Fairfax-Ipsos: 50-50; Galaxy: 51-49 to Coalition

The final Ipsos and Galaxy polls of the campaign record little or no change, with both suggesting the election is still up for grabs.

The final Ipsos poll for Fairfax has the two parties back at 50-50, after Labor led 51-49 a fortnight ago, although Labor maintains its 51-49 lead on respondent-allocated preferences. The primary votes are 40% for the Coalition (up one), 33% for Labor (steady) and 13% for the Greens (down one). On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is up two on approval to 49% and down one on disapproval to 41%, while Bill Shorten is down one on approval to 42% and up three on disapproval to 50%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister shifts from 48-34 to 49-35. The poll of 1377 respondents was conducted Monday to Wednesday.

The News Corporation tabloids have a Galaxy poll of 1768 respondents which give the Coalition a lead of 51-49 on two-party preferred, compared with 50-50 in a similar poll a week ago. The primary votes are 43% for the Coalition (up one), 36% for Labor (down one) and 10% for the Greens (down one).

Today’s Advertiser has two seat polls from Galaxy Research, which find Kate Ellis leading Liberal challenger 53-47 in Adelaide, and Mark Butler reported as leading 76-33 in Port Adelaide (although this really should add up to 100), with the Nick Xenophon Team presumably running third in both cases since the report doesn’t say otherwise. The samples on the polls are a little over 500.

Three polls have emerged from Campaign for Australian Aid, conducted last Thursday to Saturday by Community Engagement – a national one, and seat polls from Sturt and Higgins. The Higgins poll is particularly interesting in that it suggests Kelly O’Dwyer faces a very serious threat from the Greens. Greens candidate Jason Ball leads Labor’s Carl Katter by 26% to 21%, and O’Dwyer’s 44% is low enough that it would be touch and go for her after preferences. The Sturt poll has the Nick Xenophon Team clearing the first hurdle by outpolling Labor 21% to 18%, but with Christopher Pyne’s primary vote of 48% being high enough to keep him safe. The national poll of 861 respondents has primary vote results of Coalition 40%, Labor 31% and Greens 11%.

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.

1,153 comments on “Fairfax-Ipsos: 50-50; Galaxy: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  1. bilko @ #976 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:11 pm

    Can someone tell me why ONLY a COALition majority government can give Australia stability what about a majority Labor government. stay alert we need more lerts

    Not answering your question but I have to raise a point.

    This morning, on 774, Jon Faine does a weekly wrap up with Liberty Sanger (Maurice Blackburn lawyer and Feeney’s wife) and Tim Wilson (Lib’s Freedom Boy). Jon asked Tim why exactly is a minority government a bad thing.

    Tim went and listed a few points that happened during Gillard’s minority government term but I was disappointed that neither Jon nor Liberty called on him on a few of his points.
    1) Leadership battles
    2) Slipper
    3) Consensus needed with crossbenchers, etc
    and so on.

    Jon emphasised that the Gillard government achieved a lot of things during that term, and Liberty said mostly the same thing.

    I wish someone called on him and said said that many of the points raised could have happened during a majority government
    1) Turnbull vs Abbott
    2) Hockey, Bronwyn’s helicopter trip, etc
    3) Consensus still needed in the Senate.

  2. aaronkirk @ #996 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:22 pm

    Does anyone here have any insight into how the Chinese community are going to vote in inner-Sydney?
    That Sky hack Keiran Gilbert on twitter reckons that ALP are worried about Barton because of a strong Liberal campaign in the Chinese community.
    I call BS on that but any insight would be good.

    Can’t comment on inner-Sydney but in my electorate in Melbourne we have some fabulous Chinese volunteers working hard on our phone-bank and we will have them out on the booths tomorrow.
    It helps to have Chinese party members and even a Senate candidate.

  3. I take the “ripper” comment as meaning close. 50-50. A “ripper” wouldn’t be a blowout poll. They want it close.

  5. guytaur @ #1000 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:27 pm

    AK
    Only if you believe the conspiracy stories of the Chinese leaders telling the Chinese background people to vote LNP.
    I think its BS. Business leaders might but thats no more strong than any other part of the community.

    The Libs do have Chinese members and supporters and I am sure they would be doing that.
    The only way to counter it is to activate your own Chinese supporters.

  6. Hello – can someone remind me where to find the Senate template to plan voting. SA will do. Google not finding.

  7. Antony Green:

    “Nick Xenophon is going to receive the highest vote for a minor or third party candidate in over a century in any state,” Mr Green said.

    “It will be the biggest breakdown in the two-party system in a century in Australia.”

    Sweet.

  8. simon katich @ #994 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:20 pm

    Jason Ball could be the upset of election night

    Channelling Bob………
    Evan Hughes will be the upset of the night.

    Anecdotally from my Pre Poll, I have had LGBTQI couples turning up and being very angry with the Liberals about the Plebiscite.

  9. If the AEC tell all the polling places in SA to do the usual indicative 2PP count on a Lib vs Lab basis, we really won’t have clue about the outcome in any seats in SA on Saturday night will we?

    I believe the AEC do their own polling (or contract it out) to better understand how to do the count in some electorates.

  10. Further quote from NYT article on contemporary polling accuracy

    Almost all online election polling is done with nonprobability samples. These are largely unproven methodologically, and as a task force of the American Association for Public Opinion Research has pointed out, it is impossible to calculate a margin of error on such surveys. What they have going for them is that they are very inexpensive to do, and this has attracted a number of new survey firms to the game. We saw a lot more of them in the midterm congressional election in 2014, in Israel and in Britain, where they were heavily relied on. We will see them more still in 2016.

  11. pegasus @ #1007 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:33 pm

    Antony Green:

    “Nick Xenophon is going to receive the highest vote for a minor or third party candidate in over a century in any state,” Mr Green said.
    “It will be the biggest breakdown in the two-party system in a century in Australia.”

    Sweet.

    Yes, anything diminishing the Greens is good.

  15. Jackol –

    Why would they start now?

    Because no party comes remotely close to getting a majority of the primary vote. Australia, as a whole, doesn’t want its government to execute an agenda. Or at least, we don’t want any of the agendas that the major parties are selling, because about 6 in 10 Australians will not have actually voted their first choice for whichever major party ultimately claims government.

    Now seems as good a time as any for political parties to start executing the people’s will instead of their own. At least until one party manages to win an outright majority based on primaries.

  17. ‘Ch 10 news item preview: “Malcolm Turnbull in knots over Medicare”’

    No doubt any such suggestion will be completely eradicated from ABC news.

  20. C@Tmomma – it’s worth mentioning in relation to your post about LGBT anger over the plebiscite that Prahran, which is in Higgins, is the centre of gay culture in Melbourne, and I believe that Higgins has the second or third highest proportion of gay couples in Australia.

  21. uytaur
    Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:27 pm

    AK

    Only if you believe the conspiracy stories of the Chinese leaders telling the Chinese background people to vote LNP. I think its BS. Business leaders might but thats no more strong than any other part of the community.
    ———–

    All I know about the Chinese is that they gravitate to political leaders who feed their strongly felt “aspirational” instincts – whoever ticks that box best will get their vote.

  22. @pegasus

    Glad to see Xenophon doing so well, throwing a huge spanner in the works. This is why I expect many Greens to ignore the HTV cards and direct their preferences Xenophon’s way, to amplify attempts to shake up the broken system. Fingers crossed.

  23. a r @ #1015 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:36 pm

    Jackol –

    Why would they start now?

    Because no party comes remotely close to getting a majority of the primary vote. Australia, as a whole, doesn’t want its government to execute an agenda. Or at least, we don’t want any of the agendas that the major parties are selling, because about 6 in 10 Australians will not have actually voted their first choice for whichever major party ultimately claims government.
    Now seems as good a time as any for political parties to start executing the people’s will instead of their own. At least until one party manages to win an outright majority based on primaries.

    Oh right, effectively a whole Parliament of independents. That should work well and produce coherent Government, I don’t think.

    Parties develop a coherent platform for a reason.

  26. And for Pegasus’ edification, those queer couples were ignoring The Greens because they wanted to vote for a party who could form government and who would, as first order of legislative business, introduce a Same Sex Marriage Bill.

    The Greens can fanny about with their LGBTQI FeelCandidates all they like but they won’t be able to do diddly squat about SSM once in parliament, EXCEPT vote for a Labor SSM Bill. It was the very strong impression I got from talking to them. They want SSM, and they want it now! So they don’t want to vote for a fringe party, they will vote for a party of government.

  29. A R –
    you didn’t read the rest of my post, did you?

    Now seems as good a time as any for political parties to start executing the people’s will instead of their own.

    Lovely sentiments, but within the framework of how politics has been working in Australia – including the media and the voting public itself – what does this mean for forming government at this election? As I explained I don’t see how this lovely “compromise” could work with the current expectations.

    If the game changes – the majors becoming less major, other parties vying for position, introduction of actual proportional voting – sure, the way that our politics works would necessarily change. Until there is such change what you suggest seems to me like pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

  30. rogue scholar @ #1021 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    ===
    All I know about the Chinese is that they gravitate to political leaders who feed their strongly felt “aspirational” instincts – whoever ticks that box best will get their vote.

    Then how do you explain the ALP members and supporters from the Chinese community in Melbourne?

  31. Bemused – I’m going to vote below the line to cover all potential preferences right to the end. Everyone on PB should do the same. So I can ensure that NXT is ahead of Libs, RW nuts are behind Libs etc. Party HTV useless for this. I will even have the choice to support Simms ahead of SHY on the Greens ticket for example. These things register if enough people do it.

