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”

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  1. The solution these days might be to use technology (computers and automation) to specialise education for each student, with each one tracked individually.

  2. [Millennial

    I attribute my son’s awesome historical knowledge to video games.]

    I’d actually strongly recommend games like the Civilisation series (in particular IV or V), Europa Universalis, as well as various strategy games involving historical periods, like Age of Empires. Heck, even Assassin’s Creed offers enough of a back drop that it encourages further research into real life history.

  3. I hadn’t been aware of this story before.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/faulty-trains-tops-off-nightmare-week-for-south-morang-line-20160212-gmsxt2.html

    Another major problem on the Victorian railway system.
    [It has been a nightmare week for the South Morang line, with two derailments and multiple track closures in the space of a few days.

    The line in Melbourne’s north was shut down for most of Thursday because of a maintenance machine’s derailment, but normal services had only resumed for a few hours on Friday when another fault led to the line being suspended again.

    A defective train ground to a halt at Ruthven station just after midday on Friday, forcing Metro Trains to organise replacement buses for the second day in a row.

    A Metro Trains spokeswoman said it was not yet known how long it would take crews to repair the damage.

    Photos show that the arm of the top of the train that connects to the overhead power lines is damaged, and is stuck in a downwards position.

    But that train got off lightly compared to the train carrying 120 passengers that derailed near Rushall station in Fitzroy North on Saturday.

    One passenger was injured in the incident, and that train has been impounded while investigators figure out why it came off the tracks.

    It was at the same spot that a track maintenance machine derailed late on Wednesday night, leading to the line shutdown on Thursday.

    The rail safety watchdog will investigate the two derailments, which occurred at the sharpest bend on the metropolitan rail network. ]

  4. It must be admitted though, that you can learn a staggering amount from TV. A child who watches all 20 series or so of the Simpson has received a wonderful education in English expression and the structure of society

  5. bemused

    [As are accounts here of teenagers in sleep deprived states..]

    So we’ll just ignore the numerous research papers referred to, shall we – all of which say exactly the same thing.

  6. Guytaur, as he should. If the Republicans want to be stubborn, so be it – deal with that if it arises – but he is POTUS until 20 January 2017. His responsibility until then is to try and get such vacancies filled. It would set a bad standard if he just shrugged and said “We’ll wait for the next President to make the decision, to be fair.”

    I’d allow that if he was just a couple of weeks away from stepping down but not almost a year!

  7. guytaur

    [ BBCBreaking: Obama says he will fulfil “constitutional responsibility” to nominate successor to Supreme Court Justice Scalia https://t.co/H5HflMso0D ]

    Good! It will show the Republicans up for the unconstitutional rabble they really are. This is gonna get ugly!

  8. zoomster@1011

    bemused

    As are accounts here of teenagers in sleep deprived states..


    So we’ll just ignore the numerous research papers referred to, shall we – all of which say exactly the same thing.

    Your Dr Karl article was hardly a research paper.

  9. Justice Date of Birth Appointed by Sworn in
    Antonin Scalia 3/11/1936
    Age: 79 yr 11 mo Ronald Reagan 9/26/1986
    Served: 29 yr 4 mo
    Anthony Kennedy 7/23/1936
    Age: 79 yr 6 mo Ronald Reagan 2/18/1988
    Served: 27 yr 11 mo
    Clarence Thomas 6/23/1948
    Age: 67 yr 7 mo George H. W. Bush 10/23/1991
    Served: 24 yr 3 mo
    Ruth Bader Ginsburg 3/15/1933
    Age: 82 yr 10 mo Bill Clinton 8/19/1993
    Served: 22 yr 5 mo
    Stephen Breyer 8/15/1938
    Age: 77 yr 5 mo Bill Clinton 8/3/1994
    Served: 21 yr 6 mo
    John G. Roberts 1/27/1955
    Age: 61 yr 0 mo George W. Bush 9/29/2005
    Served: 10 yr 4 mo
    Samuel A. Alito, Jr. 4/1/1950
    Age: 65 yr 10 mo George W. Bush 1/31/2006
    Served: 10 yr 0 mo
    Sonia Sotomayor 6/25/1954
    Age: 61 yr 7 mo Barack Obama 8/8/2009
    Served: 6 yr 6 mo
    Elena Kagan 4/28/1960
    Age: 55 yr 9 mo Barack Obama 8/7/2010
    Served: 5 yr 6 mo

  10. zoomster

    [ So we’ll just ignore the numerous research papers referred to, shall we – all of which say exactly the same thing. ]

    Really! How could they possibly be correct if they conflict with befuddled’s childhood memories?

