Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

Malcolm Turnbull records the first negative net approval rating of his prime ministership, while voting intention is little changed on a fortnight ago.

The latest Newspoll result is very slightly better for the Coalition than the last, recording them with a 51-49 lead after a 50-50 result a fortnight ago. On the primary vote, the Coalition is steady on 43%, Labor is down one to 34%, and the Greens are steady on 12%. The leadership ratings provide Malcolm Turnbull’s first net negative approval result, with approval down five to 39% and disapproval up three to 44%. For Bill Shorten, the movement is in favour of undecided, with approval down two to 28% and disapproval down three to 52%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 55-21 to 52-21. The poll also finds 55% expecting the Coalition to win the election, compared with 25% for Labor; 54% rating Turnbull more capable of managing the economy, compared with 20% for Shorten; and 45% rating Turnbull more capable of managing tax reform, compared with 25% for Shorten. It was conducted Thursday to Sunday by automated phone and online surveying from a larger than usual sample of 2049.

UPDATE (Roy Morgan): For the first time since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister, a poll records Labor with a lead on two-party preferred, albeit a very narrow one. The fortnightly result from Roy Morgan, conducted over the last two weekends by face-to-face and SMS from a sample of 2948, has Labor moving from a 53-47 deficit to a lead of 50.5-49.5, on both the previous election and respondent-allocated measures of two-party preferred. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down three points to 40%, Labor is up three-and-a-half to 33%, and the Greens are up one to 14%.

UPDATE 2 (Essential Research): The Essential Research fortnightly rolling average is still at 50-50, but both major parties up on the primary vote – the Coalition by one point to 43%, and Labor by two to 38% – while the Greens are down one to 10%. Further questions find 34% saying they would approve of a double dissolution election if the Senate rejected the bill to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission, with 22% disapproving and 44% opting for “don’t know” – a provident question, since it was set before yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister. As for the substance of the bill, 35% supported the government line, 17% were opposed, 27% opted for neither, and 22% said they didn’t know. Another question finds no change in opinion on Tony Abbott’s future since December: 18% wanted him back in the ministry, another 18% wanted him to stay on the back bench, 29% thought he should resign now, and 18% thought he should do so at the election. In response to talk of plebiscites for same sex marriage, another question interestingly asks what other issues should be dealt with in this way. The results suggest strong support for plebiscites on social issues (61% favour one for euthanasia and 58% for abortion), but mild opposition for economic ones, and strong opposition concerning the size of the defence force (14% support, 71% opposition). The online survey encompassed 1003 respondents, with the voting intention question also including responses from last week’s sample.

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.

1,662 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  2. Seems like Essential over-estimated Labor and Green votes for 2013 election by a fair bit. Essential can be very slow turning like the Titanic.

  3. ratsak,

    The MSM constantly bang on about politicians living in glass bubbles and being disconnected from the public and the pulse of what the public is thinking.

    I believe in more cases it is the MSM and especially the CPG which are removed from what the public are thinking. They sit around and interview each other and ramble on with the group think theme of the day totally oblivious to what is happening in the real world.

    If anyone is disconnected it is the MSM.

    Cheers.

  5. Certainly September 2015 was a better month than September 2013. Much much better.

    Unless your name is Tony Abbott.

  6. [Just as steel is toughened through the application of fire, Abbott’s blowtorch to the belly is not so much burning the Turnbull leadership, as tempering it, making it more resilient, more battle-hardened.]

    What a preposterous statement!

    Mark Kenny has been staring early on the singing syrups.

  7. Doyley

    The CPG are wilfully ignorant of the realities in voter land until they get the directive to change the narrative

  10. several of the election advertisements for the Australian Labor Party. The only question that remains is how many he plans to help write.

    Labor strategists were rubbing their hands together on Tuesday at the spectre of the former prime minister’s preparedness to derail Malcolm Turnbull.

    Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/election/thanks-for-the-election-ad-tony-abbott-says-labor-20160322-gnodjp#ixzz43bRFuLmN
    Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook

  11. [Just as steel is toughened through the application of fire, Abbott’s blowtorch to the belly is not so much burning the Turnbull leadership, as tempering it, making it more resilient, more battle-hardened.]

    Yes, and it worked so well for Gillard.

    I expected better of Kenny than this horseshit.

  13. [13.Player one

    The whole private education vocational sector has been a bloody rort
    ]

    Almost too a entirely failed rort that makes the NBN look like a brilliant outcome at the best price.

  15. vic, p1

    Along with the so-called Job Service Agencies.

    I’m hearing tales of even those over 50 being forced into work for the dole scams, simply because the JSA’s get a $1000 payment for “placements”.

    They seem to have abandoned even the pretence of helping to find people a job and are now just generating revenue by “placing” them onto WFTD scams.

  17. Dan Gulberrry

    If over 50, you have to either participate in work for dole or do an approved activity such as a course for six months of the year.

  18. K17 @ 1509

    My own thinking is a work in progress. While I never saw Turncoat’s little manoeuvre yesterday coming, it never struck me as a particularly brilliant move. And while he was lauded from one length of the press gallery to the other as being very decisive, it struck me that he simply left himself more exposed.

    What I also did not see coming, because I am fairly conservative in my thinking, was that Shorten would treat yesterday’s threat of a DD as the start of an election campaign. I should have seen it, because it is bleedingly obvious in retrospect, but what I pride myself on in analysis, I beat myself up for in terms of lack of imagination.

    I have no idea what the Opposition and the cross benchers are going to do when the Senate is recalled. I suspect they don’t either – and definitely not the government. My thinking from seeing the cross benchers talk yesterday is that they will take the advantage of having the Senate sitting – and without government control of the Senate – to basically do what they want with it. Indeed, there will be no better opportunity for the cross benchers to start their political campaigns for re-election there and then, with all press gallery attention on them and all the time in the world to show their respective electorates what a great bunch of people they are to keep the bastards honest.

    At the beginning of the year I opined that the three electoral options open to Turncoat in worsening order were: first, a normal reps and half senate election at the due time; second, a DD with a minimum campaign period and, third, a DD with a long campaign period. Turncoat, convinced of his own demagogic genius, has opted for the deluxe version of the third and worse option.

    That’s 15 weeks of non-communication and miscommunication between government ministers. 15 weeks for Turncoat to be absolutely snippy and arrogant when interviewers ask reasonable (not gotcha) questions that people actually want to know the answers to. 15 weeks in which external crises can occur to throw the government even more off-course. And 15 weeks for FPMTA to provide maximum assistance by reassuring the public that Turncoat is pursuing TA’s agenda.

    The bean counters at Labor Party headquarters may have their heads in their hands, but Shorten and his colleagues simply cannot believe their luck.

    As for supply, the fact that the nation has treated Turncoat’s action yesterday as firing the starter’s gun – with the finishing line now fixed – means that it is very unlikely that the Greens and Labor and, especially, Xenophon, will move to defer it so that a July 2 election can no longer be held.

    The cross benchers will still benefit from a DD being averted but they may be left on the shelf if Labor are driving towards victory come May 11. That said, anything might still happen. Especially Malcolm ‘Baldrick’ Turncoat comes up with another cunning plan.

  20. [Clearly Turnbull’s survival is much more important than that of the planet.]

    It was the only lesson he took from losing the leadership the first time.

  21. So, does anyone doubt that when the Senate reconvenes on 18 April 2016 it will adjourn until 10 May 2016 (the previous date), and thus erase Gorgeous George’s little stunt?
    Of course, what happens on 10 May 2016 will be another chapter in this saga. But first thing’s first.

  22. [ I expected better of Kenny than this horseshit. ]

    Don’t know why.