  32. Good to see The Greens showing their true colours and supporting a political party full of former Liberals.

  34. RaaRaa @ 5:27
    The Gillard minority government would have been a very different beast if they had had any degree of hostile senate. Once the bills got through the House – the senate was a sure thing as the Greens held the balance of power – they could hardly vote one way in one house and differently in the other. Any degree of hostile senate and it might all come unstuck very early.

  36. Ardrian
    No doubt any such suggestion will be completely eradicated from ABC news

    As much as PBs have reason to dislike Sales etal, I think ABC viewers are overwhelming Labor Chardonnay drinkers & aren’t swayed to vote Liberal, while a bad run for the LNP on 10 would add to change factor

  38. Love the day before an election. I was asked by two people at work who they should vote for, and they weren’t joking, they really wanted to know who to vote for. I told em they should vote for Derryn Hinch. lol

    Spoke to at least five people who said “it doesn’t matter who I vote for, they’re all the same”. A couple of people had variations on that like “they all screw us no matter which party they belong to” or “they’re all a pack of dickheads”. One bloke said he’s going to draw a “rocket ship” on the ballot paper. Democracy at work. lol

  39. @C@Tmomma
    I don’t think that argument has ever been effective on anyone except Labor purists with an authoritarian streak. You don’t convince people to support Labor by berating them about how worthless their vote is.

    Interestingly, it’s the exact opposite approach to the Greens slogan: “Your vote is powerful”.

  40. Turnbull had an absolute shocker over bulk billing today – I wonder if its too late to have any impact on the votes tomorrow…

  41. The idea that LGBTQI folk think of themselves as a “queer community” is not what I understand of these sections of our community. I understand they think of themselves as ordinary Australians.

  43. Speers comments could mean that early in the week everybody was in Brexit mode. However, now that his washing out of the system and everything is tightening up again. People panicked, briefly, and now they’re focused on their own welfare.

  45. Multiparty government does not necessarily result in chaos.

    http://insidestory.org.au/caravan-or-coalition

    Probably not, for governments in Germany are almost always formed by coalitions between political rivals. It’s like that in much of Europe. It’s like that in New Zealand. And there are lessons that all parties in Australia should learn from them.

    But neither Turnbull nor Shorten will tell us what would happen if they emerge as the largest party but without a majority. Would they send us back to the polls again? I suspect most Australians would rather they sat down and negotiated a solution.

    That’s a perfectly normal process in Europe. Apart from one four-year term in the 1950s, every federal government in Germany has been worked out after the election in negotiations between the rival parties. Angela Merkel’s government is a “grand coalition” between her Christian Democrats and their main rival, the Social Democrats (Germany’s Labor Party).

    It’s even more mixed up at state level: fifteen of the sixteen German states have coalition governments, and they’re made up of ten different combinations of parties.

    If coalitions between opposing parties were unstable, as Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison insist, that would mean chaos. But Germany is not in chaos, it’s a success story: a stable, well-functioning democracy.

    Why does Germany have so many and such diverse coalition governments? And how does it make them work, when our parties seem unable to cooperate on anything?

    Three big differences explain it. First, elections in Germany are decided by proportional representation: any party gaining 5 per cent of the vote wins seats according to its share of the vote.

  46. wakefield @ #1031 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:41 pm

    Bemused – I’m going to vote below the line to cover all potential preferences right to the end. Everyone on PB should do the same. So I can ensure that NXT is ahead of Libs, RW nuts are behind Libs etc. Party HTV useless for this. I will even have the choice to support Simms ahead of SHY on the Greens ticket for example. These things register if enough people do it.

    What an excellent exercise in futility.
    You are obviously a Green.

  47. Maybe the electorate has completely overdosed on beaming images of Mal and listening to his waffle all the time.

  48. jimmydoyle @ #1020 Friday, July 1, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    C@Tmomma – it’s worth mentioning in relation to your post about LGBT anger over the plebiscite that Prahran, which is in Higgins, is the centre of gay culture in Melbourne, and I believe that Higgins has the second or third highest proportion of gay couples in Australia.

    As Labor has an openly gay candidate as well, I wonder if the same sort of zeitgeist exists in the electorate wrt voting for a candidate who could be part of a government that will legislate SSM? Or will they vote for Jason Ball because he is cuter? : )

    Suffice to say that there is the rest of the electorate that isn’t gay!

  49. Environment Victoria‏ @EnviroVic
    Our billboard parked outside the office that complained to have it taken down. #climate #ausvotes

  50. PhoenixGreen
    You don’t convince people to support Labor by berating them about how worthless their vote is.

    I suggest you have a chat with Nicholas. He’s constantly telling Laborites here that voting Labor is a wasted vote. Both sides are guilty of spouting bullshit.

    Can we give the Labor-Greens stuff a rest just for tonight and tomorrow night?

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