Newspoll quarterly breakdowns: February-March 2017

Detailed Newspoll breakdowns find older voters, regional areas and Western Australians turning particularly heavily against the Turnbull government.

If you’ll pardon me for being a day late with this one, The Australian has published the regular quarterly breakdowns of voting intention by state, age and gender (voting intention here, leadership ratings here), which suggest swings against the Coalition of 2% in South Australia, 3% in New South Wales and Victoria, 6% in Queensland and just shy of 8% in Western Australia. The demographic breakdowns are interesting in showing particularly strong movement against the Coalition among the older age cohort (down 10% on the primary vote, compared with 7% overall) and those outside the capital cities (down 9%, compared with around half that in the capitals). The polling was drawn from all of Newspoll’s surveying through February and March, with an overall sample of 6943.

Late as usual, below is BludgerTrack updated with last week’s Newspoll and Essential Research. The state breakdowns in BludgerTrack are a little compromised at the moment in using a straight average of all polling since the election to determine each state’s deviation from the total, and is thus understating the recent movement against the Coalition in Western Australia. As of the next BludgerTrack update, which will be an expanded version featuring primary votes for each state, trend measures will be used.

Stay tuned for today's Essential Research results, with which this post will be updated early afternoon some time.

UPDATE (Essential Research): Absolutely on change in this week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average, with Labor leading 53-47 on two-party preferred, the Coalition leading 37% to 36% on the primary vote, the Greens on 10% and One Nation on 8%.

The poll includes Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which have both leaders improving on last month – Malcolm Turnbull is up two on approval to 35% and down three on disapproval to 47%, and Bill Shorten is up three to 33% and down three to 46% – while Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister nudges from 38-26 to 39-28.

The government’s business tax cuts get the thumbs down, with 31% approving and 50% disapproving; only 20% believing the cut should extend to bigger businesses, with 60% deeming otherwise; and 57% thinking bigger business profits the more likely outcome of the cuts, compared with 26% for employing more workers.

On the question of whether various listed items were “getting better or worse for you and your family”, housing affordability, cost of electricity and gas and “the quality of political representation” emerged as the worst of a bad bunch.

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.

811 comments on “Newspoll quarterly breakdowns: February-March 2017”

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  1. bOERWAR

    I saw your comment about Te Papa and a video you were going to watch. Was that the comment ?
    By the way the weather you brought with you still causing problems 🙂

    Live: Cyclone Cook weather could be the worst since 1968

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11837045
    What happened in 1968 ? A vivid memory for me the Wahine disaster. Winds that day got to over 100 knots
    https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/nzbc-wahine-disaster-1968

  3. P
    Te Papa. Yep.
    Poor old Edgecumbe! A couple of years ago an earthquake lowered the town by 2 metres. Then Ex Cyclone Debbie raises the river that runs through the town by way of a one in 500 year flood.
    Pretty well the whole town flooded. Not good.

  9. Coalition MPs are split on whether the Turnbull government should allow young Australians to use superannuation savings for a house deposit.

    Sky News understands the government’s powerful expenditure review committee will consider whether to allow a proportion of compulsory super payments to be diverted to help home buyers afford a deposit.

    Treasury has put together an options paper examining the implications of allowing workers to 25,000 dollars a year into special savings account.

    However, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has seemingly thrown his support behind the current superannuation regime, telling Sky News the ‘purpose’ of super is to provide ‘dignity in retirement.’

    – See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/04/12/government-split-on-super-for-housing-plan.html#sthash.UtAsXvcS.dpuf

    Interestingly Sam Maiden says this issue has become a proxy to punish Turnbull for his role in axing Abbott. Fun times ahead on yet another front for the PM!

  12. Boerwar
    No , that storm was down Wellington way .It was one of the first “live coverages” of a disaster shared by the nation in almost real time.
    NZ gov history site about teh Boers.

    This first known European visitor could hardly have imagined that tens of thousands of his countrymen would eventually disembark there. It is a measure of New Zealand’s isolation that 310 years after Tasman, those post-war Dutch immigrants were the first continental Europeans many New Zealanders had seen. They suffered prejudice and homesickness, but they also injected innovation and sophistication into the culture, and produced some 100,000 descendants.

    http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/dutch

  13. Confessions

    The same people who want to punish Turnbull also have Morrison in their sights over his role in the knifing of Abbott.

    He is a dill but he won’t be getting any help from many in cabinet.

    They really are a rabble.

  16. DG
    I enjoyed a hearty laugh the other day.
    After temporizing about whether to accept the award (as opposed to the money which to Dylan is a no-brainer) he finally decides to accept it. Just when he has a new set of CDs to sell.
    The smoke rings of the mind go for 30 pieces of silver?

  19. Whatever ‘housing affordibility’ package the Coalition Government comes up with will be some bullshit pretend scheme like Durect Inaction. They will be careful not to hurt their constituency (real estate, developers, “investors”) while giving the appearance of doing something. If it cists money, they’ll try to make the most vulnerable (and least politically powerful) pay for it.

    If it includes this idea of redirecting super contributions (which Malcolm has ruled out twice but it’s still going), or “vendors grants”, it will not only be ineffctive and wasteful like Direct Inaction, but actively harmful.

  21. Rossmcg:

    Morrison has been hopeless in Treasury, and there are already calls out there (from PvO and others) to replace him with Cormann.

    Personally I hope he stays. 🙂

  26. Holy sheet! First item of news on ABC news tonight is possibility of war between Nth Korea and US, with Aus locking in behind the US!

