices at around $150 a tonne and all is forgiven.
Who knows, with the opening of the new footy stadium, more money spent around the casino, a new truck freeway to Freo – and let’s not forget Betty’s Jetty – the sun might continue to shine on the LNP?
[Who knows, with the opening of the new footy stadium, more money spent around the casino, a new truck freeway to Freo – and let’s not forget Betty’s Jetty – the sun might continue to shine on the LNP?]
I would be very surprised if the goodies actually get votes, and based on the Max light rail and Ellenbrook railway Barnett cannot make any credible promises. He should be gone and if WA Labor wasn’t so diabolically bad it would be a certainty, but the same clowns that brought you Carpenter (and thereby gave us 8 years of Barnett) still run the circus of the mediocre.
Question from a person east of the Nullarbor.
What role does the media in the west have in this?
A pet hate of mine is over-reporting of 2PP figures.
The vote for ‘Others’ was 5.3% in 2013, 2.9% for Independents, 1.8% for Australian Christians and 0.6% for Family First. In this poll it has reached 13%. There do not appear to be any new political parties, so who is going to attract this extra 8%? I very much doubt it will end up with Others unless a significant new party comes along.
Most of those ‘Others’ will end up voting for one of the established parties. The 2PP calculation in this poll assumes they will split as preferences according to 2013 flows.
Most of those people are parked in Others. They might go back to the Liberals where they no doubt came from, or they might switch to Labor. But I bet they don’t end up voting for ‘Other’.
A high vote for ‘Other’ in between-election polls is like adding an extra couple of percent to the error margin on the 2PP.
WWP @3:
[The ALP in WA still haven’t bothered to learn the lessons of 2008, one of their most effective performers has gone to the backbench, the leader makes Shorten look exciting and still they have a narrow lead. Shows how bad Barnett is.]
I’ve actually met McGowan. I actually consider him a decent person – I was working a particular polling place for the Greens at the WA Senate re-vote, and McGowan turned up to encourage the Labor volunteers (it’s in his electorate). But he had a smile and a nice word for us too, and even for the Liberal poll-workers.
Truthfully, between everyone’s positive attitude (yes, even the Libs’ poll workers!) at that polling place, I left with a renewed optimism for our politics overall – not that it lasted long with Abbott in charge.
[Truthfully, between everyone’s positive attitude (yes, even the Libs’ poll workers!) at that polling place, I left with a renewed optimism for our politics overall – not that it lasted long with Abbott in charge.]
Maybe he is ok, being opp leader is hard. In his early days in P I saw him in Lycra hard for him to recover from that.
WWP
You will not get any disagreement from me from the damage done by Alan Carpenter. He had the right idea to clear out the dead wood but it was jobs for the boys and girls in various Labor offices who licked their lips.
A lot of good Labor candidates, who just might have made the difference, did not get a look in.
That Labor has lost Morley twice is a disgrace. True there were some factors relating to the poor treatment/effort of the local member at the time, but Morley? If ever there is a seat which is one Labor has to win, surely this is it?
Meanwhile at the last election, the local Liberal candidate had a truck and trailer with his name emblazoned on it parked near where I leive. No one was in doubt as to who the Lib candidate was.
I doubt whether anyone could have named the Labor candidate for the same seat.
SM@6
One newspaper town here…owned by Stokes outfit. No friend of Labor but the West tends to be a chronicle rather than a paper and is nowhere near (now) the anti-Labor poison it once was with its former editor.
Mind you Paul Murray, our local one, is a frequent mouthpiece for the Libs though he though Abbott should go a few months ago. He seems to have shifted a bit on this one lately.
Very hard to get excited about the next election in WA. The state badly needs serious investment in public transport but nobody can promise anything until Abbott goes. The government hasn’t done a terrible job but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who could credibly replace Barnett, and the opposition has no new ideas and is taking a very opportunistic attack on budget deficits.
The WA Greens, despite being the organisation that gave us Ludlam, are barely heard from and are missing some serious opportunities to get into both majors on future planning.
I don’t pretend to know much about WA politics, but I note that McGowan has a net approval rating of 16 (even after a net loss of 9 since the last poll). This compares with the Premier’s net approval of negative 21 (having fallen 6). William also reports that McGowan has maintained a 6 point margin as preferred Premier.
