After teasing us a little confusingly with results to secondary questions in the Sunday Mail yesterday, the Courier-Mail today comes good with state voting intention numbers from the Galaxy poll that gave us the federal numbers published on Saturday (paywalled link here). The poll has the Liberal National Party up three points on the primary vote to 44% in the immediate wake of Tim Nicholls’ leadership coup against Lawrence Springborg the Friday before last, with Labor down a point to 36% and the Greens down one to 9%. This translates into a two-party lead to the LNP of 52-48, compared with 51-49 at the last such poll a month ago. Since then, however, the state’s electoral system has unexpectedly switched from optional to compulsory preferential voting. Galaxy was previously coping with the volatile preference behaviour under OPV by using an average of the last three elections for its preference flows. I’m not sure what they’re doing now, but the published result is what you get if you apply a typical compulsory preference flow such as the one from the 2013 federal election, when Greens votes in Queensland went 80-20 to Labor, while the rest went 55-45 to the Coalition.
The poll also finds Annastacia Palaszczuk down seven on approval to 44% and up seven on disapproval, which is in comparison with a poll conducted in February. Tim Nicholls opens his account with an unspectacular 25% approval and 30% disapproval, with 45% reserving judgement. The results published yesterday related that Nicholls’ coup had 42% approval and 27% disapproval, but also showed Palaszczuk leading 44% to 29% as preferred premier. The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday evening from a sample of 1176.
I think Tim Nicholls will be too right wing for Qld to stomach.
he is campell newman with brains, but a real ideologue.
Hardly surprising after the last few months.
I like the Palaszczuk government, but they need to stop trying to govern like they’ve got a 20-seat majority when they’re a minority government. They don’t have the seats in parliament to be able to get away with picking stupid fights and trying to strongarm backbenchers, and everything surrounding the Rob Pyne situation just screams absolute clusterf–k. That was such an avoidable own goal but the party just seemed to insistently try to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly for months on end.
And Nicholls has the huge advantage right now of “not being Lawrence Springborg” and so mainly known for losing elections. If the government can remember that they’re a minority government, take a few hints from Daniel Andrews, and get on with governing, I’m sure they’ll bounce back soon enough.
A State poll during a Federal election is garbage.
Rebecca I don’t think it’s Labor fault that Rob Pyne quit the party. Pyne was not a team player and left on his own accord.
You also suggest Annstasia is governing like she has a 20 seat majority. She has been alot more steady and consultative then Campbell Newman ever was. I think this poll is really too early to know anything. Remember, Nicholls was always going to enjoy a honeymoon period.
Daretoread I probably half agree with you. Nicholls is more right wing then Springborg in a neo-liberal sense (privatization assets), probably more moderate in terms of a social sense (civil unions, abortion etc) .
This is the thing, though: you can’t have the same definition of “team player” if you are a minority government as if you have a twenty seat majority. I can see why having backbenchers resistant to toe the party line would absolutely make the government shirty, but if you’re relying on their vote to stay in government, not calling their bluff on stupid stuff is probably in one’s interests. It would have been patently easier to have Pyne on the inside pissing out and not expect that he would never oppose the party line than to have to negotiate his vote on everything – but that’s the price you pay for not adapting to minority government. “More steady and consultative than Campbell Newman” is the weakest praise ever. Everyone who ever lived is more steady and consultative than Campbell Newman.