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”

Comments Page 6 of 17
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  2. Just catching up.

    As Finance Minister and the government’s best-performing minister, Cormann naturally has a powerful role in budget deliberations. But the fact that Turnbull has given Peter Dutton — the man most likely to come after Turnbull if the current run of bad polls continues — veto over economic and fiscal policy is extraordinary, both for what it says about Turnbull’s precarious leadership, and Morrison’s lack of standing within the government.

    I protest. Surely Potatohead can’t be a real candidate for PM?????

  4. ScoMo seems to be out of his depth and failing to cut through. I reckon Turnbull only accepted him because he was the steak knives to the Leadership takeover. But, it’s clear that the PM does not rate him particularly highly.

    Now with Dutton becoming the darling of the right his previous support base in the Party room is transferring to “the successful property millionaire from Queensland”. Looks like Morrison is to be the bunny in this current saga of why the Government is in turmoil and unpopular with the electorate.

    He might get that job marked for Brandis in London.

  7. there would be others in cabinet who realise what a dud Morrison is.

    It only seems like yesterday when morrison was being touted as the so called great hope of the tories.

    But they said that about hockey as well.

    Meh…

  8. You’d also have to wonder what the vengeful Lunar Right of the Liberal Party have in store for Foreign Minister Barbie.

  9. Kakuru

    I used to peruse Pies Akermann’s and Blot’s blogs. The comments section dated his audience. Stalinist, politburo,’Trot’ ,Bolshevik etc also made appearances . When Truffles was LOTO I am pretty sure all those words were used when talking about him 🙂

  10. It cost $30m extra to collect the same percentage of census forms?

    The 2016 census was plagued by technical difficulties, after a 43-hour outage caused by the ABS taking the online form down after denial of service attacks. The ABS has said the shutdown cost $30m in a reduction from savings expected to be made by moving the census online.

    Small business minister, Michael McCormack, said in a statement on Tuesday that the 2016 census collected 4.9m online forms and 3.5m paper forms, a response rate of 96% and on par with the 2011 consensus.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/apr/11/census-says-typical-australian-is-38-year-old-married-woman-with-two-children

  11. C@Tmomma

    Christian Porter is so up himself he can’t see the wood for trees!

    Yep, ideal qualification for high office in the Liberal Party.

  12. Dave

    The Tories don’t so much have a talent pool. More one of those wet spots on the drive where the water drips out of the car’s aircon

  13. C@Tmomma

    The yanks won’t care. Madelaine Albright set the standard

    In an Emmy Award-winning 1996 interview on CBS program “60 Minutes,” the Clinton-era secretary of state was asked whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was worth it. “The price is worth it,” Albright bluntly replied.

    http://www.salon.com/2016/05/11/college_protests_revive_accusations_against_war_criminal_madeleine_albright_who_defended_deaths_of_500000_iraqi_kids/

  14. C@tmomma Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:23 pm
    Donald Trump will have killed more babies in Syria by neglect and as a result of Presidential decree than Basher Assad, or whoever released the Sarin/Cyanide. Let Keith Olbermann explain how:
    https://youtu.be/sGFel-fhGkw

    *************************************************

    I’ll get flamed for this for being anti-American ( which I am not – still have my Green Card as a US citizen ) but rather as a student of history – but I find it all a bit rich from a *historical perspective* that the US criticizes other countries for killing “innocent civilians” by some process when in one night in Tokyo in 1945 if “fire-bombed”/napalmed to death about 100,000 civilians …… and in 2 days in August 1945 it “vapourised” maybe 90,000 civilians in Hiroshima and around 40,000 civilians in Nagasaki by chemical/atomic means…….. let alone those killed in places like Hamburg , Dresden etc etc …..

  16. I found the article below very interesting.

    It highlights the unreliability of so-called baseload plants – gas and coal.

    This seems to have a number of causes such as mechanical failure, the cooling pond getting too hot to use in the summer heat just when it is needed most, steam leaks, a circuit breaker tripping.

    Nothing much unusual about that, though it blows holes in the idea that fossil fuel generators are reliable.

