ReachTEL: 54-46 to Coalition

ReachTEL offers another increment of evidence for a slight loss of honeymoon gloss for the Malcolm Turnbull prime ministership.

A ReachTEL poll, which I presume to have been broadcast on the 6pm Seven News, shows the Coalition with a two-party lead of 54-46, down from 55-45 at the last such poll three weeks ago. Malcolm Turnbull holds a 75-25 on a preferred prime minister question that allows no option for undecided, partly reversing a blowout to 81-19 that raised eyebrows in the previous poll. The poll also finds a remarkably even spread of opinion on Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister, with 32% expecting him to be very good or good, 34% expecting him to be average, and 34% expecting him to be poor or very poor. More to follow.

UPDATE: Full results on the ReachTEL site here. The primary votes are 48.1% for the Coalition (down 0.4%), 32.8% for Labor (up 1.0%) and 10.1% for the Greens (down 0.7%). The personal ratings find Malcolm Turnbull taking a solid hit, with his net approval rating of plus 15.3% comparing with results of between plus 31.5% and plus 41.4% in ReachTEL’s three previous polls on his watch.

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.

1,235 comments on “ReachTEL: 54-46 to Coalition”

Comments Page 16 of 25
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  1. K-17 @749

    Lot’s of use of the word “faction” 🙂 I will take the idea that the ALP will lose a lot of seats seriously if it actually becomes plausible. Peak honeymoon didn’t gain many seats and the end of the honeymoon is yet to play out in the polls.

  2. K-17 & TPOF

    Lot’s of use of the word “faction” 🙂 I will take the idea that the ALP will lose a lot of seats seriously if it actually becomes plausible. Peak honeymoon didn’t gain many seats and the end of the honeymoon is yet to play out in the polls.

  3. TPOF

    Massola spoke to ‘a dozen MPs’ and got two quotes and a tiny bit of speculation.

    […the opposition’s election prospects was (sic) tipped as a talking point.
    As one federal MP put it, “it’s the thing everyone will be gossiping about.”]

    We can do better than that on PB!!!

  6. K17 755,

    Giving with one hand to take with the other, but not a bad idea if you ask me. Deductions can easily fall into the area of creative accounting.

  8. lizzie
    […the opposition’s election prospects was (sic) tipped as a talking point.]

    Thank goodness for Massola’s insight and Labor Party contacts. We’d never have considered the possibility that election prospects in an election year conference would be a talking point.

  14. GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes · Feb 12

    #ReachTEL Poll Turnbull: Approve 39.2 (-14.4) Disapprove 23.9 (+11.4) #auspol

  16. her attention is not on Green imagery but on the voters and their interests.

    She has concluded that she cannot advance the voters’ interests from within the federal Labor party. That’s a sad reflection on the party’s capacity to accommodate progressive voices, particularly those of women.

  17. #ReachTEL Poll Turnbull: Approve 39.2 (-14.4) Disapprove 23.9 (+11.4) #auspol

    We have well and truly passed peak Turnbull. The 2PP will surely follow.

  20. @756 work tax deductions include union dues. The conservatives would see scrapping the deductions a disincentive for union membership and are probably right. So win-win for them as they could also claim they were reducing taxes. All smoke and mirrors but politics is all about perceptions and not facts/reality.

  22. Of course if you ask NSW Labor MPs who they see as a likely leader after the next election, they will pick a NSW Labor MP.

    As for the ‘NSW Labor won’t make a move on a Victorian leader” – firstly, that’s an excellent reason to have a Victorian leader! and secondly, it sounds like an excuse, not a reason. More likely, NSW Labor MPs aren’t making a move on the leadership because they recognise, as most thinking humans do, that to do so would be batsh*t crazy.

    It’s interesting to note that the factional leaders named are all Victorian. Suggests that the power base has moved there. In which case, a NSW successor to Shorten is even more unlikely. (But Docklands is further away than Sussex St, and Massola was at a NSW conference, so he won’t know that).

    So, if Shorten were to be rolled after the next election, it is unlikely that he would be replaced by a NSWelsher.

    My own prediction would be that, even if Labor loses the next election, Shorten will stay.

  26. mikehilliard

    sounds very like he was sent to NSW Conference and told to come back with a leadership story. If that’s the best he can do, then Shorten is as safe as a pre 2017 negatively geared house.

  27. [@756 work tax deductions include union dues.]

    as well as all sorts of professional membership fees.

    Spiteful bullet meets foot?

  28. Still, I think Kenny and “scandalised ministers” is onto something more real than whatever Massola is smoking. This is a first term government, the ALP have nothing to lose.

    The LNP have been a complete mess, more than a waste of 3 years, they have sent us backwards. Their biggest “achievements” have been what they have destroyed.

  29. Well I think that Shorten might have been in trouble if Turnbull’s honeymoon had lasted through February, but as the Libs self destruct it is now less clear.

    I do think that Labor (and Shorten) brought on the GST debate way too early. It would have been better to wait until the budget.

  30. And the SMH wonders why circulation is dropping. One reason must be that they’re chasing away their core centre-left readership.

  31. [Yes, Nicholas, Alannah should have joined the Greens, where she would have been given the power to change the world.]

    from the local council

  32. meanwhile we are possibly on the brink of WWIII, so I think that we just do not know what will happen

    Turkey has invaded Syria. This might lead to a Turkey/Russia conflict, that could go very, very, very nasty. Too early to say what will happen.

  33. Massola’s article is obviously a deliberate placement to “balance” all the shite coming out about the coalition. A bit like the Nick Ross situation.

    Perhaps the fact that it is so self evidently shoddy journalism is a bit of a signal by Massola that it should be ignored. He was probably told to write it.

  34. K17

    I agree. it was a very weak article by Massola. Also out of date. Two months ago, there were rumblings about shorten, but since the new year not really.

    Mind you he has to carry this tax reform and have a real win.

  35. @777 indeed, many unintended consequences. Home office expenses etc etc and the fact the tax cut will hardly be noticeable in comparison with lump sum refund usually spent soon after receiving it (well I do) thus giving the economy an annual boost.

    And given the ease in lodging a Joe Average return online via the My Tax web site these days I wonder what the actual savings for the ATO would be. And the impact on accountants for that matter.

  36. Puff, the Magic Dragon.@745

    Teenagers should not start school until 10 am at the earliest. This is based on their Circadian Rhythms, which switch markedly in the teenage years.

    High school should start at 10 am and finish at 4pm. Just about all high school kids suffer from sleep deprivation as they do not enter sleep mode until about 1.00am.

    My how I must have suffered when going swimming training before school when in my final years of high school.

    Well actually I didn’t suffer! A good session of physical activity before school had me all alert and ready to go.

  38. As Voges nears a double hundred, in Wellington, having already scored a gazillion runs in recent times; it’s worth reminding everyone that vogues is 36 and selectors dropped Simon Katich at the age of 34 because he was too old.

  40. bemused

    there will always be some people who cope better with getting up earlier than others.

    There is this thing called ‘research’. It shows fairly conclusively that MOST teenagers are sleep deprived virtually all the time, because during this period of their lives there has been a shift in their sleeping patterns, and asking them to conform to a timetable arranged for the convenience of adults means they are not performing at their best.

    Schools (and education departments) talk a lot about being student centered. That this research is ignored (and ‘ignored’ is the word, because it’s well known in educational circles) shows what a fallacy that is.

    An ideal education system – and that was what I was talking about – would put students needs first.

  42. James Massola is a well-known anti-Shorten agitator.

    ANYTHING Massola writes about Shorten is negative. Guaranteed.

    Even when Shorten was exonerated by the TURC, Massola was saying he still had “questions to answer”. He was writing pure opinion pieces urging Shorten to stand down, well before the Labor leader even appeared before the Commission. These were based on “evidence” that Massola thought would be forthcoming, but which wasn’t (remember the Theiss exec who thought it strange that his orders to preserve diaries were not obeyed – 7 years after he left the company? Massola did, and wrote this up up as damning. Pffft…)

    Anything Massola writes is not for the good of the Labor Party. He is not their friend. He’s probably spoken to a couple of malcontents and has blown it up into an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy. Write enough stories about how just everybody in the caucus thinks Shorten is gone, and it will be so (at least Massola seems to believe that).

