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”

Comments Page 3 of 24
1 2 3 4 … 24

  3. One comment on Brexit, I wonder how different the result may have been if the Lib Dems were still a strong, independent third force in British politics

  5. poroti
    Yes. I do feel cheated. I wanted to enjoy the Europeans to spend the next two years torturing Bam Bam.
    I assume that he will now spend the next two years telling Gove what a putz he his for not doing tougher negotiations.

  6. The headline/link that originally said “Coalition faces shock loss: Fairfax-Ipsos Mark Kenny” now says ” Dead heat? Election cliffhanger looms EXCLUSIVE Mark Kenny”.

    I thought for a while they were actually trying for “Under Dog” status, but the old triumphalism soon re-surfaced.

    Truth is: no-one knows what the f*ck is going to happen.

    It’s probably down to a couple of thousand voters in dispersed electorates – a hundred here, fifty there – people who don’t know how important they are and are probably watching House Rules or some tow truck reality show right now.

  9. A disengaged voter’s reaction to 730 tonight:

    LOVE Leigh Sales, 7.30 report! How to talk straight to a politician, Gold!

    Via my facebook timeline.

  11. Cannot help but consider that the Galaxy TPP is calculated from the 2013 preference distribution. Whereas Ipsos has a respondent allocation of preferences.
    And all of the polls are within the MOE.
    As to those journos making claims from what ALP “insiders” tell them, I refer to the comments I made earlier today about this journalistic licence, and call again, bullshit!!!

  13. I don’t have a clue what to expect Saturday night.

    Betfair tonight offering 9:1 odds on the ALP winning , same odds they were offering Leave as the polls closed.

  15. kevin-one-seven @ #10 Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 8:51 pm

    BURGEY – People on this blog say labor should have said this, or said that. Labor knew what it was doing. Making sure that disengaged voters carried just one big thought into the polling booth. In this case, it is “Medicare”.

    I made comments about what I would have liked to have seen. My opinion and that’s something that certainly is not unusual here. I also noted that there were far more professional and experienced people than me running the Labor campaign. Interestingly, after I posted that I watched the Drum which, for once, was very interesting – and not just because of William’s presence. Even Toby Ralph was somewhat informative and less simply spouting the official Coalition spin. It seems that there were many alternative campaigns that could have been out there, with each having its own risks and opportunities.

    For all that, what happens, happens. Labor has fought one of the best and most focussed campaigns ever and has set itself up very well for the following election if it does not win power this time round. And the following election might not be that far away if there is a hung parliament.

    But if the CFA circus does have an impact on the results in Victoria I hope that the idiots who let themselves be duped by the Liberals and vote against good local Labor representatives whose demise will make no difference get their comeuppance.

  16. Bug1 – the reporter on Lateline who cited the 9 seat claim later clarified that and said it was across both houses. From memory I think the latest estimates has labor gaining maybe 2 seats in the Senate, so that would be 7 Assembly seats. Of course this could be a worst-case scenario, and labor might be playing this up as part of their underdog strategy. Personally I’d be surprised if labor’s gains were as little as 7 lower house seats, but it probably won’t be much more than that.

  17. I can live with a hung parliament as I always thought Labor had too much ground to make up.

    The fun will be watching the TCT negotiate their way through the senate. Will the right push the case for Abbotts master negotiator Abetz to get the gig again?

  19. BB: “It’s probably down to a couple of thousand voters in dispersed electorates – a hundred here, fifty there – people who don’t know how important they are and are probably watching House Rules or some tow truck reality show right now.”

    Spot on, BB. Mmm. I reckon tea leaves ‘d be as a good a way to pick it as any. Might just go and make a pot!

  20. Mattinlondon

    These days the question of who is supported by the print media is of the same relevance and impact as who is picked by the crocodile and certainly less helpful than the prognostications of a blue ringed octopus.

  21. My tweet two days ago (Copyright markjs):

    Comrade Mark @markjs1
    “You can have high speed FIBRE #NBN..

    ..OR..

    You can have Malcolm Turnbull..

    ..BUT..

    You can’t have BOTH!!

    VOTE ALP
    #auspol #ausvotes”

  23. It’s worth bearing in mind that for all the discussion that goes on about the accuracy of polls, house effects, the desirability of using previous elections vs. respondent allocated preference splits and so on, it’s only once every few years, namely for the last polls before an election, that you can realistically test what the polls are trying to estimate against true data. That means that inferences are being drawn from very few sample points. Maybe it’s possible to say between elections that one polls is consistently more favourable to a particular party than another poll, but unless you know the underlying partisan split, that doesn’t actually tell you which of the polls is correct.

    Douglas and Milko if you are here, does this remind you of the process of measuring distances using Cepheid variables?

  25. I’m almost certain that Galaxy do not do respondent allocated preferences and only use last election preferences. Given that, my gutt tells me this is closer to 50-50. The Galaxy primary vote numbers look far more realistic than Ipsos.

