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. Nicolae Ceaușescu built the second biggest building in the world. I have walked in and around it. It is high on the list of bad things he has done. And he did some pretty bad stuff.

    Curiously, whilst walking around it I spotted a budgerigar happily eating some grass seed by a path. Freaky!

  2. Kezza

    Just saw your post. What a Scary experience for you!
    You can see why the crime rate has increased dramatically here in Victoria!
    In a perfect world, no one would never ever touch the stuff!!

  3. Bemused, I think they’re inbetween the normal greens and left renewal.
    CT, do you think it will reduce the smugness ?

  4. Player One says..

    Nonsense.

    That’s a good start. If Player One wanted a calm, discursive, scholarly discussion, she doesn’t help by using this sort of language, but I digress..

    Wind and solar have ongoing costs, just as every form of generation does.

    This is what I mean by intellectual dishonesty. Don made the comment that once you have wind or solar, the excess power is effectively at zero cost. In other words, it favours the market entry of energy storage. Now, of course it costs money to maintain these systems, but does it cost more money to have these systems output useful energy (at a very low price) rather than simply not output energy at all? Well the simple answer is – effectively no. There is almost no extra maintenance cost incurred in doing so. The fact that Player One is trying to impute this simply shows the depth of intellectual dishonest she constantly uses in her arguments.

    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.

    This is of course, factually incorrect. And I do recall Player One citing sources that are years out of date when pressed on this previously. You see, I didn’t set out to have a fight with Player One at first. She was being a dick to other posters on here and I tried to calmly suggest that maybe, just maybe, she was simply in error because the information she had was out of date. Expecting fully for her to go do some research, make some corrections, and move on. It was her less than scholarly response to my polite prompting, and her behaviour towards others that showed she was unwilling or incapable of challenging her own assumptions and correcting her point of view, that earned here the “idiot”. Maybe in reflection I shouldn’t have been so pointed, but I was on a mobile on a beach at the time and just didn’t have the time/patience to deal with this issue at length. Since then I’ve been suffering a nerve injury and unable to type much so its infuriating watching Player One repeatedly assert claims such as this.

    The reality here is that right here, right now. Today. Wind and solar plus storage (pumped hydro, arguably battery, but certainly battery is it will be in 2-3 years) will have a LCOE below other sources, including peaking gas.

    The other thing that pisses me about Player One is that her arguments are always couched in an all too clever “it aint cheap enough now, and therefore I want you to think it will never be cheap enough soon enough” terms. Even if you were to believe the assertion that wind and solar with storage are uneconomic today, when people point out that all these technologies are still following a very predictable curve downwards, Player One just resorts to shifting coal posts or snark. And always with a tone of illegitimate authority. She doesn’t know the facts and doesn’t absorb them when experts point them out.

    Another issue is that I did try to argue with her patiently at one point (it took me hours to type on a mobile) that what matters is not the present moment but what will happen over the 15 year period during which fossil fuelled generators will retire. This is the time frame in which you need to build new wind, solar and storage. Again, more snark and rudeness from Player One, instead of accepting that yes indeed, it might be possible that we can go directly to a renewable energy economy. Her argument, thrown at other posters is to try to assert that its a “big build”. That the scale of the project is too big and you can’t “ramp up” renewables faster enough. This leaves her with the obvious logical hole that you’d also need a big ramp up of gas generation if you were to follow her plan. And how is that easier? It is not. Again, no cogent argument from Player One on this issue. When its boiled down, her posts are nine tenths assertion. One tenth snark and rudeness and talking people down.

    I’ll also comment on this. Other posters have pointed out that renewables are actually highly predictable when built at a large enough scale. Sure, they are variable as a source of power, but “intermittent” is too strong a word. The wind is always blowing somewhere and weather that brings less sunshine also correlates strongly with stronger winds. Yes, you do need storage in a renewable energy system. But not as much as Player One seems to think. Again, to argue this means going into some pretty heavy statistics and I doubt she is interested in catching up with the science. Several, thorough, peer reviewed papers have been put in front of her nose by people here, and always her response is not “yes, I’ll read that and learn”. Her response is just abusive and dismissive. Her favourite line of course is “oh you’re just an advertising bot for xxx”.

    I also tried to argue with Player One about the overstatement of “baseload” power. That a lot of the energy we consume overnight, we do so because of the nature of coal fired power and the perverse incentives we provide. In other words, the ratio of peak to baseload should be much larger. Again, when I tried to argue this with Player One reasonably, she was just plain rude. But this does factor into the question of precisely how much storage you actually need. The answer is surprisingly a lot less than Player One seems to think.