    In any negotiation, as soon as the other side starts obsessing about something that you haven’t paid much attention to, you smell a rat. The other side starts concentrating on dates, and you know those dates mean something – to them – and that they are afraid you’ll find out. If they start obsessing about the other side’s team leader, in this case Shorten, you know they’re worried about him and what he’s capable of doing. There’s nothing surer.

    The Coalition has gotten rid of a sitting Prime Minister in record time, far faster than Labor got rid of either Rudd or Gillard. They have to cover up that inconvenient fact with talk of “natural evolution”, “moving forward”, or by reference to Turnbull’s popularity (when they know that popularity is a wildflower that blooms pretty, but dies quickly).

    Trying to start up a bit of leadershit on Labor’s side doesn’t hurt either. So in they go. You can be sure that if Shorten is rolled, there won’t be any talk about “natural evolution”. It’ll be “Labor up to its old dysfunctional tricks” again.

    James Massola is just particularly hamfisted at trouble-making. He wears his prejudices and his huge ego on his sleeve. He thinks he’s a participant, a mover-and-shaker. He’s not. He’s just another smartarsed journo who comes on a bit obvious.

  43. Keyman, I know what you are saying, but plenty ofoffice working professionals have only membership fees to claim. These are hefty, and as you say, very salient come tax time. Can’t see how union fees could be excluded when prof fees are not.

  44. daretotread@782

    meanwhile we are possibly on the brink of WWIII, so I think that we just do not know what will happen

    Turkey has invaded Syria. This might lead to a Turkey/Russia conflict, that could go very, very, very nasty. Too early to say what will happen.

    This absolute rubbish. Hyperbole to the max.

  45. Simon Katich@788

    As Voges nears a double hundred, in Wellington, having already scored a gazillion runs in recent times; it’s worth reminding everyone that vogues is 36 and selectors dropped Simon Katich at the age of 34 because he was too old.

    I feel your pain Simon. 😥

  46. zoomster@790

    bemused

    there will always be some people who cope better with getting up earlier than others.

    There is this thing called ‘research’. It shows fairly conclusively that MOST teenagers are sleep deprived virtually all the time, because during this period of their lives there has been a shift in their sleeping patterns, and asking them to conform to a timetable arranged for the convenience of adults means they are not performing at their best.

    Schools (and education departments) talk a lot about being student centered. That this research is ignored (and ‘ignored’ is the word, because it’s well known in educational circles) shows what a fallacy that is.

    An ideal education system – and that was what I was talking about – would put students needs first.

    Late nights with social media or stupid computer games might have a bit to do with it.
    How would human sleep patterns have shifted so much since the days before artificial lighting when humans slept during the hours of darkness?

  47. Good Morning

    I see Insiders seems all excuses for the LNP today. However if you look at it from what can they do to show they are governing well and have an election winning strategy its very bleak commentary.

  49. Zoomster

    Biologically teenagers have evolved not to be in a school at all but to be out with parents and mentors, learning the skills of survival. just one or two teens together, mot a classroom full.

    Fouteen year old girls (assuming they have passed puberty) would be pregnant and becomoing mothers. Their circadian rythms would be quickly those of a new mother.

    Now as for boys, you would need a sound biological/evolutionary explanation as to why there should be a change of circadian rythmss. What survival vlaue has such a weird biological outcome.

    As it happens I can think of a possibility – no research just my guess. Tribes or small human groups survive by fighting off predators and rival groups. One essential element of survival is warning of danger. Now it seems to me that teenagers 12-15 age boys and probably 10-13 age girls, would make ideal night lookouts. Old enough to understand the importance and strong enough to get help quickly, but not yet strong enough or skilled enough to be much use in a fight. Better that the old strong and wise are sleeping and well rested.

    So Zoomster I will give you the reality of teenagers having different sleep patterns BUT probably not after they are 17 or so when biologically they would be at a fighting peak and need to be well rested. Also girls and boys will differ.

    Mind you if my biological model has any validity, we should see older people (over 40) waking up early to cover the 1am- dawn shift.

  50. morning all

    Massola would have spoken to a few malcontents. Also the dead giveaway of this piece was the reference to Albo not being one to undermine the leadership. Lol! That really gave me the giggles

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