ReachTEL: 51-49 to Coalition; Ipsos: 51-49 to Labor

More evidence of a fine balance of support on the national two-party preferred, but with Labor falling short where it matters most.

The latest weekly campaign poll for the Seven Network from ReachTEL has the Coalition hitting a lead of 51-49, following headline results of 50-50 in the last two polls and a 52-48 in favour of Labor three weeks ago. This week’s forced preference primary vote totals are Coalition 43.5% (up 0.8%), Labor 33.6% (up 0.4%), Greens 9.1% (down 0.8%) and Nick Xenophon Team 9.1% (down 0.8%). Malcolm Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 55.4-44.6 to 57.6-42.4, but both leaders’ personal ratings are little changed: Turnbull goes from 28.3% to 27.4% on very good plus good and from 37.4% to 36.3% on poor plus very poor, while Shorten goes from 27.5% to 29.6% favourable and from 38.6% to 39.7% unfavourable. The automated phone poll was conducted last night from a sample of 2576.

A rather different set of results emerges this evening from the latest fortnightly campaign poll by Ipsos for the Fairfax papers. It records a dramatic increase in the minor party vote, with both the Coalition and Labor down three points, to 39% and 33% respectively. Most of the yield goes to “others”, up four points to 14%, with the Greens up one to 14%. This cancels out on two-party preferred, which is unchanged at 51-49 in Labor’s favour on both the respondent-allocated and previous-election two-party preferred measures. The major parties’ loss of support isn’t reflected in the personal ratings, with both leaders up two on approval (47% for Malcolm Turnbull, 43% for Bill Shorten) and steady on disapproval (42% for Turnbull, 47% for Shorten). Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows from 49-31 to 48-34. The live interview phone poll was conducted Tuesday to Thursday from a sample of 1437.

ReachTEL’s weekly marginal seat poll is a disappointing result for Labor, showing Liberal member Ken Wyatt retaining a 53-47 lead in his eastern Perth seat of Hasluck, suggesting a modest swing to Labor of 3%. Forced preference primary vote results are 46.1% for Ken Wyatt (46.2% at the 2013 election, post-redistribution) and 32.6% for Labor candidate Bill Leadbetter (29.2% for Labor in 2013). The Greens are on 13.5%, up from 10.7% in 2013, much of which comes from the forced response follow-up question asked of the undecided. The Greens got 10.9% on the first round question, but 21.1% of those who responded as undecided favoured the Greens on the follow up. The two-party headline is from respondent-allocated preferences, but 2013 election preferences would have produced the same result. The poll was conducted last night from a sample of 753.

Also:

• A ReachTEL poll commissioned by GetUp! suggests Rob Oakeshott is looking competitive in his bid to unseat Nationals member Luke Hartsuyker in the seat of Cowper in the Mid North Coast region of New South Wales. Inclusive of forced preferences, the primary votes are Hartsuyker 42.6%, Oakeshott 25.6%, Labor 14.0%, Greens 8.4%, Christian Democrats 4.5%, others 4.9%. Hartsuyker would likely get over the line after preferences on those numbers, but only by a few per cent. The poll was conducted on Monday from a sample of 842.

• Roy Morgan has released details results of its polling conducted from April to June in South Australia – a little too detailed in fact, since results are provided at electorate level from samples of only 180 each. Taken in aggregate, the Nick Xenophon Team is at 21.5% statewide, which would score them three seats based on Kevin Bonham’s modelling. There is no clear indication of major geographical variation in the NXT vote, as was the case with Xenophon’s Senate vote in 2013.

Another Morgan report repeats the electorate-level voting intention exercise for the seven seats recording the highest levels of Greens support, which suggests their primary vote to be slightly higher than Labor’s across Melbourne, Batman and Wills, but a) it’s hard to read much into this given the sample size, and b) Morgan has long been reporting excessive-looking results for the Greens. The report also tells us that Labor led 51-49 in Morgan’s regular polling over the fortnight, unchanged on the previous result, which didn’t get the usual published result this week for some reason.

UPDATE: Here is an update of BludgerTrack with the two latest polls, whose peculiarities have essentially cancelled each other out. The Coalition is up a seat in Queensland, but down two in New South Wales.

bludgertrack-2016-06-18

2016-06-16-marginal-seat-polls

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.

1,029 comments on “ReachTEL: 51-49 to Coalition; Ipsos: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. At this stage of the game, the libs would be wanting to be putting daylight between themselves and the opposition. They must be bloody worried that’s not happening.

