Fairfax-Ipsos: 54-46 to Labor

Ipsos adds to the drumbeat of bad-to-terrible polling for the Abbott government.

Fairfax has gotten in early-ish with the results of its latest monthly Ipsos poll, which is well in line with recent form in having Labor leading 54-46 on two-party preferred, up from 53-47. The primary votes have Labor up one to 36%, the Coalition down one to 38%, the Greens steady at a still unusually high level of 16%, and Palmer United scoring one of their occasional showings at 2% rather than the more common 1%. Bill Shorten’s lead as preferred prime minister increases from 43-39 to 45-39 – approval ratings should be along later. A question on preferred Liberal leader has Malcolm Turnbull leading on 41%, Julie Bishop on 23% and Tony Abbott on 15%. Further findings: 69% support for same-sex marriage with 25% opposed; 58% believe the government is doing too little on climate change, with 32% opting for about right.

UPDATE: The approval ratings are interesting in showing a recovery for Bill Shorten, who is up four points on approval to 39% with disapproval down six to 49%. Tony Abbott on the other hand is mired at 59% disapproval, and down one on approval to 35%. Shorten has consistently done relatively well on net approval in Ipsos, which is presumably related to its lower uncommitted ratings. ReachTEL, it seems, gets still more positive for Shorten by eliminating an uncommitted option altogether.

UPDATE 2: The respondent-allocated preferences result records Labor’s lead blowing out all the way to 56-44, after being equal with the headline figure on 53-47 last time. As this scatterplot shows, there has been a strong trend away from the Coalition on preferences in respondent-allocated polling conducted since the 2013 election. Contributing factors include a rise in the Greens’ share of the non-major party vote, and the Palmer United collapse.

UPDATE 3 (Essential Research): This week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average swims against the tide in recording a small shift in the Coalition’s favour, reducing the Labor lead from 53-47 to 52-48. The primary votes are 41% for the Coalition (up one), 38% for Labor (down one) and 10% for the Greens (down one). The most interesting of the supplementary questions relates to approval of government ministers, which delivers an excellent result for Julie Bishop of 56% approval and 22% disapproval, with Malcolm Turnbull close behind at 47% and 24%. Bottom of the table of seven by some margin is Joe Hockey, at 31% and 48%. Other questions register a conviction that a re-elected Coalition would introduce laws like WorkChoices (44% likely versus 26% unlikely), and a belief that not enough is being done to tackle climate change (53%, versus 24% for doing enough and 7% for doing too much).

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.

2,192 comments on “Fairfax-Ipsos: 54-46 to Labor”

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  1. This is going to be big if Medibank Private don’t back down.

    [AUSTRALIA’S largest health insurer won’t pay the bill if a person commits suicide in a health facility.

    And patients may have to be tied to their beds to comply with Medibank’s policy of refusing payment if a patient falls in hospital and breaks a bone, private hospitals warn.]

    Private hospitals won’t perform look after complex illnesses or perform major surgery is MBP wins. All those patients will be forced into the public system which won’t cope.

    A total fark-up resulting from privatising MBP.

    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifestyle/health/medibank-wont-pay-for-suicides-death-in-childbirth-or-falls-in-hospitals/story-fni0dguy-1227490397572

  2. Dio – MBP already had a reputation of driving hard bargains with hospitals even before it was privatised didn’t it?

    And of course if it bullies its way through this with its “market force”, the other insurers will surely all follow.

    MBP insurance scrutineer – “Look, we’re not paying for that hospital stay because clearly you have lost several limbs as a result of surgical misadventure”

    Black Knight – “It’s just a flesh wound. Here, have at ye.”

  3. RR

    Absolutely. BUPA etc will follow. Private hospitals will end up doing only day surgery and won’t look after non-surgical patients.

    Ramping is endemic in SAs hospitals and they can’t possibly look after all the people with private insurance who the private hospitals won’t look after.

  4. lefty e – great post.

    I love it when news media put names to people in pictures like this (which they do more often now). Brings it home.

    Could be, say, Josh Frydenberg’s grandmother fleeing Nazi Germany to England without papers (as happened I believe)

  5. If a senior Liberal official in Victoria has indeed been doing the wrong thing, it will be interesting to see what a big of a dig around in his previous career produces by way of links with contemporary power brokers at the federal level.

  6. [Could be, say, Josh Frydenberg’s grandmother fleeing Nazi Germany to England without papers (as happened I believe)]

    Yes. We’ve lost our bearings.

  7. Maybe the ALP, if it fails in its attempt to have the TURC closed down, should instead request that its Terms of Reference be extended to include the Victoria branch of the Liberal Party.

  8. Am I missing something or is this Victorian Liberals thing going to be about the fraudulent conduct of one individual (albeit a fairly senior ranking one by the sounds). Is there any suggestion it extends beyond this one person? If not, it’s a crook day for the Victorian Libs but hardly a matter of particular consequence more broadly.

