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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  2. Redeeeming features? Well, he’s a better PM than Tony Abbott. I am relieved that Abbott is no longer PM. But that’s a pretty low bar to clear.

  3. lizzie

    I don’t care what anybody says, he’s wrecked a vital piece of
    Infrastructure.

    It will take TEN years to correct and cost heaps, a WRECKER in my opinion!.

  4. QandA: New Minister for Trade @SteveCiobo will join the #QandA panel on Monday.

    Will be interesting to see how he goes after the Zak Malla affair.

  5. 1934pc

    Oh yes, I’d agree with that. A wrecker for his own ends and no real view for the nation’s future. No better than Abbott in that way. If he’d had real courage he would have stood up to Abbott, even if it meant getting out of the ministry to make his move.

  6. If Obama were to appoint a SCOTUS judge one quarter as biased to to the left as Alita and Bush’s appointments are to the right there would be insurrection.
    That’s modern America for you – under the grip of big money and the Republican Party spoilers.

  7. [But whoever expected him to be a “paragon of a progressive PM” must have been ignoring the fact ]

    There were a lot of things they had to ignore, utegate, NBN …

  9. BK

    I would not be surprised if that Is what President Obama does. The more the GOP oppose the more votes the Democrats will see.

    Its all lose lose for the GOP which is why Trump was honest enough to say Judge Scalia’s death was a big setback for the conservatives.

  10. CTar1

    [MTBW

    A occasional full stop would help.

    I always have to read you twice!]

    Did you not see the full stop at the end of the first line and the exclamation on the second.

  11. 1934pc
    [
    lizzie

    I don’t care what anybody says, he’s wrecked a vital piece of Infrastructure]

    He will go down in total costs as perhaps Australia’s greatest economic vandal/saboteur. All done to keep his hopes for PMship alive. Shows where his priorities lay.

  12. [Turnbull – a WRECKER in my opinion! ]

    Its hard to name an area where he has done any serious or worthwhile policy work while he has been in politics.

    Wrecking the NBN for something he knows is inferior, clearly isn’t even a starter.

  13. Oh MTBW, I hate to take over Pedant’s role (no I lie, I love it!) but perhaps you could end your question with a question mark? And I think it was the second “sentence” of your earlier post that Ctar was referring to – it was two sentences that needed at least a dash between them.

  14. [I want it known I was calling Turnbull a turd long before it was fashionable!]

    Me too, I was laughing at the “7 day economy” (and the way it apparently only applies to menial work) very early on 🙂

    Speaking of which… back to my odd-jobs.

    This article was first posted a few days ago but I love the photo of him trying to look like Gordon Gekko. What a ….
    http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/gw-classics/raging-turnbull-20140904-10c7ye.html

  16. John Cleese modelled the evil cruel vicious villain in “Erik the Viking” as a merchant baker cos he said he couldn’t image anyone worse [WTTE].

    Turnbull is a merchant banker.

  18. [ As the Hill adds, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement calling the conservative justice an “unwavering defender” of the Constitution.

    “He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution,” Abbott wrote. “His fierce loyalty to the Constitution set an unmatched example, not just for judges and lawyers, but for all Americans.

    Scalia, born in Trenton, N.J. and raised in Queens, N.Y., was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 after serving on the D.C. Circuit Court.

    The judge was a proponent of “originalism,” the legal philosophy that held that the meaning of the Constitution should be interpreted as it was first written and not subject to contemporary views. ]

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-13/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-found-dead-west-texas-ranch

    So people dead well over 200 years should have the final say on how a country’s laws should be interpreted today ?

    The living should be subject to what the dead thought all those years ago irrespective of current circumstances ?

    Beyond weird.

  19. Turnbull represents everything that is most wrong with our society. He’s a bludger who’s never done a decent day’s work in his life. He just lives off the labour of others. I don’t care if he wears a suit and attends gallery openings. He’s the worst our society has to offer. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the Cayman Islands yet.

  21. [Turnbull represents everything that is most wrong with our society. He’s a bludger who’s never done a decent day’s work in his life. He just lives off the labour of others. I don’t care if he wears a suit and attends gallery openings. He’s the worst our society has to offer. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the Cayman Islands yet.]

    I still say that marrying Mal to the Caymans is the smartest thing Labor have done post Tony – Mal change.

    I hear that the Libs think they are behind on BEPS and tax changes and will install some window dressing before the election.

    Not a big bill fan but quite smart to move onto the next tax change before the libs have even caught up on the BEPS stuff.

  23. Jack A Randa

    Yep! It didn’t take to0 much for her to give you the cane but poor devil had ninety six of us in one classroom and she would walk up and down the aisles swinging the cane just in case one of us got out of line.

  25. BK #1156
    [If Obama were to appoint a SCOTUS judge as biased to the left as Alito and Bush’s appointments were to the right there would be insurrection.]

