It’s been an oddly quiet week on the national polling front, though no doubt the coming fortnight will more than make up for it. Besides the regular weekly campaign ReachTEL poll for Seven, the only new result is the latest fortnightly rolling average from Essential Research, out a day later than usual due to the Monday public holiday. This records Labor with a 51-49 lead, returning it to its position before a sudden two-point shift to the Coalition a fortnight ago. The primary votes are Coalition 41% (steady), Labor 37% (up one), Greens 10% (steady) and Nick Xenophon Team 4% (steady). Also featured are personal ratings, which Essential usually does on a monthly basis, but it seems to have picked up the pace to fortnightly for the campaign period. Malcolm Turnbull is down three on approval to 38% and up one on disapproval to 40%, while Bill Shorten is steady on approval at 34%, but down four on disapproval to 40%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows slightly, from 40-27 to 40-29.
An occasional question on the parties’ attributes records positive movement since March for Labor, whose ratings are up from three to nine points on favourable indicators (the biggest gain being from 30% to 39% on “has a good team of leaders”), and lower ratings on all the negative ones, with the exception of “will promise to do anything to win votes”. The movements for the Liberals are more of a mixed bag, with both positive and negative indicators going up. The one exception is “divided”, something the Liberal Party is now deemed to be by 52% of respondents compared with 61% last time. Other results from the Essential survey include a finding of 47% approval for the superannuation changes in the budget, with disapproval at 22%.
The only other bit of poll news from the last few days has been a Greens-commissioned Lonergan Research poll from the traditionally blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins, where the Greens appear to be giving Kelly O’Dwyer something to think about. The Greens were on 24.2% of the forced preference primary vote, which would put them in second place for the first time, with O’Dwyer on 44.6%, Labor on 18.5% and the Nick Xenophon Team on 7.9%. O’Dwyer leads 53-47 on respondent-allocated preference. The poll had a large sample of 1118, and unlike ReachTEL’s polls was conducted over two nights, on Friday and Saturday of the weekend before last.
The BludgerTrack aggregate records a reasonably solid tick to the Coalition this week, which is mostly down to a ReachTEL result that would have come out at 52-48 in favour of the Coalition if previous election preference flows had been used, as opposed to the headline result of 50-50. BludgerTrack now shows a more plausible result in Western Australia, although it’s still on the sunny side for Labor compared with what’s coming through anecdotally and in individual seat polls. Since last week’s reading, the Coalition is up two seats in Western Australia and one in Victoria, but they’re down two in Queensland. They are also recording a favourable swing in South Australia, which possibly just shows the two-party model isn’t working there any more. It’s worth noting that the Greens have been losing steam nationally over the past few months, presumably because some of the loose anti-major party vote is being gathered up by the Nick Xenophon Team.
Gee, isn’t anyone excited about the Facebook debate, hosted by jumpin’ Joe?
Edi_
Oh. I thought you meant no ‘shortage’ of Galahs in Canberra – which is funny. But the typo of ‘storage’ tickled my funny bone even more.
Another 50/50 poll? But you know the coalition has it in the bag?
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-story-that-will-stun-australia-a-current-affair-gets-rare-access-to-nauru-20160617-gplsj9.html
Why are the “The Drum” participants so rational tonight? Where are the IPA representatives? John Hewson is surely a Lib. How did he get to be so sensible?
Ken McNeill
Hewson was BA: Before Abbott.
question @ #1780 Friday, June 17, 2016 at 5:25 pm
It has all gone to pieces since boer and a few others started contesting the premises on which G campaigns are conducted.
It’s not pretty.
But it is a microcosm of a real political contest – the campaign by the G’s to take possession of the non-LNP political domain . It is also about techniques in “suasion” – persuasion/dissuasion. This is not an idle business. It has been running for 20 years. It implicitly involves the capacity of Labor to win office and to exercise power and the corresponding capacities of the LNP.
I think there are few more important and intriguing issues in Australian politics. It is as important in its own way as the ALP/DLP split of the 1950’s, a fissure endured until at least 1975.
I think we should all take more interest in it, not less.
John Hewson has always been sensible, it’s why he failed as Lib leader.