    There is a role for gas of course. There will in any event be some new gas fired power and that stop being useful, even as the occasional backup. There’s also a role for gas in providing back up heat for solar thermal with molten salt storage. But when you’re down to the level of a few hours per year, I don’t think anyone is going to fuss about the CO2 emitted. However, building out very large levels of gas fired power locks us into the situation of longer term CO2 pollution, or wasted capital. This one has been pointed out to Player One many times and she has kept a perfect score in never, ever responding to this obvious point. She seems desperate. Trapped by her out of date “facts” and latching on to what seems to her to be the only way out. Well, I just wish she’d demonstrate the ability to sit up, pay attention and learn from the experts, and not just be an ass (as she was to me) when its pointed out to her, that her facts are now out of date.

  5. Geelong Flyer
    Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:26 pm
    News Corpse has announced 80% of their photographers will be immediately sacked.
    Murdoch must and is desperate

    Murdoch doesn’t need photographers when he has a subscription to Photoshop. Those horrible DT front pages come to mind.

  6. ML, by normal I mean the ones left renewal and grassroot greens don’t like.
    As regards the handsome head, Jimmy Choo is dressed up and ready to go.

  7. I missed this article yesterday by the CEO of AGL on why our energy market structure (i.e. The bit designed by the Howard government) is stuffed in an age of renewable power.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/bungled-closure-of-hazelwood-shouldnt-have-been-allowed-to-happen-20170407-gvfrz7.html

    This further reinforces that Jay Weatherall is correct in both acting to fix the problem soon, not in 4 to 7 years time, and in reregulating it in SA. Funny I haven’t heard from Josh Frydenberg on this topic for some time.

  8. Turnbull’s “all the way with Donald T” apparently hasn’t impressed Fox News and that nasty type O’Reilly:

    In his Talking Points Memo on Monday, Bill O’Reilly said it was a “damn shame” that western nations won’t help the United States combat threats like Syria, Iran or North Korea.

    O’Reilly said the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia offer only limited assistance in “policing the world.”

    He said President Trump’s strike against a Syrian airfield after a civilian gas attack is proof America will make sure world order is kept.

    http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/04/10/oreilly-talking-points-trump-united-states-only-country-fighting-world-threats

  9. FTTC is an admission that they stuffed up the FTTP. However why don’t do the last bit and bring fibre to the home.

    Using copper from the curb to your house means the 100mbps you paid for becomes 70mbps.

    The adults in charge are idiots.

  10. Socrates
    Go easy on the mad uncles. I think I fall into that category these days. A couple of my nieces were in town from far flung places at the weekend and at rthe family gathering they delighted in making me nurse their babies!

  11. Did anyone else read the Peter Lewis article in guardian australia today?
    Certainly outlines the issues driving the polls in the current direction. The Libs. haven’t got a clue.

  12. PeeBee @ #318 Tuesday, April 11th, 2017 – 7:17 pm

    FTTC is an admission that they stuffed up the FTTP. However why don’t do the last bit and bring fibre to the home.

    Because that’s the most expensive part. And the most time consuming, too, since then you need permission from the home-owner and cooperation from the occupier, and to have a tech install additional hardware components at the residence.

    FTTC means they can claim they’re doing “almost” FTTP while actually doing very little more than FTTN. It’s politically expedient. And it leaves taxpayers to foot the bill (for a second time) if/when they decide they want to upgrade to proper FTTP.

  13. Vogon Poet
    That is so cool.
    Maybe I need to investigate updating mine, but I’m torn as I’m very attached to mine, and miss my old moniker of Harry “Snapper” Organs.

  14. GG
    Thanks for your kind words re the Ice episode. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating/mind nunbing the experience truly was. This guy will never, ever, ever, ever take this stuff again. As if I believe him.

    To that end I have told him never to darken my doorway again. Hope I’m not inviting trubble.

    As for your dismissal of Cud Chewer’s words, I found them strangely explanatory of the the Electricity Wars.

    Cud Chewer
    Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:47 pm

    Thanks for that precis. I admit I started to scroll on by, and then hurried past. It was too too tedious (especially the cut and paste) by each and every one of you. All I really know is that I want reliable power when I flick a switch.

