As reported here in early May, British-based market research giant YouGov has entered the Australian federal polling game, in conjunction with Australian communications agency Fifty Acres. After reporting attitudinal polling on a fortnightly basis over recent months, the pollster has produced its first set of voting intention numbers, which are exclusively related below.
First though, a few points about methodology. The poll is conducted through an online panel, similar to Essential Research, and indeed an increasingly dominant share of public opinion polls internationally. The polling is conducted fortnightly from Thursday to Tuesday from a sample of a bit over 1000 respondents (1125 in the case of the latest survey), drawn from its pool of survey volunteers.
With respect to voting intention, respondents are presented with a mock ballot paper featuring (together with party logos) Coalition options that vary by state, Labor, the Greens, One Nation, Nick Xenophon Team, Katter’s Australian Party, a generic option for “Christian parties”, and “other/independent”. The results are weighted not just by age, gender and region, which is standard in Australian polling, but also by education and past vote. The latter two are common in Britain but, as far as I’m aware, unique in Australia. Needless to say, this leads to two-party preferred results based on respondent allocation, rather than results from previous elections.
The results for this week’s poll are distinctive in the narrowness of the two-party preferred, with Labor’s lead at 51-49, and low primary votes for both major parties, which come in at 34% for Labor and 33% for the Coalition. Results for the minor parties are Greens 12%, One Nation 7%, Christian parties 4%, Nick Xenophon Team 3%, Katter’s Australian Party 1% and other/independent 6%.
The first thing to be noted is that Labor would record a much stronger lead of 54-46 if preferences were distributed as per the 2016 result, rather than respondent allocation. However, such is the size of the non-major party vote that this would be heavily dependent on preference flows remaining stable despite some fairly dramatic changes in vote share. The second point is that the Greens are two to three points higher than the recent form of Newspoll and Essential Research, although not Ipsos. One Nation and the Nick Xenophon Team respectively come in at 7% and 3%, which would be fairly typical coming from Essential Research, but the combined vote of 11% for everyone else is around double the equivalent figure from Newspoll and Essential Research over the past two months.
For the regular attitudinal questions, this fortnight’s poll focuses on Donald Trump, with findings that 58% consider him “erratic” and a third “unhinged” (not sure if the one response here precludes the other, or if we should combine them to conclude that nearly everybody considers him unstable or worse); that 47% think his presidency threatens to destabilise the world; that 44% feel he won’t last long; and that 52% think his use of Twitter not suitable for a world leader. The poll also records 52% saying Australia is “ready to be fully powered by renewables”, 47% considering climate change a threat to the economy, and 51% supporting the inclusion of clean coal in a clean energy target.
NOTE: Separate to this one, I have a new post that takes a detailed look at the census results.
frednk @ #12 Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 6:09 am
No poll sampling is ever truly random, because the randomness is skewed by differing response rates (does the person have a phone, are they home, will they take the poll etc). So every pollster needs to scale their way around that.
These panel-polls use a sort-of random selection from a non-random sample of the population and then try to use scaling to simulate the overall population. There’s a strong argument that panel polling has unavoidable biases because people who enter panels are different from other people in ways that no amount of demographic data can describe. This has made me very suspicious of a lot of Essential’s issue polling for instance.
In the case of this YouGov effort there’s a further reason for caution – their panels from which they select potential respondents are openly self-selecting, unlike Essential’s.
But Survey Monkey which also uses self-selecting panels has pantsed most of the conventional UK pollsters two elections in a row so I think it’s best to keep an eye on these things and see how they go at elections.
Australia have an extradition treaty with Italy. Does that mean, if Pell doesnt want to front up to the charges, he will have to stay in the 40ha of the Vatican?
Pell has been charged.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/29/cardinal-george-pell-charged-with-multiple-sexual-offences
Will Abbott make a fatuous comment about the Pell charges?
There was an article not too long ago about the issues involved in extraditing Pell. Regardless of diplomatic protocols, the current Pope might not be too comfortable to be seen as harbouring an alleged lawbreaker (particularly with the charges Pell might be facing).
Of course, Pell has claimed he is too unwell to fly to Australia. It might be a sea voyage on a conveniently scheduled cruise liner(s) for him!
**Will Abbott make a fatuous comment about the Pell charges?**
Surely someone in the LNP will blame Andrews or Shorten….. or windfarms.
‘The problem involves the ability of the New South Wales branch to direct how it’s Senators vote — even if that means voting against decisions made by Federal party room.’
If this is a direct quotation from the ABC web-site, then they seem incapable of writing a grammatically correct sentence, let alone get the facts right.
Simon Katich
It’s VicPol making the charges, so lots of scope there 🙂
Darn @ 9:33
No, a US president who has served two full terms can’t serve as president again.
George Pell.
I need say no more.
Adrian
I am in despair at the loss of grammar in media publications, and unfortunately these mistakes are cemented in with the catchcry “the language is always changing”.
Without the correct forms as an example, people can hardly be blamed.
George Pell.
Bolt & his sewer mates will be apocalyptic.
We’ll be “treated” to millions of words on this in the coming months.