    But the thing that really made me sit up and take notice was that one gas plant was not fired up at one stage because it was uneconomic to do so:

    To top this off, the Colongra gas plant in NSW suddenly made its entire 640MW of capacity unavailable because of “uneconomic dispatch”. Go figure: the prices were running at $13,400/MWh at the time. One wonders at what price would burning gas become “economic” for this power station owned by Snowy Hydro.

    That would seem to be a real advantage of wind and solar – there is no marginal cost of production from fuel, so they can feed in to the grid no matter how low the price goes, and still make money.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/melting-sun-fossil-fuel-generators-failed-summer-heat-wave-91043/

    It is fashionable in much of the mainstream media to blame energy shortfalls on renewable energy and wind and solar. “When the sun don’t shine and when the wind don’t blow” is a common refrain from the prime minister all the down to ABC television presenters.

    But reports from the Australian Energy Regulator into many high-priced events that occurred over the last summer suggest the biggest problem facing energy markets is that the major coal and gas plants are just as likely to melt in the sun: and unlike wind and solar output, which can be reliably predicted, these events usually come as a surprise.

    As Spark Infrastructure, the owner of networks in Victoria and South Australia, wrote in its submission to the Finkel Review: “It currently appears that generators are increasingly unable to deliver their full generation capacity when it is needed most.”

    Take, for instance, February 6, when more than 3,000MW of capacity in NSW and Queensland suddenly became unavailable.

    At the Liddell coal generator in the Hunter Valley, one 480MW unit tripped in the morning, and in the afternoon a second until lost 100MW of capacity due to a steam leak , and then another Liddell unit lost 130 MW of capacitydue to a tube leak.

    Over at the Vales Point coal plant, one unit lost 160MW in capacity because the operator was worried about the rising water temperature in the adjoining Lake Macquarie, while in Queensland “vacuum” issues at Callide forced 350MW of capacity to be withdrawn, while Gladstone reduced the capacity by half for no apparent reason.

    To top this off, the Colongra gas plant in NSW suddenly made its entire 640MW of capacity unavailable because of “uneconomic dispatch”. Go figure: the prices were running at $13,400/MWh at the time. One wonders at what price would burning gas become “economic” for this power station owned by Snowy Hydro.

    Of course, this is not the first time this has happened. Nearly all the pricing spikes that coincided with heat waves over summer have been caused, at least in part, by the failure of fossil fuel generators in the heat.

    Four days later, in NSW, came the biggest heat event, one that very nearly caused widespread blackouts. At the time, 1,000MW of capacity was lost at Liddell, and then the two biggest gas generators in the state – Tallawarra (faulty gas turbine) and Colongra (low gas pressure) – tripped, taking out another 1,200MW of supply.

    The NSW government has been at pains to point out that it was the wind, solar and hydro resources that did deliver as expected and were critical in keeping the lights on.

  17. Poroti,
    Yep, that’s right, how could I have missed it!?! If someone from the Clinton era did it first, then The Don can get off scott-free for doing it now. Excuse me while I go and punish myself for my pathetic oversight!

  18. The 2016 census was plagued by technical difficulties, after a 43-hour outage caused by the ABS taking the online form down after denial of service attacks.

    There may have been a denial of service attack but it did not cause a 43 hour outage. That was all down to ABS and their IT contractor.

  20. victoria (if you’re about)

    I’ve just had the most insane week dealing with a person who had taken a (one) tab of ice.

    Un-fckn-believable. This bloke thought his house had been secretly wired by ASIO, and that there were, at any one time, two people in his roof space (always invisible when he went up to check) laughing at him. He could hear them – although nobody else could).

    Initially, unaware that he had imbibed anything, I thought perhaps his telly or radio was on, but at a low level – he’s had problems in the past.

    I advised him to nail his manhole shut.
    But, according to him, they didn’t get in via the manhole, they had a way of lifting the roof to let them in. Fuck a Duck.

    He wanted me to ring the Fed Police, to report this break in. (I said “no”, I’ll call your doctor)

    He then wanted me to ring the Ombudsman (I asked: which ombudsman, the one for having people in your ceiling space? – he hung up on me).