    Hmm, not exactly. Bush (I assume you’re talking about Bush #43) only appointed two justices to the Supreme Court – Roberts and Alito – and ideologically, they were around +1.5 (i.e. right-wing) on the Martin-Quinn score when they were appointed.

    See here for a neat visualization, courtesy of FiveThirtyEight:

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/supreme-court-justices-get-more-liberal-as-they-get-older/

    Obama has made two appointments to the Supreme Court. They are Sotomayor and Kagan, and they are were both around -1.5 (i.e. left-wing) on the Martin-Quinn score when they were appointed.

    But because Sotomayor and Kagan were replacing liberal justices, and the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, nobody really made a fuss about it.

    (Interestingly, there seems to be an overall trend of Justices becoming more liberal over time.)

  26. WWP – Labor should whip out a policy in favour of motherhood, and the Libs will oppose it. They could demand a GST and these nongs would say no. It’s too easy.

  27. MTBW

    [Did you not see the full stop at the end of the first line and the exclamation on the second.]

    If you put them in there I’ll have to claim ‘punctuation blindness. 😀

  29. Millenial – “Interestingly, there seems to be an overall trend of Justices becoming more liberal over time.”

    Possibly because once appointed they have to take the Bill of Rights seriously, and it’s a very liberal document, though the Second is unfortunately anachronistic. I’m always amazed that US conservaturds use “liberal” as a term of abuse – liberalism (as understood in most parts of the world but not in the Aust “Liberal” Party) is built into their Constitution. Of course it was contradicted for a while by the other provisions that accepted slavery, but the liberalism was there ever since the first ten amendments were added, and reinforced by the 13th and 14th.

  31. dogsbreakfast

    [
    “The Land” reports a tax on backpackers, not going to please the Nationals]
    Not just the Nationals. In Darwin backpackers are a vital source of bar staff. Talking to a few it seems there is a bit of a circuit they travel around working in bars across WA, NT and Qld on their backpacking tour.

  32. MTBW

    Not so fast!

    I meant in paragraph like this:

    [Nor would I are some of you drinking?]

    A full stop wouldn’t have gone astray between “I” and “are”.

    😀

    (That’s the limit of complaint for this whole month on here. Watch out or I’ll do it again next month.)

  35. [1048
    zoomster
    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.    ]

    Indeed! I went to a small regional school, and my “French” teacher had a thick Scottish accent. Needless to say, I learnt very little French.

  37. Turnbull is a lowlife alright. Doing what he did and is doing to the NBN makes him lower than the lowest form of lowlife on the planet.

  38. [1063
    Kevin17
    It appears that Scalia was more interested in blasting poor innocent quail out of the sky than sex – more’s the pity.    ]

    Well truthfully, Scalia was very interested in same-sex sexual relations, specifically in keeping it illegal. Scalia had some very charming things to say about a subject that shouldn’t have been his business:

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/scalia-worst-things-said-written-about-homosexuality-court

  40. http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/northern-territory/deputy-chief-minister-willem-westra-van-holthe-expected-to-announce-resignation/news-story/22942424ddefae5d6625d6c7a7b98f93
    [Deputy Chief Minister Willem Westra van Holthe resigns from ministry
    February 14, 2016 11:46am
    BEN SMEE NT News

    DEPUTY Chief Minister Willem Westra van Holthe has announced his resignation from the ministry in the wake of revelations about his investment discussions in Vietnam.

    The NT News understands CLP members are preparing to meet to elect a new deputy, with business minister Peter Styles the frontrunner.

    The move will force another cabinet reshuffle. It’s expected Nathan Barrett will be elevated to a junior ministry.]

    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2016/02/14/the-accidental-deputy/
    [Willem Rudolf Westra van Holthe: the accidental Deputy
    Bob Gosford | Feb 14, 2016 1:51PM

    At 3pm today Willem Westra van Holthe will resign as Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory and all of his Ministerial portfolios.

    Van Holthe’s most recent troubles–the photo above was taken after a 2011 pub stoush–have been an open secret for the past few months, with the NT News sitting on a batch of documents leaked to the media by van Holthe’s estranged wife following her Facebook revelations in early November 2015.

    As Sunday Territorian columnist Maria Billias wrote at the time, van Holthe’s wife went “on a mass Facebook tirade labelling him a “bastard” and his new girlfriend a “tramp”.” Billias said that van Holthe’s camp sought the sympathy of Territorians by a frank admission that had indeed “cheated on his wife of 27 years” but noting that van Holthe was concerned about the effects the revelations could have on his political career.

    But van Holthe and electors in his home electorate of Katherine didn’t have to wait long. The Murdoch-owned NT News may have taken its time in getting the story to press but it was scooped by a front page splash last Wednesday in the Fairfax-owned Katherine Times, where editor Lyndon Keane reported that van Holthe was furious at allegations arising from emails–leaked by his estranged wife–that “demonstrate a personal business relationship between the Member for Katherine and CT Group president Tran Kim Chung.”]
    Worth reading all of the second article

  43. [But because Sotomayor and Kagan were replacing liberal justices, and the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, nobody really made a fuss about it.]