50/50 isn’t “too close to call”, it’s a narrow Lib win, which is why the betting and media narratives are the way they are. Labor needs consistent 51s and 52s to be in this election.
Yeah, yeah, such a surprise. This time they analysed social media.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-nbn-emerges-as-a-surprise-defining-issue-of-the-election-race-20160617-gplibs.html
One for BB
http://www.smh.com.au/world/search-for-mh370-thousands-of-kilometres-off-target-australian-aviation-expert-20160616-gpkn7g.html
IPSOS 51/49 to labor.
PV
Coalition 39 (-3)
Labor 33 (-3)
Cheers.
Ipsos reported as 51-49 to Labor. True?
#Ipsos Poll Federal Primary Votes: L/NP 39 (-3) ALP 33 (-3) #ausvotes
KM
Hewson is, IMO, one of the better members of various talking heads shows.
Where’s 50-50 for Ipsos coming from? The tweet I’m seeing from Ghost says this:
ReachTEL national and Hasluck polls will be with us very shortly.
a 33% primary transmutes to 51 2PP?
Hell’s bells.
Boerwar – those respondent-allocated preferences are really favouring Labor aren’t they!
Boer,
Look at the L-NP primary
That would make a 26-28% primary for the minors and the micros.
If so, it might mean that preferences are going to have an even less predictable impact…?
Q
Yep. Below 40%. The two majors have lost 6% to the minors and the micros… where did all that go?
I don’t expect the Ipsos 2PP result would be respondent-allocated.
JD
I trust they have the courage of their convictions!
No it doesn’t. It just needs the seats.
Huh. Well Labor is doing very well in this poll to from a 33% primary vote to 51% TPP!
Jimmy – which it is very unlikely to get with 50% of the TPP vote.
Simon, I did not realise I failed to spell that word correctly. Sorry for my English language failure.
There’ll be platters of crow eaten tonight as the commentators frankly admit they got it wrong…
Nah… just kidding.
What the pundits seem to have done is comb through the forest looking for the trees, without seeing the forest.
The Ipsos poll is almost exactly 51-49 (I make it 50.98-40.02) on previous election preferences to Labor if we assume the Green vote (13%) stays the same as the last poll and the remainder (15%) goes to “Others”. We don’t have those figures yet though.
teh_drewski – true, but saying that Labor “needs” a particular set of poll results two weeks out from an election to ensure a particular result on election day is silly. IMO Labor is doing just fine.
That should be 50.98-49.02.
BB
LOL
It’s sounding like the Queensland election…preferences, preferences
So, two polls in a row (Essential, now Ipsos) on 51/49?
Edi_
no apology needed. I am terrible with typos.
I found the typo quite funny as it conjured up images of a storage area for galahs in Canberra. I can see some Canberran Bludgers in there, flapping around.
I was expecting Ipsos to be 51-49 to the Coalition, so this is a great result!
According to 7 News, the ‘frontrunner’ in the election has ’emerged’: sounds like some movement in the ReachTEL.
Only one person on this blog predicted the Qld result. Someone called Unitary State from memory.
POSS, that would have to be the Libs to go with the narrative, surely…
It’s begun, and Malcolm has a plan. (It’s OK I wont’ comment throughout.)
Oh deat, all the cliches by Mal.
What a joke: 10,000 viewers only on Facebook.
Just heard on local Perth news that ReachTel is 51-49 to the LNP. The meme was that “The Government has hit the front in a major poll and the PM has stretched his lead over Bill Shorten as PPM”. Surprised I heard it first on local commercial radio before here.
Long live the Macadamia’s
Turnbull opposed to churing PMs. WTF?
Well, it was mentioned in the same headline as Mal’s bungle inviting a anti-gay Islamic leader to dinner, so who knows…
LOL
Turnbull just reckoned he is against prime minister churn on the Facebook thingie. This was met with cynical laughter.
BB
How do you work that out?
7News just said it was the Coalition ahead 51-49. How disappointing.
First answer
Turnbull: Very poor
Shorten: Slightly better.
Reachtel also 51-49 to Labor
Audience of 30… live questions?
How come not from Facebook?
WTF?