    Long story short, he wasn’t convinced that this was all a figment on his imagination. He only came to realise what a complete dick he’d been when the shit wore off.

    This is dastardey stuff, as you’ve been saying for quite some time.

    What do we do?

  21. C@tmomma

    Check out how many civilians that cool dude Obama killed with drones in Afghanistan, Yemen etc. But that’s ok because he isn’t Trump.

  22. poroti @ #271 Tuesday, April 11th, 2017 – 4:48 pm

    Check out how many civilians that cool dude Obama killed with drones in Afghanistan, Yemen etc. But that’s ok because he isn’t Trump.

    When Obama does it, he wins a Nobel Peace Prize.

    Which isn’t to say that Trump shouldn’t be criticized, and harshly. At all times. But yes, bias acknowledged.

  24. As far as I know, a hot cross bun is vegetarian friendly and doesn’t contain any alcohol in it. That would make it halal-compliant by default.

  25. Poroti,
    Living in this little pure and unadulterated bubble of yours I can see how easy it would be to think that no one should die in the world except from natural causes ever, or that leaders of countries should not make decisions which lead to anyone dying either. However, as someone with a clear-eyed historical perspective remarked to me the other day, that has never been the case in the whole history of man, nor will it ever be likely to be. That’s just not how mankind seems to roll, despite the best intentions of world leaders to do no harm.

    So I take that perspective into consideration, plus try to make a value judgement about what sort of political decisions by leaders have been taken in an attempt to minimise loss of life, and which are taken with not a care in the world for loss of life, due to attempting to satisfy an ideological bent. Such as the one Trump took to withdraw funding from Syria which could keep babies alive hopefully until after hostilities have ceased. As opposed to President Obama who was trying to get rid of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

    But fine, if you think Al Qaeda in Yemen members should be allowed to live, then I guess that’s your right to choose that view. I beg to differ.

  26. poroti Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:34 pm

    C@Tmomma

    The yanks won’t care. Madelaine Albright set the standard

    C@tmomma
    Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:53 pm
    Poroti,
    I’m sorry you’ve lost the plot, I really am.

    ********************************************
    I’ll support you, Poroti

    Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the antistate terrorists who ever lived.

    A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.

    United States bombings of other countries :

    The bombing list

    •Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
    •Guatemala 1954
    •Indonesia 1958
    •Cuba 1959-1961
    •Guatemala 1960
    •Congo 1964
    •Laos 1964-73
    •Vietnam 1961-73
    •Cambodia 1969-70
    •Guatemala 1967-69
    •Grenada 1983
    •Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
    •Libya 1986
    •El Salvador 1980s
    •Nicaragua 1980s
    •Iran 1987
    •Panama 1989
    •Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
    •Kuwait 1991
    •Somalia 1993
    •Bosnia 1994, 1995
    •Sudan 1998
    •Afghanistan 1998
    •Yugoslavia 1999
    •Yemen 2002
    •Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
    •Iraq 2003-2015
    •Afghanistan 2001-2015
    •Pakistan 2007-2015
    •Somalia 2007-8, 2011
    •Yemen 2009, 2011
    •Libya 2011, 2015
    •Syria 2014-2016

    https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/united-states-bombings-of-other-countries

  28. don @ #266 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:38 pm

    That would seem to be a real advantage of wind and solar – there is no marginal cost of production from fuel, so they can feed in to the grid no matter how low the price goes, and still make money.

    Nonsense. Wind and solar have ongoing costs, just as every form of generation does. The LCOE of wind and solar are coming down, and are within the range of the LCOE of various other forms of generation. This is making it worthwhile investing in them for peaking power. But this does not include any storage costs. When you add these costs, they are still uneconomic compared to other sources for baseload power.

    The rest of your article is really about the abject failure of our National Electricity Market. The NEM is so broken that suppliers find it more profitable to leave generators turned off rather than turning them on to meet demand. This can happen no matter what the source of the electricity is. The suppliers are “gaming” the system to maximize their profits, not availability or reliability.

  29. roger miller @ #268 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    There may have been a denial of service attack but it did not cause a 43 hour outage. That was all down to ABS and their IT contractor.