I seem to recall that it is very rare for an Opposition leader to enjoy such an advantage on these metrics. Yet posters here seem very dismissive of his prospects.
I’d acknowledge that approval/disapproval and preferred Premier/PM doesn’t mean much if it is contradicted by Party numbers (noting Antony Green’s caution about this 2PP). That apparently isn’t the case here.
What is this obsession with people wanting to find politicians exciting? Why does it matter one bit that McGowan is a bit boring? I’d much prefer him to be honest and maybe relatable, I’m looking for a person to run the state not come round for a barbie.
[The government hasn’t done a terrible job but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who could credibly replace Barnett, and the opposition has no new ideas and is taking a very opportunistic attack on budget deficits.]
Well I disagree, the Government really has done a terrible job. We are coming out of a boom into possible recession, we don’t have the light rail, we don’t have the Ellenbrook rail link and we don’t have anything visionary like MetroNet. We don’t even have a proper public hospital in Midland and Fiona Stanley doesn’t seem to have been executed well. We will have Lizzy’s pond and Packers Arena, both of which aren’t quite right. We are currently in a State assets fire sale. Yeah everything is going swimmingly.
The opposition should probably have other ideas as well, and if we paid more attention they have probably shared them, but Metronet was visionary for Perth, a combination of infrastructure to catchup to where we should be now plus the links and and structure of the City for at least a couple of decades to come, maybe more.
[Meanwhile at the last election, the local Liberal candidate had a truck and trailer with his name emblazoned on it parked near where I leive. No one was in doubt as to who the Lib candidate was.]
Labor definitely hates (and largely successfully avoids) local candidates with a local profile and god forbid entirely a passion for the local area. Need to be a mate or relative of one of a few union bosses with no passion for anything but self advancement. Labor is very lucky the Liberals are just as dumb with preselection and how very very poor the candidates (and some members) the liberals roll out are. A brilliant candidate in Kate Lamont last time and they rejected her, but again she had a brain and a passion for Perth.
Perhaps both parties only like mediocre to actually stupid because they don’t rock the boat or challenge the fools running the place.
@ Shea McDuff #6
You should think about the West Australian in the same way you would The Hun or The Daily Terror. I thought The West was a rag until I lived on the east coast and experienced The Hun and The Daily Terror.
I had heard many times that the Limited News rages were bad. To be worse than The West (and I don’t only mean it’s political coverage) is commendable, and not in a way that Limited News should be proud of.
Re Antony’s post 7, overly high Others or at times Greens (anyway third-party votes in general being overly high) have been a common problem in Newspoll especially in the past several months. Suspect they’ll drop off when Galaxy takes over. And I agree – some of these Others are clearly not real Others voters and it’s hard to know how to read the poll unless we know where they came from and where they might be going.
Peter (#13) – it is indeed rare for an Opposition Leader to have a big Preferred Premier lead and usually when it happens a government would be well behind. At federal level it is not rare for an Opposition Leader to have a better netsat than a PM (happens about half the time) and I suspect ditto at state level, but haven’t checked.
Historically, state Premiers with netsats as bad as Barnett’s are at any point in their term nearly always either get rolled or lose. The same however doesn’t apply to Prime Ministers.
Tom L@12
The only good bit is that the WA elections will happen only some time after the next federal election. I’m sure McGowan will be campaigning hard for federal elections then.
Hope that State ALP gets some money in between now and the next election. Last time around they were outspent around 5 to 1, which certainly didn’t help. A massive payout to the outgoing State Secretary won’t help in that regard. ANyone have any inside information as to the likely successor?
Hopefully WA Labor have learnt something from the Joe Bullock fiasco, McGowan seems dull but competent. It very much seems like 2017 will be a close contest, but neither party can afford to make any large mistakes.
Boring but OK former minister becomes Labor leader late in the first term of opposition, has an even worse election than the one they lost govt in, and sticks around anyway. The election after that, the increasingly unpopular Lib govt gets belted and he becomes premier. (That’s happened before.)
Speaking of history repeating, if Rob Johnson runs as an independent in Hillarys, Labor could win it for the same reason the Libs won Morley in 2008. If Labor are still doing OK in the polls in early 2017 and he does so, it’s worth a punt.