    He has never been a particularly insightful writer. Wishy washy ‘on one hand, but one the other’ insipid guff, IMO.

    I don’t expect any journo to have a crystal ball, but not many of the current crop are particularly skillful at describing what is happening at any particular point in time, eg read some older Pinstrip Pete articles or those of his ilk a bit after the event – on most things.

    The obvious example of this is their various articles on abbott – now being repeated with turnbull.

    Situation normal.

    Not that I’m claiming a Labor victory either, but this race has only just begun.

  23. [I expected better of Kenny than this horseshoe.]

    I sometimes think that two people are actually alternating columns. Sometimes the column is really perceptive and sometimes it looks as if it had been written by teenager with a hyper-active imagination interning on press gallery.

  24. JD much earlier

    [Grocon was fined just $250,000 for the wall collapse, while the CFMEU was fined over $1.25 million for protesting Grocon’s safety record.]

    I find this obscene.

  25. Looking forward to Bludgertrack again this week. Unless Bilbo radically changes his weighting on Morgan the 2PP should probably drop below 51% and Turnbull’s Netsats will likely go negative.

  26. [ The bean counters at Labor Party headquarters may have their heads in their hands, but Shorten and his colleagues simply cannot believe their luck. ]

    The Bean Counters angst may be offset a little by the publicity, exposure and air time the ALP will get with Parliament being recalled. Play up the theatre, and use the time, interviews and exposure to get messages out there and jump all over any hint of stuff ups and disunity in the ranks of the enemy.

    Also, it seems that the ALP / Unions do have a pretty good structure of on the ground, grass roots campaigning happening already that they can ramp up and frankly, that i dont think the Libs can match. People, talking to People. 🙂

  27. Capital costs for those major projects for which data were available represented about 40 per cent of the unit cost of the final product. Erection costs were around half of capital costs. Labour costs accounted for around half of erection costs.

    My reading of this is that erection costs are about 20 percent of the unit cost of the final construction product; total labour costs are about 10 percent. The 10 percent total labour costs might comprise 5 percent for wages and 5 percent for non-wage labour costs (the costs of recruiting, training, supervising, managing, and insuring workers).

    The wages bill is only 5 percent of the unit cost of the final product in the construction industry. But cutting wages is oh so important.

  29. tpof
    [While I never saw Turncoat’s little manoeuvre yesterday coming]
    Nobody saw the possibility of the manoeuvre itself, but I have to ask, so what?

    If he had performed this unexpected political manoeuvre to take us all somewhere unexpected or to secure something of significance, then I agree we should all be standing here slack-jawed in astonishment. That’s not what’s happened. He’s performed this unexpected political manoeuvre to take us to take us all somewhere we already expected was an option, and that he could have brought us to in other ways – though possibly more roundabout.

    It’s not even a particularly significant place, that will enthuse most people, that he’s brought us to. The manoeuvre itself might be dazzling – it’s certainly dazzled the CPG – but the place it’s landed us in is not.

  30. TPOF

    ‘That’s 15 weeks of non-communication and miscommunication between government ministers. 15 weeks for Turncoat to be absolutely snippy and arrogant when interviewers ask reasonable (not gotcha) questions that people actually want to know the answers to. 15 weeks in which external crises can occur to throw the government even more off-course. And 15 weeks for FPMTA to provide maximum assistance by reassuring the public that Turncoat is pursuing TA’s agenda.
    ”

    Yes, that’s what I said earlier.

    Fifteen weeks of PollyWaffle’s stocks going downhill sure and steady.

    All his leadership incompetences and lightweightedness on full show; defending what can only be a hypocritical budget (emergencey suddenly gone; deficit and debt no longer problems); defending a budget based on eleventy-ism; defending himself from the enemies within; and the electorate tiring of being lectured to by Mr Inaction

    That’s why I wrote @ #1511:

    “Don’t be surprised if a challenge to his leadership appears on the horizon by the end of April.