  11. [Stephen Mayne
    ‏@MayneReport
    Accommodating all the ambition & factionalism is making exec govt bigger, more expensive and with grander titles]

  12. SenSanders: I will never forget Alan Greenspan visiting Congress to tell us how great deregulation was. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now.

  13. Interesting. Four of those Supreme Court Justices would have been retired under Australian Constitutional rules (although appointments aren’t as politically contentious here, of course)

  14. BEMUSED – If these people want to hang on until they die, why shouldn’t people be allowed to make calculations based on their death? The best solution (to keep the court contemporary) is to have a ten year term limit. That’s what they do with the German Constitutional Court. That way, the Court is closer to the zeitgeist (as our PM would say)

  15. While we’re sharing anecdotal evidence, I distinctly remember spending much of my latter years of high school in a semi-permenent state of sleep deprivation. I had previously attributed it to going to a Far North QLD school where less than a third of the classrooms were air-conditioned, but all this talk of natural sleep rhythms makes a lot of sense too, especially when I consider that by Year 11 I had gone from struggling to stay awake all the way through a TV show that began at 9:30 to rarely managing to fall asleep before midnight (despite still waking up at 7am on the dot every morning and actually going to bed by 10 or 11 at the latest).

    So, there you have it. Incontrovertible proof. School timetables must be changed now.

  16. P1

    Sensible policy on donation from Labor. I expect the Greens will support it and will be surprised if they do not.

    Note that means I am guessing.

  17. [A terrible thing to say I know, but it would be fortuitous if Scalia’s demise was contagious and took say Thomas and Alito as well.]

    Terrible maybe but you’re not alone! 😉

    Actually, I worry about Ginsberg. She is probably the most left-wing of the court as well and I know she has been dealing with health problems in the last few years. Not to be morbid but there might be two vacancies being discussed over the next year :/

  18. Asha Leu

    [ So, there you have it. Incontrovertible proof. ]

    But … but … your memories conflict with those of “Old Infallible”!

    What a quandary!

  19. Al Gore:
    [For many years, CSIRO’s contributions to climate observations and modeling have been globally recognized and respected, and the decision to cut this effort from CSIRO should be revisited at the highest levels of the Australian Government.]

    I wonder if Malcolm feels the teensiest bit of shame on this.

  20. CM

    Ginsberg is expected to retire if a Democrat wins the Presidential race. Otherwise she may hold on until deaths door.

    This is one of the reasons this Presidential race is talked about as being the most important since Reagan.

    The good thing about Obama getting the pick is it means Ginsberg can retire without changing the balance of the court as it has been up until now. If as seems likely the Democrats win the Supreme Court will be Liberal for the next decade and the GOP culture law losses will be entrenched.

  21. KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@1021

    BEMUSED – Kennedy wouldn’t be missed either. He’s a maverick, but he often sides with the conservatives.

    I thought Kennedy was seen as a safe conservative appointment who turned out to be much more liberal.

  22. P1, 1023

    I, for one, think that the compulsory LOTE is also a great policy by Labor. I’m surprised that NSW hasn’t implemented that yet.

  23. zoomster@1028

    bemused

    Your Dr Karl article was hardly a research paper.


    So you’ll just ignore the others Puff and I posted?

    I don’t have time to read every link posted here, particularly if they are to, presumably, detailed and lengthy research papers.

  24. BEMUSED – He’s definitely the swinging vote (indeed, it’s been called the Kennedy Court), but that means that in all of the big decisions that have gone against the liberals (e.g. on political donations; electoral rorts etc) he’s sided with the conservatives.

  25. K17

    Ginsberg has not retired due to the Congress blocking abilities. She wanted a fellow liberal on the bench to balance the nutbaggery of Scalia and Thomas.

    I can understand her thinking.

  26. Carey Moore@1029

    A terrible thing to say I know, but it would be fortuitous if Scalia’s demise was contagious and took say Thomas and Alito as well.


    Terrible maybe but you’re not alone!

    Actually, I worry about Ginsberg. She is probably the most left-wing of the court as well and I know she has been dealing with health problems in the last few years. Not to be morbid but there might be two vacancies being discussed over the next year

    Ginsberg should quit now while Obama is there.

  27. It would be nice to see a US Supreme Court that would give a sensible interpretation to the Second Amendment and open the way to proper gun law reform.