    I’m not sure I’m that much the wiser, although your post does set out the argument, and reasons for and against, much more succinctly than anything else I’ve read, lately. And it makes sense. I hope you and Player One can come together on this, at some point.

  15. c@tmomma @ #312 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 7:02 pm

    BIGD,
    Plenty of room for solar panels on their roofs.
    Well observed about Woolworths.
    Same, same Coles.

    Before you get too excited, remember that commercial and industrial users typically pay 1/2 or perhaps even just 1/4 of what a residential user pays for electricity.

    For these users, rooftop solar is not yet economic.

  16. Kezza,

    Cheers.

    Re CC, just go back 24 hours to see his disgusting abuse of P1.

    It’s a standard I am not prepared to walk past.

    When he apologises uncondtionally, I might give him some slack.

    That’s how I roll.

  17. I think I heard Wendy Harmer say she interviewed Jody Mackay about Labor Transport policy today!

    C@, you wouldn’t have a link?

  18. player one @ #332 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 7:54 pm

    c@tmomma @ #312 Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 7:02 pm

    BIGD,
    Plenty of room for solar panels on their roofs.
    Well observed about Woolworths.
    Same, same Coles.

    Before you get too excited, remember that commercial and industrial users typically pay 1/2 or perhaps even just 1/4 of what a residential user pays for electricity.
    For these users, rooftop solar is not yet economic.

    As they pay $360 million a year for electricity the potential is there to make considerable savings.

  19. Hey Vic
    “You can see why the crime rate has increased dramatically here in Victoria!
    In a perfect world, no one would never ever touch the stuff!!”

    Oh, man oh man, I kept thinking “Do you seriously want to be known as akin to a bloke who stabbed his brother, then did donuts in Flinders St, and then killed half a dozen with your car?”

    Trying to keep my cool was half the problem. I felt like knocking him out. I still feel like it. I’m so angry with him.

    And now he’s just wallowing in self-pity: too embarrassed to take responsibility.

    I’ve had to step right away and let others deal with it.

  20. Before you get too excited, remember that commercial and industrial users typically pay 1/2 or perhaps even just 1/4 of what a residential user pays for electricity.

    For these users, rooftop solar is not yet economic.

    More intellectual dishonesty from Player One. The post specifically talked about Coles and Woolies, not large industrial users. Its generally the very large, power intensive industrial users that get the discount rates.

    Besides, the assertion is that solar isn’t cheap enough. This isn’t the case any more. And shopping malls are precisely the place where solar plus battery storage makes good sense.

  21. GG

    Yeah, well, okay, I’ve missed lots of 24 hours in the past week. And I obviously missed what you’re talking about. If that’s the case, then CC should apologise, and move on with what I consider to be a pretty well-reasoned argument.

  22. Cud Chewer,
    I can only proffer that a look at the 702 ABC Sydney facebook page might provide a link. I was hoping as you were more savvy about these things that you could track it down! 🙂

  23. **This is a very brave young woman**
    The Bill were right next to her and in the background. The EDL ‘security’ were there as well and one would like to assume they wouldnt allow a woman to be beaten up by EDL thugs with cameras around.

    But still courageous. A very noble act too. She did her city proud – a local hero IMO. And a tops photo.

  24. GG

    “But, you and i know no-one ever backed off on PB ever!”

    Well, that’s bloody true. I think I’ve had an overdose of holding my breath! and was hoping the ship would right itself.

  25. Kezza2,
    You have my unreserved sympathy. I don’t know how you are coping as well as you seem to be. I am so glad I never had to confront armed robbers of my Pharmacy who were high on Ice. Only Heroin. And they were usually too strung out to get their act together very well and I just gave them the money they wanted to score again any way. Except for the time my late husband happened to be picking me up from work and came upon this guy holding me up for the day’s takings. My husband hit the roof! The guy looked like he had a gun in his jacket that was pointing at me!

    This transformed my husband from a slender man of average strength into Superman! He tackled the guy from behind, yelled “You don’t take my wife’s money!” and then proceeded to hold the guy with a vice-like grip until the Police came along and took him away.

    Turns out this poor, hapless soul had just been released from Emu Plains Prison Farm, after serving time for a drug-related matter, used the money he was released with to buy a bus ticket to Perth to try and escape his demons, couldn’t resist the urge when he got to Perth, so decided on robbing the closest pharmacy to his hotel. Mine!

    Like I said, thank goodness he wasn’t on Ice because we wouldn’t have been able to restrain him, that’s for sure!

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