  2. William, you should just take Reachtel out and shoot it. Don’t sully Bludgertracker with its presence.

    Kevin, you say a extraordinarily large number of really, really stupid things.

  3. Very disappointing debate.
    Turnbull can hardly get a good answer out but Shorten little better. Empty promises lacking any substance, impossible promises that are not going to be fulfilled.
    The answer on mental health by both leaders was a disgrace and shows both are not fit to lead a scout group let alone a country.
    I am giving up on it.

  4. Turnbull just gave a very good answer on pollies’ remuneration, citing the labour movement in the process.

    The Monkey Pod won’t like that 😉

  5. Mal keeps on about “the most exciting time in our history”. So many people are stressed over housing, jobs, health, education opportunities, I bet the Gold Rush was more exciting.

  6. The ultimate sign of desperation in a political biased person is the wish to ignore polls that do not fit into their biased views in the hope that ignoring reality can cause their side to somehow win. This desperation can be very embarrassingly exposed on election night.

  7. The Ipsos poll shows Labor’s primary vote has fallen three points in the past fortnight to 33 per cent. But that is at least only what it polled at the last election. The poll shows the Coalition’s primary vote down to just 39 per cent (the first time the primary vote has been below 40 since Malcolm Turnbull became leader). This is a full seven points below the 46 per cent it recorded in the 2013 election.

  8. The Iosos primary numbers are hard to believe.

    Depends which way you look at it. They’re now much in line with the ReachTEL and Morgan results, whereas before the higher primaries for the majors put it in the same league as Essential.

  9. ReachTEL’s weekly marginal seat poll is a disappointing result for Labor,

    —————————

    Fair dinkum

    If someone in newscorp made a dumb comment like William Bowe stating a safe liberal party seat of 56/44 at the 2013 federal election , is a marginal seat

    Would be hounded on this blog

    #youknowitmakessense

  10. Gave up on-line because of buffering. Thanks Mal. Lots of comments on facebook with buffering mentioned.

    Polls are crap. Well, in terms of i want them to be different. 50/50 all that can be said o reckon. Still, two weeks to go, which is a twice a long time in politics.

  11. It seems quite clear there is a movement away from the coalition government but that the movement is not going to Labor to the extent it would like. Instead it is going to other parties and how the preferences flow from the other parties will decide a number of seats. If the preferences vary from what the polls judge to be the best way of allocating them then the polls could be a long way out.

  12. I believe William was saying it was ReachTel’s weekly marginal seat poll not him saying the seat was a marginal seat.

  13. SWAMPRAT – Sorry, you were right – IPSOS.
    Is the “flight to the minor parties” good for the incumbent? Mmm. Interesting that there seems to be “churn” going on

  14. The Facebook debate? Bill kicked several goals whilst Mal hit the crossbar a few times. Final score 4-0 to Labor

  15. Don’t know what to make of polls, Reachtel is showing a trend to Libs. But this is not matched by any other pollster. At least to that extent.

  16. Davidwh

    even the title william boww has put this
    but with Labor falling short where it matters most.

    That comment is no better if he is referring to Hasluck ,

  17. Oh so I missed the Facebook debate. Stupid scheduling that excludes people outside the east coast who were working at 4pm!!

  18. chinda63 @ #18 Friday, June 17, 2016 at 6:53 pm

    That finish by Shorten was a bit lecturey.
    No idea if that is a real word, but you know what I mean

    The point was that Bill was connected to the concerns of ordinary people while Malcolm was somewhere in la la land. I thought he did very well with that answer.

    Clearly, so did the small audience, voting 17 to 7 in favour of Shorten.

  19. If talk time is counted, IMV Mal won because he wouldn’t shut up.

    I got that impression from the little i saw that wasn’t stuttering. hildebrand not able to shut him up.

  20. Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits 1h1 hour ago
    A totally content-free moderator is one way to go.

    Who was the moderator?

  21. I got an interesting AEC document at my PPVC work today. Basically states that if you vote just 1 above the line, it will infact count as a formal vote as others exhaust

    Didn’t know that

  22. Chris I don’t see a problem with the remark as that ReachTel result for Hasluck is indicating a smaller swing to Labor in WA than what is required and has been talked about.

  23. EDI – Totally agree. How preferences will flow seems more important than ever. If you decide to abandon the govt and vote for a minor party, do you then say, oh, well, that’s enough of that protest and then cast a vote for the govt? Mmm. Be surprised.

  24. The AEC says, “Where a winning candidate received less than 56% of the two candidate preferred vote the seat is classified as ‘marginal'”. By my reckoning, the post-redistribution margin in Hasluck is 5.9534733441034%.

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