    No, a big fuss was made about Sotomayor. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

    Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on July 13, 2009, during which she backed away from her “wise Latina” remark, declaring it “a rhetorical flourish that fell flat” and stating that “I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment.” When Republican senators confronted her regarding other remarks from her past speeches, she pointed to her judicial record and said she had never let her own life experiences or opinions influence her decisions. Republican senators said that while her rulings to this point might be largely traditional, they feared her Supreme Court rulings – where there is more latitude with respect to precedent and interpretation – might be more reflective of her speeches. Sotomayor defended her position in Ricci as following applicable precedent. When asked whom she admired, she pointed to Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo.In general, Sotomayor followed the hearings formula of recent past nominees by avoiding stating personal positions, declining to take positions on controversial issues likely to come before the Court, agreeing with senators from both parties, and repeatedly affirming that as a justice she would just apply the law. On July 28, 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Sotomayor’s nomination; the 13–6 vote was almost entirely along party lines, with no Democrats opposing her and only one Republican supporting her. On August 6, 2009, Sotomayor was confirmed by the full Senate by a vote of 68–31. The vote was largely along party lines, with no Democrats opposing her and nine Republicans supporting her.]

  44. What the Clintons are selling is a kind of reflexive identity politics: “You must be for Hillary because we’ve been around. This is her turn.”

    The fact of the matter is that much of what the Clintons have been selling – such as dismantling Glass Steagall, which was Bill Clinton’s signature effort to ingratiate “his” Democratic Party with Wall Street (and provide access to the coffers of financial support that go along with that) – has not helped the middle class.

    Neither have their (and Obama’s) mindless policies of pushing people into expensive colleges (and mountains of student debt) in lieu of championing free public universities as in other countries.

    Or their efforts to sell something as health care “reform” that barely moved the needle on the exploding costs of health care and pushed millions more into the arms of their friends in the private insurance sector.

    SELLING CLUNKERS
    Thus, while the Clintons try to argue that Hillary deserves anointment as the Democrats’ presidential candidate, many voters feel they have seen enough. They are no longer willing to buy the Clinton shtick.

    Whatever the odds of Sanders in the general election, they feel they have much more in common with a self-described Democratic Socialist than with the Clintons.

    It does help Sanders’ cause as a man “of the people, by the people and for the people” that his net worth (in the $400,000 range) is well below the combined fees that Mrs. Clinton commanded just for the one series of speeches she gave to the Goldman crowd.

    The Clintons are also understandably livid with anger about the fact that Bernie Sanders has them in a headlock.

    Even though he never says it, everybody knows that his trademark reference to the 1% is what separates both Clintons (and many of their top-drawer supporters) from the American people.

    http://www.salon.com/2016/02/13/hillary_will_be_her_own_undoing_no_amount_of_rebranding_can_change_her_record_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

  45. Took six years to catch up with him?

    [A current Metro Rail employee and CFA volunteer has been charged with a spate of arson and sabotage crimes across Melbourne’s rail network and in country Victoria over the last six years – including the $3-million derailment of a Melbourne-bound train on the Hurstbridge line last November.

    27-year-old Nicholas Archer, an equipment assistance manager at Metro Rail, has been charged with more than 25 offences after he was arrested on Saturday at his house in Waterford Park, east of Kilmore.

    He was questioned and charged on Sunday over multiple fires and is alleged to have caused damage at railway line assets across the state.

    His last alleged offence was lighting a fire in Brooklyn only one day ago.

    The charges relate to two alleged incidents in 2009 and 23 from March onwards this year both in the western suburbs and in rural areas.

    He is charged with lighting a fire at the Newport fire museum at 8pm on the evening of November 24, 2009, and with starting a bushfire in Mount Disappointment on December 17, 2009, only seven months after Black Saturday fires ravaged the area.

    The other charges relate to more recent incidents. ]

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/hurstbridge-train-derailing-police-arrest-suspect-on-arson-sabotage-offences-20160214-gmtq1p.html

  46. [bemused – Got him. Alan Griffin a pool playing ANU student in around 1980.]
    Are you that old? Or were you in the ANU campus crèche in 1980 and it was so near to the Uni bar you could look in?

    I dont recall much about ANU. I was there for an intervarsity some time back, but the only memory I have was trying to convince the feds not to arrest a couple of female colleagues.

    Oh wait – I vaguely remember the Divinyls doing a gig there. I cant tell you what Chrissy did to an unsuspecting female member of the crowd.

  49. Bemused

    I totally accept I am painting the worst case scenario. That is my intention.

    However you are living in a bubble. You are stuck in 1988.

    Much has changed

    The reality is that there is probably a 1% chance of my scary scenario and 99% for yours. So we are agreed.

    However I still think it makes sense to point out the 1% risk Just like an OHS matix. Likelihood is very rare but impact catastophic. Still gets into the red or yellow risk zones in anything I do.

    Syria (not Russia) is now lobbing shells on Turkey. It is getting messy

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