  30. For those that are concerned by how John Clarke passed away I can tell you personally that there in no conspiracy re his passing and comment would be just sheer speculation at this time until the autopsy has been completed.

  31. My great, great, great, great grandmother died of a nose bleed. It caused heart failure, which is what was the ultimate cause of her demise. She lived a fair way out of Kempsey and there were no telephones, maybe they had a horse someone could’ve ridden into town on to get the doctor, but alas, to no avail. Having undiagnosed Haemophilia probably helped to hasten things along. Which they only found out upon autopsy, as it was such an unusual way to die.

    Which brings me to World War III, which Trump seems keen to start to get his ratings up back at home. Thank goodness my sons won’t be going there, they both have Haemophilia as well! They’d make a terrible mess on the battlefield from as little as a flesh wound. 🙂

  32. Ides:

    The bulk of ABC news thus far is US-Nth Korea-Russia-Syria. Only one WA story so far with McGowan jumping the shark over the Perth city council.

    If Trump wanted to escalate the chaos he’s certainly succeeded.

  33. Confessions
    I am not sure that it is an unbreakable rule but it would be very difficult for Cormann to be Treasurer while he is in the Senate. I think it has something to do with money bills having to start their way through the parliament in the house.
    And I can’t see him giving up that gig any time soon. He is another Minchin who when once asked if he would move the the lower house answered along the lines of “why? The Senate is where the real power is.”

  34. Confessions @9:02PM: I can see it now. Turnbull, trying his best to look Prime Ministerial, solemnly announces:

    blockquote>”Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by North Korea in her invasion of Poland, the United States has declared war upon her* and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.”

    * that’s North Korea, not Poland. Did anyone pick up Menzies on that?

  35. rossmcg:

    There is no requirement for the Treasurer to be a HoR member. The argument for switching out ScoMo for Cormann (apart from the fact that Sco Mo is just hopeless) is that it would move responsibility for treasury questions in QT to Turnbull, whom some political commentators feel has a better grasp of, and superior explanatory capacity for budget type questions.

  38. steve777 @ #784 Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at 9:26 pm

    Confessions @9:02PM: I can see it now. Turnbull, trying his best to look Prime Ministerial, solemnly announces:
    blockquote>”Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by North Korea in her invasion of Poland, the United States has declared war upon her* and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.”
    * that’s North Korea, not Poland. Did anyone pick up Menzies on that?

    Officially the Korean War has still not ended, we merely have an armistice.
    So it would just be hostilities resuming.

  39. Confessions

    Cormann may be able to be Treasurer but then someone else would have to deliver the budget speech as on my reading it cannot be done in the Senate.

    Maybe it would be good if he could. I think it would go something like this: “Mr President, I present the 2017 Budget. Labor and Bill Shorten …”

  42. C@t:

    ABC news also mentioned China muscling up. I’m not feeling good things right about now, expect relief that I live where I do, a place that is unlikely to be a military target if hostilities escalate courtesy of Trump’s incompetence and brutish diplomacy.

  43. @Player One
    Yes, as you rightly say, we’ve talked it through. Apologies that my assumption about your not reading the link was false.
    Nighty night.

  44. Boerwar
    Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at 8:12 pm
    Briefly
    Mighty Montenegro to join NATO!
    There goes the balance of power…

    wb, Boer.

    If anyone needs NATO it’s the Montenegrins. They will be very good for moral support, wondrous beauty and, I suppose, grappa and other moonshine. As they have a charming bit of Adriatic coast to call their own, they will also have tinned fish, medieval battlements, safe inlets and a sense of history. These will be very useful compliments to their undoubted bravery and implacability.

  45. ‘Fess,
    I’m not feeling good things right about now, expect relief that I live where I do, a place that is unlikely to be a military target if hostilities escalate courtesy of Trump’s incompetence and brutish diplomacy.

    Me too! 🙂

  46. rossmcg:

    If Cormann was treasurer I’d imagine MT would deliver the budget speech. But this is just political theatre. I can’t recall and maybe NSW Bludgers will confirm, but from memory there was a NSW state govt treasurer in recent years who was in the upper house. It can be done, and in the case of our federal govt, would benefit the govt if ScoMo was removed from duty.

  47. http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/us-military-bases-in-australia-protecting-us-or-putting-us-at-risk/news-story/274681984ca0959242829f9da8fa338e

    The US is strengthening a network of secretive military bases across Australia that could be used for waging wars against our interests, it was claimed at a weekend summit.

    Instead of fostering crucial relationships, we are allowing the US to create enemies for us with its growing strategic presence on our soil, say the academics, politicians and campaigners who gathered for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) conference attended by news.com.au in Alice Springs this weekend.

    Under a burning hot sun in the red centre, experts and citizens shared their fears over what is happening in the most remote parts of the country. These mysterious bases may be invisible to the majority of us living in the most populated regions along the coast, but could threaten the fabric of all our lives. Here’s what you need to know:

  50. George Monbiot: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model

    So what are we going to do about it? This is the only question worth asking. But the answers appear elusive. Faced with a multifaceted crisis – the capture of governments by billionaires and their lobbyists, extreme inequality, the rise of demagogues, above all the collapse of the living world – those to whom we look for leadership appear stunned, voiceless, clueless. Even if they had the courage to act, they have no idea what to do.

    The most they tend to offer is more economic growth: the fairy dust supposed to make all the bad stuff disappear. Never mind that it drives ecological destruction; that it has failed to relieve structural unemployment or soaring inequality; that, in some recent years, almost all the increment in incomes has been harvested by the top 1%. As values, principles and moral purpose are lost, the promise of growth is all that’s left.

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