  9. don’t you love the murdoch media being all coy about who is the alleged embezzler. not sure they’d be so reluctant to name names if they had the same dirt on labor or the greens. giving the libs time to get their stories straight and go into damage control.

    interesting the Hun is running with this – could be them seeing the writing on the wall for the libs (particularly in Vic). perhaps murdoch wants abbott gone and morrison in place before the election.

  10. When you locate one rat, there tends to be nest nearby.

    No one steals that amount of money without those around him or her knowing something about it.

  11. alias @ 2166

    [Is there any suggestion it extends beyond this one person? If not, it’s a crook day for the Victorian Libs but hardly a matter of particular consequence more broadly.]

    For me and, I think, for others here it is the hypocrisy of the Liberals yet again. Malfeasance by a small number of people across the entire union movement leads to all union officials being tarred by the Liberals and their business allies as crooks who line their own pockets at the expense of members.

    But when malfeasance occurs on the other side of the divide, it’s a case of ‘we can’t be held responsible for one bad apple’.

  12. [Maybe the ALP, if it fails in its attempt to have the TURC closed down, should instead request that its Terms of Reference be extended to include the Victoria branch of the Liberal Party.]

    a royal commission hearing into Matthew Guy would be interesting indeed – the philip island affair stunk to high heaven and was blatantly a minister working to do favours for LNP patrons – The vic government paid out $millions in go away money to his co-conspirators, and now they’ve made him leader of their party. ICAC would have a field day with this.

  13. pedant @ 2140

    [The view of at least one British campaign professional with whom I discussed the UK election was that Cameron’s big win owed a great deal to the perception that Labour could only govern with the support of an SNP dedicated to the breakup of the UK.]

    That may be the view of the camapign director (was he/she Labour by any chance?) but there is no evidence to support that.

    1. There is no research into why voters changed their votes.

    2. UKIP ffinal votes of 12.6% was nearly half their peak. They may have voted Tory because of the promise of the EU referrendum.

    3. A lot of people not bothering to vote are likely to be the most deprived who may feel abandoned by the Tory-lite Blairites running the Labour show.

    4. Nicola Surgeon is by far the most popular politician in the whole UK, not just in Scotland.

    Look at this article:

    http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-yawning-chasm/#more-72740

  14. swamprat @ 2171: My friend is no longer an active campaign director, and wasn’t connected with Labour. But he’s someone who keeps his ear to the ground, and I have no doubt he was giving me an informed and objective view, probably based not on surveys, but on anecdotal information which some choose to glorify as “focus groups”.

    So take it as an hypothesis worth thinking about, rather than an assertion based on hard evidence. But if there’s anything to take from the article you linked – thanks for that – it’s that there were any number of factors alive late in the UK campaign, including tactical voting, and that tends to confirm my main thought in this area, which is that Mr Cameron’s win can’t really be taken as implying anything about what might happen at an election here.

  15. 2178

    There are so many differences with the situation in the UK as to make the elections entirely different.

    We have compulsory voting, they do not.

    We have preferential voting, they do not.

    They have 4 nations, we have four states.

    They are in the EU, we are not.

  16. [4. Nicola Surgeon is by far the most popular politician in the whole UK, not just in Scotland.]

    Sorry, I think SNP rules are that their leader must have a fish-based surname and not a medical one.

    Seperately, Nicola is about as popular as a fart in a lift outside Scotland as it was largely down to her that the UK was given its first majority Tory government since the early 1990s.

    Nicola and the SNP can shove their fish where the sun don’t shine as the UK now suffers another 5 years of Tory austerity and born-to-ruleism .

  17. [They have 4 nations, we have four states]

    My understanding is that we have 6 states. But you’re never wrong, so I am sure you’ll claim two of our states are not really states based on some smart-arsed BS.

  18. [When trade union royal commissioner Dyson Heydon presides over a submission calling for his own resignation, he will be able to make an unbiased ruling, according to Professor Nicholas Cowdery QC.
    ]

    No, not an article from The Onion, but a real story from ABC.

    How these people can say this BS with a straight face is beyond me! But I guess that’s why these unethical characters can make such outrageous sums of money.

  19. 2182

    The single time I am wrong you think I will be able to intellectually contort myself out of it but you are wrong. Not even I can intellectually contort myself out of this one.

  20. Darren Laver

    [Seperately, Nicola is about as popular as a fart in a lift outside Scotland as it was largely down to her that the UK was given its first majority Tory government since the early 1990s.]

    Absolute nonsense. If the SNP had won no seats in Scotland the UK Labour would still have lost the election.

    Labour lost the election. It was all its own doing.

  21. Maggie Bird ‏@Magpie1954nBird 51m51 minutes ago

    @TonyAbbottMHR has been caught in a lie.PatrolBoats promised 4 Adelaide now promised to WA 2bolster the bi election danger. Same funds&jobs

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