  28. I’ve rarely get hit with the “You are posting too quickly” message, but it is slightly infuriating when it happens during my first post here in roughly 4-5 days. Three times in a row.

    To be honest, I think that it would be a lot less infuriating if the text was just changed to a generic “Sorry, there has been an error. Please go back and try again”, since it obviously has nothing to do with how fast or often anyone is actually posting. Which is a shame, really, since I daresay some here could do with some sort of limit placed on how much they can flood this place with their posts.

    Oh well, it could be worse. At least our posts are still there when we press the back button.

  29. [I wonder if Malcolm feels the teensiest bit of shame on this.]

    Doubtful. He keeps demonstrating how utterly spineless he is.

  30. bemused

    [I don’t have time to read every link posted here, particularly if they are to, presumably, detailed and lengthy research papers.
    ]

    No one was asking you to.

    You said that all the references to teenagers and sleep deprivation were anecdotal.

    Clearly they’re not. They are backed by research.

    The papers cited are simply evidence of that.

    …and, of course, the reason people started relying on anecdotes rather than citing the research was because that’s what you were doing. In some cases, they were clearly having a lend of you.

  31. Re the whole sleep timing thing, there is now some excellent research that shows that the ~15 to 20% of adolescents who are “night owls” are quite disadvantaged compared to the “larks”: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/if-you-want-to-get-ahead-be-a-night-owl-8547115.html

    After adolescence, the proportion of genuine night owls, of whom I am one, falls to ~ 2 per 1000.

    There is a strong genetic component, although it is not simple Mendelian genetics.

    We once had a big extended family reunion of the second cousins thrice removed type, of my father’s family, and what struck us all was that we were all strongly night people, even though there had been no contact between the branches.

    The other thing of note was that we were all generally quite successful, and there were many academics and professionals (law, medicine, teaching, nursing) among us, although of disparate fields. Not a single merchant banker in sight.

    My body remains steadfastly unconcerned about sunlight. my favourite time to go to sleep is around 3am, and I like to wake up a bit after 9am. then I am clear headed and productive all day. Of course, I have a day job, and so can rarely use that schedule. But if I am writing a paper or a grant, then I try to arrange things so I could do this. An older scientist once advised me that if you are a night person, then this is the most productive schedule, and I have never felt guilty about it.

    That was how I did my PhD with 4 kids. My mother was great. She oversaw breakfast and dropped the kids at school. She was from the other side of the family, a decidely morning person.

    My OH, on the other hand, has a body clock completely tied to the sun. If he needs to work all night, he just cannot sleep after the sun comes up, and spends the whole time sleep-deprived. When we travel, he snaps into the new time zone straight away, while my body moves at the snails pace of 2 hours per day. His family come from Provence, mine from the South-West of Ireland. It figures.

  32. [It would be nice to see a US Supreme Court that would give a sensible interpretation to the Second Amendment and open the way to proper gun law reform.]

    Indeed. That’s what sticks immediately in my mind. Would be lovely to have a court interpret that amendment for its obvious intent and declare it redundant (or at least diminished) due to the fact that the United States doesn’t need militias to protect its citizens anymore, due to the fact that it has a permanent and readily mobile military and many law enforcement agencies (the ethics and powers of both of those things definitely are things that should be questioned but I think we agree that they make obsolete the need for a well-regulated militia.)

  33. The problem with compulsory LOTE – which I support – is that there simply aren’t enough LOTE teachers to deliver it. Some really, really bad teachers get an easy ride because they’re LOTE qualified.

  34. For elevated rail, Santiago de Chile has some great recent elevated lines. The are bike paths and sporting facilities underneath them, and of course roads. Unfortuntely as we see from Sydney, every new piece of infrastructure quickly ginas a few critics, and then some local politician sees an opportunity for a following (or support from the Daily telegraph), and voila, said infrastructure either does not get built, or it gets ripped out by the political group who gained from opposing it, see e.g. the College St cycle way recently ripped out by the NSW state govt.

    The knee-jerk “I don’t like it and will scream until it does not happen” is particularly unfortunate as it then drowns out real discussion about how to improve the proposal, and then bad planning decisions get railroaded through, especially if the Daily telegraph likes them.

  35. Apologists of Malcolm and his government seem a bit thin on this blog these days. Not a good sign in Malcolm’s election year. He doesn’t seem to have a natural supporter base – unlike Howard and Abbott.

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