    I don’t think a Shorten v Turnbull election is a 100% for sure event at this stage.

    Because the Waffler is not going to improve ….. he’s only way forward is down.”

  32. KENNY and HARTCHER know it is going to be a long campaign. They have to suck up to Turnbull’s press office or be taken off the “A” drip. That would be diabolical, because then they would have to work for a living. Simple, really.

  33. [So, does anyone doubt that when the Senate reconvenes on 18 April 2016 it will adjourn until 10 May 2016 (the previous date), and thus erase Gorgeous George’s little stunt?]

    I don’t think they’ll adjourn. They might just call Malcolm’s bluff. Knock ABCC on the head on the first day back and say, well you called us back for three weeks, what have you got left for us to do? Plenty of havoc can be caused between April 18 and May 3. Turnbull might adjourn the reps, but the Senate might say you called us back, we’re staying unless you get Pete to pull his Sect 5 trick again only in reverse (Prorogue Parliament again).

    Or because the GG has to formally open the session the Senate gets to debate an Address-in-Reply. The senate might decide that will take about two weeks to get through.

    There a lots of things that can be done to make Malcolm’s life difficult in the Parliament yet. I expect Labor, Greens and the x-bench will be looking into all of them.

  34. TPOF – Yes, maybe I am being too inflexible. Maybe a looooonnnng debate on the Marriage Equality Bill, and then adjourn to 10 May 2016.

  35. [Nobody saw the possibility of the manoeuvre itself, but I have to ask, so what?]

    We did actually discuss the option of proroguing Parliament a few weeks ago. Just that seeing as it has only been done a few times in the last 50 odd years and never for a political reason we discounted it.

  36. DN @ 1579

    I think we are mostly if not completely in agreement. The thing that occurs to me about the ‘masterstroke’ is not that it creates so many options for Turncoat, but that he is locked into only two.

    Either get his legislation passed untouched – and he has included both relating to industrial relations – and he therefore gains a famous victory over everyone.

    Or he has to try to go to a DD on 2 July, however his party is travelling in the polls and however the public responds to his budget.

    And he has brought the Senate back for three weeks of bunfesting. Just because he wants them to talk about HIS bills does not mean that they have to or will. Whatever they do, the three weeks will give his ABCC bill constitutional standing as a DD trigger, but the electorate will not be voting primarily on industrial relations.

  37. “Turnbull is 62. If he needs to be battle-hardened at his age, he’s a frickin lost cause”

    Turnbull’s philosophy seems to be, ‘why work hard for something when you can achieve the same with trickery, deceit and the use others’.

  38. Re the ABCC (quote from Update 2 to main article above):

    As for the substance of the bill {to restore the ABCC}, 35% supported the government line, 17% were opposed, 27% opted for neither, and 22% said they didn’t know.

    Those numbers might change in the Government’s favour after a 100 day disinformation campaign, actively spruiked by large parts of the media and unchallenged by most of the rest.

  39. [There a lots of things that can be done to make Malcolm’s life difficult in the Parliament yet. I expect Labor, Greens and the x-bench will be looking into all of them.]

    I think all of the cross-bench, other than Wang and, likely Day and Madigan, have enough public profile to present a serious possibility of getting up in their own right. Lazarus is well known. Muir has a lot of opportunity to be heard and to strut his stuff as Mr Everyman. Lambie must be a shoo-in in Tasmania, given how small the electorate is. Leyonhjelm may also attract right-wing nuts now he has such a high profile. And Xenophon could well have two more senators on his team if the 2013 results were replicated.

    And three weeks with the CPG attention fully trained on them will be millions of dollars of campaigning publicity if each of them plays their cards right.

  40. K17 @ 1584

    The options for the Senate majority are endless – as long as they can work together. And all Turncoat will be able to do is watch helplessly from the sidelines wondering what they will come up with next.