    No-one has ever been able to show any evidence of a denial of service attack. Quite the opposite, in fact – those who regularly monitor national and international network traffic detected no unusual activity at the time. The census site was taken down because of a false alarm, followed by a comedy of errors involving both the contractor and the ABS.

  32. Kezza,

    You seem to be personing one of those Crisis Help Lines given that story earlier.
    More power to your arm comrade and keep well.

  36. Luke Simpkin (former WA Lib, defeated by Anne Aly) has apparently joined the Benardi is a Smarti Parti. Claims Liberals no longer represent small government and private enterprise and social standards.

  39. North Korea for goodness sake?

    Turnbull is getting quite desperate if he is starting on that. He might go after that cheeky upstart Nicolae Ceaușescu next.

  40. Abbott might like to explain to Woolworths CEO why electricity prices have risen so much since he abolished the ‘carbon tax’.

    Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci recently warned that soaring electricity prices were a “material issue” and would lead to higher prices on the shelves. At $360 million a year, electricity is Woolworths’ third largest cost, behind labour and rent.

    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/retail/supermarket-prices-to-rise-on-soaring-electricity-meat-produce-prices-20170411-gvin14.html

  41. the US criticizes other countries for killing “innocent civilians” by some process when in one night in Tokyo in 1945 if “fire-bombed”/napalmed to death about 100,000 civilians …… and in 2 days in August 1945 it “vapourised” maybe 90,000 civilians in Hiroshima and around 40,000 civilians in Nagasaki by chemical/atomic means…….. let alone those killed in places like Hamburg , Dresden etc etc

    One of the very few accurate observations by Donald Trump has been, “You think our country is so innocent?”

  43. The United States used to employ carpet-bombing on a vast scale. It is only in recent decades, when it has had the technological capability to kill people in a somewhat less indiscriminate manner, that it has tried to use non-existent morality authority to de-legitimize the weapons used by its less advanced rivals.

  44. Nicholas,

    Dropping the bomb on Japan was the right thing to do at the time and saved millions of lives.

    Re-writing history to accommodate an anti-US narrative is just so typically you.

  45. The Victorian Greens have gone all Monty python with yet another faction :

    “Grassroots Greens offers a direct critique of the party’s electoral strategy, accusing it of “chasing votes in wealthy, inner-city blue-ribbon electorates by being careful and playing small target politics” and calling on the party to appeal to the working and middle class in suburbs and regional areas “by being bold and radical but staunchly progressive”.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/apr/11/grassroots-greens-launch-calls-for-party-to-look-beyond-wealthy-city-voters

  46. nicholas @ #293 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:18 pm

    The United States used to employ carpet-bombing on a vast scale. It is only in recent decades, when it has had the technological capability to kill people in a somewhat less indiscriminate manner, that it has tried to use non-existent morality authority to de-legitimize the weapons used by its less advanced rivals.

    As did other combatants in WWII.
    When dropping unguided bombs from 5 miles up in the sky, particularly at night, it was about the only way to have much chance of hitting the target. High collateral damage though.
    And later it descended into a policy of de-housing the enemy to put a strain on their economy and break civilian morale.

  48. vogon poet @ #295 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:25 pm

    The Victorian Greens have gone all Monty python with yet another faction :
    “Grassroots Greens offers a direct critique of the party’s electoral strategy, accusing it of “chasing votes in wealthy, inner-city blue-ribbon electorates by being careful and playing small target politics” and calling on the party to appeal to the working and middle class in suburbs and regional areas “by being bold and radical but staunchly progressive”.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/apr/11/grassroots-greens-launch-calls-for-party-to-look-beyond-wealthy-city-voters

    Sounds like a Trots faction.
    It will be fun to watch.

  49. citizen @ #290 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    Abbott might like to explain to Woolworths CEO why electricity prices have risen so much since he abolished the ‘carbon tax’.

    Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci recently warned that soaring electricity prices were a “material issue” and would lead to higher prices on the shelves. At $360 million a year, electricity is Woolworths’ third largest cost, behind labour and rent.
    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/retail/supermarket-prices-to-rise-on-soaring-electricity-meat-produce-prices-20170411-gvin14.html

    Plenty of room for solar panels on their roofs.

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