  26. Pedant,

    Thanks for your reply.

    My understanding is that both polls used 2013 preference flows.

    My only thought is perhaps the greens vote in the latest Galaxy has gone down.

    Anyway, thanks for that.

    Cheers.

  27. Here’s a polling problem. Talking to my wife about being polled and she asked me what the upper and lower house were…
    Lower = House of reps, Upper = Senate.
    That’s what she thought but was questioning it as the women who polled her did not know. The questioned asked was; who did you vote for in the last election?
    My wife; in the upper or lower house?
    Pollster; errr upper…
    My wife; the Greens.

    My wife voted Labor in the lower house though.

  28. Oh dear

    Photos
    Likes
    Tweets
    David Flint
    1h1 hour ago
    David Flint ‏@profdavidflint
    A focus group of undecided West Sydney voters on SKY’s Speers Tonight demonstrate what a mistake it was for the Liberals to overthrow Abbott

  30. Matt31
    You are spot on and I agree with your summation.
    My feeling is that Galaxy also is a 50/50 within the MOE.
    And the unsourced ALP insiders are excuses for wanton behaviour by Liberal leaning journos.

  32. TPOF, on the same page – always curious to see how naked certain publications are in their bias.

    The Sun-Herald: Coalition
    Sunday Telegraph: Coalition
    Sunday Herald Sun: Coalition
    Sunday Mail (Brisbane): Coalition
    Sunday Mail (Adelaide): Coalition
    Sunday Times: Coalition
    Sunday Age: ALP
    AFR: Coalition

    Pathetic, but not remotely surprising.

  33. Aren’t these all within the margin of error? Someone here just said that in a close race 1% is significant which logically would be true. But isn’t it statistically insignificant?

  42. It’s worth bearing in mind that for all the discussion that goes on about the accuracy of polls… it’s only once every few years, namely for the last polls before an election, that you can realistically test what the polls are trying to estimate against true data.

    I’ve often said that, and the poll junkies and psephy types then plonk on about how they’re the experts and we’re the grunts.

    But how would you know who are the grunts? And who are the experts?

    There’s no data to prove either right, especially where we are now: arguing about MOEs, whether Labor has 50 or 49, 2013 v. 2016 preferences, and what the preferences themselves mean when Primary Votes are all over the place.

    There is so much fog in this election that guessing the result is as close to tossing a coin as you’d want to be. There’s bluff and counter-bluff, Bandwagons and Under Dogs, there’s brilliant strategies, failed ones, lies, scare campaigns, besotted journalists trying desperately to prove they were right all along, pollsters out to make money on corn flake surveys from their political work, moguls pulling strings, apathetic couch potatoes who care more about the footy, fools, n’er-do-wells, spivs, shonks and urgers everywhere… and there there are the parties and the candidates and the policies.

    It’s pure guesswork at this stage.

    And thank God it’ll all be over in 48 hours when we all may know for sure.

  46. Victoria. Poor old Samantha Maiden. I bet she was driving home drunk when the editor called to say that the whole Liberal campaign was going off the rails. Did she have any “serious labor insiders” with her in the car who will pooh pooh Labor’s chances? Samantha said: “Yes, now you come to think of it.”

  47. Thinking about the 2015 UK General Election as compared to this election, a big reason why polls were so far off was because of poll herding – that is, pollsters tended to avoid publishing polls that were outliers and/or tweak their methods as to make their polls to be more agreeable to the general consensus.

    Looking at available polling, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of disagreement – all national polls (bar Essential and ReachTEL) seem to suggest a TPP of 51-50 to the Coalition. Combine that with the high turnover of polling ownership and methods, and there is a chance that the result will be off to what the polls are telling us at the moment.

    For more info, see this Kevin Bonham article from 2015:

    Could A UK-Style Mass Pollster Fail Happen In Australia?

    http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/could-uk-style-mass-pollster-fail_27.html

  48. Ancestors
    Show full conversation
    Ashley Leahy
    14m14 minutes ago
    Ashley Leahy ‏@AshleyLeahy
    @jamesmassola @Drag0nista @brisvegas1 actually labor only needs 50.6 in a uniform swing to claim 75 maj seats according to ABC calc
    James Massola
    James Massola – Verified account ‏@jamesmassola

    @AshleyLeahy @Drag0nista @brisvegas1 sorry – that was poorly expressed. I think it’s around 52% required by Labor to win outright.

  49. confessions @ #141 Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 10:33 pm

    TPOF:
    Cause I know her. And she can’t even name our local member such is her disengagement.

    Sad, but I can see it from her point of view. Still grossly unprofessional from Sales. Not only was she biased but she lost her cool. And this from a woman who was left whimpering in submission when Scott Morrison insisted he would use his words (I will respect the result) to describe how he would respond to the results of an ME plebiscite, despite those words being utterly meaningless. I don’t think your friend would have been impressed by Sales in that interview.

Comments Page 3 of 24
1 2 3 4 … 24

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *