Newspoll: 50-50

Even stevens from Newspoll, which has a further poll finding Barnaby Joyce hanging on for dear life in New England.

With a fortnight to go, Newspoll finds two-party preferred steady at 50-50, from primary votes of Coalition 41% (up one), Labor 36% (up one) and Greens 10% (steady). We are also informed that the Nick Xenophon Team is at 29% in South Australia. On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is down one on approval to 36% and steady on disapproval at 51%, while Bill Shorten is up two to 35% and down one to 51%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister shifts from 45-30 to 46-31. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1805.

The Australian also has a Newspoll result showing Barnaby Joyce with a lead of just 51-49 in New England, from primary votes of 48%, 36% for independent Tony Windsor, 7% for Labor and 3% for the Greens. This was part of the same marginal seat polling that was mostly released on Saturday, being conducted Monday to Wednesday from a sample of 523.

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.

1,417 comments on “Newspoll: 50-50”

Comments Page 5 of 29
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  3. briefly

    No its just your fictional view.

    All here know it so do us all a favour and give it a rest for a while. Try every ten posts instead

  4. Hold on a minute, in my new Senate voting rules I got in the mail it explicitly says I MUST complete 6 boxes. This is either correct or seriously misleading if you say I can only label 1 box and it counts.

    Btw this terrorist candidate is a real worry for labs. If theyre already dredging up this kind of dirt, let’s see whatelse they have closer to the election….

  5. Scout

    I’m in Tassy and would LOVE NiKolic to get booted

    I’m not in Tassie but also would like muchly to see this one ‘discarded’.

  6. daretotread @ #197 Monday, June 20, 2016 at 7:50 am

    Guytaur
    I have figured it out now, thanks to BK
    Briefly is Amanada Vanstone or at least her ghost writer.

    dtt, it’s ok. I already know you are opposed to the election of strong Labor governments. You don’t need to prove it again this morning.

  7. Don

    I am not sure how the votes exhaust on a party basis. I assume maybe wrongly that a 1 would mean the party but no other party would get your vote.

  8. “My prediction. Labor toast. Shorten toast.”
    Ha! A Green knows what is going to happen inside the Labor party. If Labor does full short I doubt they will get rid of Bill Shorten. Shorten has exceeded expectations- got rid of Tony Abbott, led a resurgence against Malcolm Turnbull even when the chips were done.

    As I have pointed out previously. It would probably better that Labor sticks with Shorten to give trust to the public in terms of the leadership stability issue. However I will acknowledge that the Liberals have pretty much neutralise that issue for us as soon as they rolled Abbott.

  10. Lee Wool

    in my new Senate voting rules I got in the mail it explicitly says I MUST complete 6 boxes

    Obviously you took no interest in the debate around the Senate Voting ‘Reform’.

    One is valid.

    The wording on the form is part of the compromise.

  11. Don
    In the old system when you ticked above the line, you were like it or not allocating your preferences , but according to the way your preferred party chose. So while you might tick ALP, your preferences may have gone to Geens, DLP, FF or Sex, according to the choice of ALP head office.

    The only real change is that now YOU make the decision rather than Sussex St, Menzies House or Green central. While by and large (Victoria excepted) the major parties made predicable preference deals, for some of the minorts it was weird, bordering on the corrupt. For example feel fairly sure that only 1/1000 voters for the Socialist Equality Party would actually have preferences the Liberals ahead of Greens or Labor, but in fact that party issues a split ticket (three ways) so that 1/3 went Liberal. Similarly some bizarre outcomes for parties such as Animal Justice where some preferenmces went top the LDP, who because of their no rules ideology would be antithetical to the views of Animal Justice.

  12. I am going to be crystal clear on my views again. I don’t care which party you vote primary for as long as a progressive voter your preference goes to Labor.

    The only reason we are getting these Labor Green wars is the competition for primary votes in a few seats.

  14. Shorten got rid of tony? Lol. Don’t flatter yourself. I think Tony and his cabinets 2014 budget got rid of Tony.

  15. briefly

    No thats you and your fiction,
    Try some restraint. Thats not telling you to shut up thats just telling you to stop boring us.

  17. briefly

    I was going to say DTT was being unfair. Now I am starting to think maybe DTT is right.

    Anyway thats it for me I am not going to continue to bore the other posters with this back on forth about boredom

  18. Morning bludgers

    Thanks BK for today’s offerings.

    Will be interesting to see what the narrative will be this week.
    The past week was that it was all over red rover, the coalition had this election in the bag. Now with Newspoll at 50/50, what is going to be the mantra

  19. David

    I imagine that the future of the ALP leaders will depend on the actual outcome of the election and where swings occurred/did not occur. At this stage I would say Shorten looks pretty secure, but we will need to see how each of the states pans out. It is way too early to be even discussing this.

  20. Don

    Most of those 12 will be eliminated from the count early on. After that point your vote will exhaust and not be able to help any other not terrible candidate who is still in the race.

  21. “Shorten got rid of tony? Lol. Don’t flatter yourself. I think Tony and his cabinets 2014 budget got rid of Tony.”

    Yes. Bill Shorten stayed out of the fray and let Tony Abbott hang himself. Shorten played his cards right, and knew all he had to do was hold his nerve.

  23. Cormann on 24 claiming that they are supporters of Medicare because bulk-billing rates are higher now than they were under Labor.

    Not more than a week ago the were claiming this was why they had to take measures to discourage people going to the doctor.

  24. guytaur @ #215 Monday, June 20, 2016 at 8:05 am

    briefly
    No thats you and your fiction,
    Try some restraint. Thats not telling you to shut up thats just telling you to stop boring us.

    this really is trivial pursuit…the pursuit of the trivial by the trivial for the trivial…petty-fogging G-tics.

  25. I just reread that that Senate pamphlet and its misleading. borderline corrupt. What is the motive for this? Fair enough to have these Senate changes, but this is different. Why try trick people?

  27. Scoutdog

    The coalition stand for nothing except being re elected and working to distribute monies to the top 10%

  28. Don
    If you put 1 in the Labor column, it flows to each Labor candidate in turn. However, when it reaches the first Labor candidate NOT elected it will exhaust unless you have placed a number in another column.
    On another point, the legislation REQUIRES you to fill in 6 squares. However there are various savings provisions which allow votes to be treated as formal if they don’t strictly meet the requirements

  30. On Eddie McGuire.

    I agree with the ABC sports presenter. McGuire must be treated more harshly by the AFL than they treated Brad Scott of NMFC comments on umpires.

    Joking about drowning someone is out of order no matter what the gender.

  31. don

    I’ll start off by saying things like this are like tying shoe laces – so simple that everyone can learn how to do it, but almost impossible to explain in writing. (I have had the advantage of watching the equivalent of a Senate count on a small scale).

    I’m also going to assume you know almost nothing to ensure I’m covering my bases, so please forgive any inadvertent slurs on your intellect!

    In situations where there are multiple candidates to be elected, a quota system applies. That usually means the number of voters are divided by the number of positions available plus one. (So if there were 125 voters and 4 positions, a quota would be 25 votes).

    So if the X group gets 56 votes, that’s enough to get two of their people elected and leaves 6 votes unallocated. They have to go somewhere.

    As it would be unreasonable to pick any 6 votes out of X’s pile and reallocate them to someone else, all of X’s pile is recounted, with each second preference being added to the pile of votes for other candidates, but with a reduced value.

    This means that the votes from X’s pile, even though they have already been used to select candidates for X, will continue to flow on (at a reduced value) until they have all been allocated to a successful candidate.

    To continue the example: say most of X group’s vote goes to party Y. Party Y had 48 votes, to they got one candidate up and one is nearly there. X’s redistributed vote will get candidate Y’s second candidate over the line, but there will still be an excess, so that excess will flow on to the next candidate — and so on.

    The further you go in the count, the fewer options there are, as candidates have been eliminated along the way. (The process works from both the top and the bottom – excess votes from the majors are redistributed but so are votes from parties with votes so low that they are eliminated from the count, and their preferences are also distributed).

    Just to give you an idea of how important it is to number as many boxes as possible, I was once elected to council because I was 15/16 on someone’s ticket. All the other candidates had either been elected or eliminated, and there were three of us left in the count. The candidate who numbered me at number 15 out of 16 was the one left with the lowest number of votes, so his votes were redistributed. As he had numbered me 15 and the other remaining candidate at number 16, the last spot of the ballot was decided in my favour.

    (I know this sounds very complicated, but actually it isn’t — however, it is best explained visually. When you see how ballot papers are moved around in a counting room, it becomes crystal clear).

  34. Damn it, I think a quota in my example would actually be 26 votes (25 plus one). Sorry, but it should give you an idea anyway.

  36. Zoomster – Monday, June 20, 2016 at 8:20 am
    Is it possible to watch a count as a member of the public? I would like to see it in action.

  37. Do bludgers find Fran Kelly on ABC RN aggressive to Labor? Frustrated that they are looking likely? Maybe even I bit panicy this morning?

  38. Don

    I’d like to ask a dumb question. OK, another one.

    Is a good thing to do. I’ve sat in numerous meetings listening to people using obscure language arguing some point and could see that most in the room didn’t understand what the discussion was about. When asked a ‘dumb question’ directly one or both of the protagonists are usually shown not to actually know what the actual issue was.

  40. prefix @ #220 Monday, June 20, 2016 at 8:08 am

    Don
    Most of those 12 will be eliminated from the count early on. After that point your vote will exhaust and not be able to help any other not terrible candidate who is still in the race.

    zoomster @ #231 Monday, June 20, 2016 at 8:20 am

    don
    I’ll start off by saying things like this are like tying shoe laces – so simple that everyone can learn how to do it, but almost impossible to explain in writing. (I have had the advantage of watching the equivalent of a Senate count on a small scale).
    I’m also going to assume you know almost nothing to ensure I’m covering my bases, so please forgive any inadvertent slurs on your intellect!
    In situations where there are multiple candidates to be elected, a quota system applies. That usually means the number of voters are divided by the number of positions available plus one. (So if there were 125 voters and 4 positions, a quota would be 25 votes).
    So if the X group gets 56 votes, that’s enough to get two of their people elected and leaves 6 votes unallocated. They have to go somewhere.
    As it would be unreasonable to pick any 6 votes out of X’s pile and reallocate them to someone else, all of X’s pile is recounted, with each second preference being added to the pile of votes for other candidates, but with a reduced value.
    This means that the votes from X’s pile, even though they have already been used to select candidates for X, will continue to flow on (at a reduced value) until they have all been allocated to a successful candidate.
    To continue the example: say most of X group’s vote goes to party Y. Party Y had 48 votes, to they got one candidate up and one is nearly there. X’s redistributed vote will get candidate Y’s second candidate over the line, but there will still be an excess, so that excess will flow on to the next candidate — and so on.
    The further you go in the count, the fewer options there are, as candidates have been eliminated along the way. (The process works from both the top and the bottom – excess votes from the majors are redistributed but so are votes from parties with votes so low that they are eliminated from the count, and their preferences are also distributed).
    Just to give you an idea of how important it is to number as many boxes as possible, I was once elected to council because I was 15/16 on someone’s ticket. All the other candidates had either been elected or eliminated, and there were three of us left in the count. The candidate who numbered me at number 15 out of 16 was the one left with the lowest number of votes, so his votes were redistributed. As he had numbered me 15 and the other remaining candidate at number 16, the last spot of the ballot was decided in my favour.
    (I know this sounds very complicated, but actually it isn’t — however, it is best explained visually. When you see how ballot papers are moved around in a counting room, it becomes crystal clear).

    Thanks Zoom. I’ll print that out and look at it for a while!

  41. I may be wrong but it’s my understanding that a 1 above the line is equivalent to filling out all the boxes for that group below the line in sequential order

  43. Soft option

    I rarely listen to Fran Kelly these days, but there has been much feedback that she treats Labor much more harshly

  44. “If you vote above the line, you NEED to number AT LEAST 6 boxes from 1 to 6.” this is a direct quote from ‘your official guide’.

    What happens if I tick 1 box. Does my vote count or not? Reading this it clearly states my 1 vote will be invalid. Unless they’ve redefined the word need?

  47. Victoria:

    I heard the grab of McGuire and co yesterday morning and thought it was in extremely poor taste. I don’t know what radio station they appeared on, but all I can say is it’s obviously not a station that wants to attract female listeners.

  49. Lee

    Because this is the first election with the new system, and people are used to ticking one box, there’s a period of grace where the 1 will be accepted.

    Of course, it might end up as a permanent thing, because these things can.

    The bottom line: yes, if you number fewer boxes than 6, your vote will count. However, to have the most impact, you need to number as many as you can — all ballots get to the last three candidates standing situation, and you have a say as to which one gets up.

  50. Fess

    Apparently the comments by Eddie McGuire and Co were made early last week. Dont know why it took this long for it to make the public sphere

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