  41. TPOF – Doesn’t malcolm have the option of accepting amendments to the ABCC and saying “Well, guys, I guess that’s close enough. I’ll get these passed in the HoR. No DD then.”

  42. TPOF – You’re correct again. They can, as Ratsak says, knock the ABCC on the head and then dangle the issue of supply before Malcolm’s mesmerised eyes.

  43. Tingle –

    [ BoldThanks for the election ad Tony Abbott, says Labor

    Tony Abbott has already written several of the election advertisements for the Australian Labor Party. The only question that remains is how many he plans to help write.

    Labor strategists were rubbing their hands together on Tuesday at the spectre of the former prime minister’s preparedness to derail Malcolm Turnbull.

    Having slavishly – but perplexingly – followed so many of the Labor government’s plays while he was prime minister, Abbott seemed determined to do the same as a humble backbencher: choosing moments when things seemed to be going particularly well for the Prime Minister to intervene.

    ….For the first time in weeks Turnbull looked like he was at least a little in control, and actually had a plan.

    …But his predecessor just couldn’t help himself and had to chime in from London, ensuring the news cycle for the next 24 hours would be dominated by talk of disunity, and effectively forcing the Prime Minister out to claim his own territory.

    “The Turnbull government is seeking election fundamentally on the record of the Abbott government,” Abbott told Sky News from London.

    …The seams that Labor can mine here are those of prime ministerial weakness, or Coalition disunity, in what is now effectively a formal election campaign.

    The working presumption on both sides of politics is that Abbott will continue to butt in.

    …However, at a political level, the ongoing perceptions of dysfunction between the prime minister and the treasurer are emerging as possibly just as large an issue to manage as whatever Tony Abbott says.

    When Opposition Leader Bill Shorten emerged on Monday to respond to Mr Turnbull’s Senate play, the first thing he focused on was the fact that the Treasurer did not seem to be aware that the date of the budget had changed. That was more a perception than a reality – but it is a perception the govenrment could well do without. ]

    http://www.afr.com/news/politics/election/thanks-for-the-election-ad-tony-abbott-says-labor-20160322-gnodjp

  45. Kenny’s prose is what you would expect from a year 10 student essay.
    On the other hand perhaps I am being totally unfair to Year 10.

  46. It might make sense for Lazarus to formally join the Xenophon team, provided he was not bound to voting any particular way. Might get a higher vote in Qld.

  47. lizzie@1574

    JD much earlier

    Grocon was fined just $250,000 for the wall collapse, while the CFMEU was fined over $1.25 million for protesting Grocon’s safety record.


    I find this obscene.

    Also inaccurate.
    CFMEU was fined for much more than a simple protest, but I am hazy on the details and can’t be bothered looking it up.

  49. Bluey’s Bulletin No 2/103 22 March 2016

    Day 1. The PM went to the GG for a DD on the ABCC cos the CFMEU. WTF?

    Day 2.
    Bluey reckons that without Creddo’s monomaniacal micro management Turnbull’s Liberals are less coordinated than a troop of baboons.

    Turnbull’s Long March to Electoral Nirvana is already off the rails. Turnbull shafted Morrison again. Twice. But Bluey reckons who cares? Morrison came to the Treasurer’s job fresh from jailing sick kids in concentration camps and bastardising pregnant women. But the MSM spent a bit of Day 2 talking about the Turnbull/Morrison relationship shambles. Older heads will recall that one of the reasons LOTO Turnbull was knifed was because of his lack of team work.
    Not content with this shambles, Brandis, Cash and Frydenberg contradicted each other about Cash’s role. Brandis reckons no amendments. Frydenberg implied that amendments were still on the table. Cash, hand-picked for the job, negotiates with the subtlety and agility of a Vale class Supermax dry bulk carrier. Bluey is an admirer of Cash even if she is not exactly WYSIWYG. Blue reckons that she will add a touch of class to the negotiations with her stentorian fog horn blaring. But the Cross Benchers are Very Cross. Does Cash have Buckley’s? Still, Bluey is alert but not alarmed because di Natale, fresh from his triumphant black shirt fashion shoot and getting dudded by Turnbull, reckons that there will not be a DD.

    In what must be a very worrying portent of things to come for Turnbull, Abbott has launched HIS campaign to win the election. According to Abbott, he STOPPED THE BOATS and DITCHED THE TAX. Abbott offered the view that ‘TURNBULL DOES IT MY WAY.’

    Bluey reckons that part of Turnbull’s riposte, ‘I was a Cabinet Minister in Abbott’s Government’ is piss weak. The VEEP meme is also demeaning. To add a frisson of excitement, Creddo has joined the Sky Team.

    Turnbull reckons he has spent six months doing lots of Turnbull Government things. The effects test, media reform, the Innovations statement, and the Defence White Paper. Bluey reckons that apart from the Innovations Statement which reinstates and rebadges of a $1 billion dollar in research costs the rest are hot air. They are words.

    In best Bestiality Boy style Abbott, who funded the program, now reckons that the Safe Schools is ‘social engineering’. Bluey is nostaligic for the sheer grunting honesty of the good old boots and all bastardry of Abbott’s salad days. OTOH, it is not clear to Bluey how saving kids from suicide as a result of homophobic hate is bad.

    The Leaders

    Bluey recalls fondly BB’s sustained analysis of Abbott. It was incisive and it was deep. Who can forget BB’s Abbott naughty school boy who was always forgiven? How right that was! And now BB has given us the Two Turnbulls: the suave, articulate Smiler. And Nasty Prick Turnbull. Shorten soldiered on today as he has been doing for three years. Di Natale jiggled around doing ‘Look at moi. Je suis jejeune’

    Poll

    Essential came in at 50/50 2PP. Bluey reckons that the main result is that around half the electorate is more or less completely disengaged. Bluey reckons that nothing much real will happen until around Day 103.

    Lies

    Bluey notes with jaundiced weariness that lies are going to be big in this campaign. The best liar or the worst liar, depending on your POV, has been Turnbull. Turnbull is fast out of the blocks. He lied about a 20% change in productivity as a result of the ABCC. Bluey reckons that Fact Check should be renamed ‘Liberal Lie Check’.

    Self-inflicted Black Swan Events

    Bluey reckons that the Liberals talking up company tax cuts when the ATO is about to release tax figures that show 98 big companies pay zero tax and 56 squillionaires pay zero tax, is crazy politics. Less predictable was the head of the ASX stepping down in relation to a bribery thing in relation to which he has declared he has the old ‘no memory’. The Sydney terrorist arrests would have been a boon for Abbott but they are useless for Turnbull, politically. Morrison was on Sky but he is a terrible motormouth.

    The Big Sleeper

    All the reverse Robin Hood bastard measures in the 2014 Budget which were not removed during the 2015 Budget and which are live political IEDs for the Coalition. Bluey assumes that they will be removed from the 2016 Budget.

    The MSM

    Bluey reckons that this morning the MSM Chatterati were agog with Turnbull’s daring agility and innovation. They went the full gaga. ‘Audacious’ and ‘daring’. With classic infotainment insouciance they all missed the real point which is that Turnbull is gutless on global warming, Safe Schools, Murray Darling Basin water, the 2014 Budget nasties, gutting climate science, coal seam gas, the Great Barrier Reef, big carbon polluters, approving huge coal mines, and gross exploitation of foreign workers in Australia.

    Bluey reckons that Turnbull has decisively decided to maintain uncertainty until some uncertain time after the Senate meets. That is three weeks away. Bluey reckons that Turnbull has reset the clock to the old slow drift to nowhere and that people will twig to this some time soon.

    Verdict: Day 2 goes to Labor mainly because the Liberals are sticking with their self-destruction.

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