As much as I’m happy to see a shit fight between the conservatives and
Turnbull, that comment is a bit rich coming from a bloke who managed to squander a seventy seat majority and lose government all in the space of three years.
Is Peg a GRN or a LIB?
Hard to tell because all we ever get is selective cut & paste spam and never an articulated personal opinion.
Edward Boyce @ #109 Thursday, June 29th, 2017 – 10:28 am
Unless Trump abolishes term limits. Although that would require a Constitutional Amendment, which should be well beyond his reach.
Obama Gets Delicious Revenge As Fox News Poll Shows Soaring Support For Obamacare
Fox News has spent years demonizing Obamacare, but President Obama is finally getting his revenge as a new poll shows support for Obamacare has grown by 11 points in the last year.
Barack Obama is finally getting some sweet revenge as Republicans as his signature presidential accomplishment is more popular than ever as Republicans are destroying their political futures by trying to repeal a law that may be destined to stay.
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/28/obama-delicious-revenge-fox-news-poll-shows-soaring-support-obamacare.html
Donald Trump Is Holding An Illegal Reelection Fundraiser At His DC Hotel Right Now
Norm Eisen of CREW is warning that President Trump’s reelection fundraiser at his own DC hotel is illegal and in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
Trump is brazenly and blatantly violating the Constitution. He is personally profiting off of this fundraiser because the donors are spending money to stay at the President’s own hotel. This is illegal, and Eisen’s organization CREW is suing Trump for different Emoluments Clause violated related to this same hotel. Trump didn’t want the press covering this event because he is engaging in illegal activity while occupying the White House.
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/28/donald-trump-holding-illegal-reelection-fundraiser-dc-hotel.html
@ Darn – there was a reliable documentary that looked into the idea of getting around the two term limit.
It pointed out the critical wording was that no body can serve more than 2 terms. Obama could serve more terms, as long as he is a head in a jar, possibly ontop of a robot!
Senate intel committee probing over 2,000 Trump docs from Treasury Dept. financial crimes unit: report
The Senate intelligence committee is combing through a trove of more 2,000 documents regarding the finances of President Donald Trump and his associates, a report by Bloomberg reveals. They received the documents from the Department of Justice’s financial crimes unit.
According to the report, the intelligence committee’s investigation of potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia is now “focused sharply” on transactions of the president’s associates, ostensibly to find evidence of payments made to or from Kremlin-backed firms or individuals.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/senate-intel-committee-probing-over-2000-trump-docs-from-treasury-dept-financial-crimes-unit-report/
[No, a US president who has served two full terms can’t serve as president again.]
Indeed, unlike some other term-limited offices, the 22nd amendment is clearly written to establish that you can only be elected twice, full stop. It also provides that if somebody serves out the remainder of somebody else’s term (e.g. a VP succeeding a President after the latter vacates) for two or more years, that counts as one election.
So, yeah, Obama is prohibited from ever becoming President again, unless that is changed (a big task that would require bipartisan support.)
Not that I want Obama back. Even though I have a positive view of him (and I think he was the best POTUS of the last 50 years), the Democratic Party is best served by looking forwards, not backwards. (And after 8 years of serving in an extremely stressful and, at times, thankless job, I think Obama would politely decline anyway.)
A reliable documentary by Futu R. Ama.
(That post kind of sounded a lot more sycophantically pro-POTUS and USA than intended.)
The charging of the Mad Monk’s spiritual adviser with multiple sexual abuse charges has made my day!! 🙂 🙂
Thanks to those who responded to my question regarding multiple terms for the US president.
Darn, Campbell’s just trying to help Trumble see the reality he ignored and get out early to let some other schmuck cop the flogging.
Citizen
Him and Clive’s nephew can have a drink together.
Tony loves war games, doesn’t he?
Darn Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 10:49 am
Thanks to those who responded to my question regarding multiple terms for the US president.
***************************************************
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms.
Roosevelt rose above personal and political challenges to emerge as one of the nation’s most revered and influential presidents. In 1921, at the age of 29, he contracted polio and thereafter was burdened with leg braces; eventually, he was confined to a wheelchair. From the time he was first elected to the presidency in 1932 to mid-1945, when he died while in office, Roosevelt presided over two of the biggest crises in U.S. history: the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. FDR implemented drastic and oft-criticized legislation to help boost America out of the Great Depression. Although he initially tried to avoid direct U.S. involvement in World War II, which began in 1939, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 thrust American headlong into the conflict.
By the time Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term, the war had taken a turn in favor of the Allies, but FDR’s health was already on the decline. His arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) had been worsened by the stress of serving as a war-time president. In April 1945, seven months before the war finally ended in an Allied victory, FDR died of a stroke at his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia.
In 1947, with President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s vice president, in office, Congress proposed a law that would limit presidents to two consecutive terms. Up to that time, presidents had either voluntarily followed George Washington’s example of serving a maximum of two terms, or were unsuccessful in winning a third. (In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third non-consecutive term, but lost.) In 1951, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was passed, officially limiting a president’s tenure in office to two terms of four years each.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-wins-unprecedented-fourth-term
The Libs need to listen to the chap. Few can match CanJoh’s expertise in leading a political party ‘into the valley of death’.
There have been discussions on whether a termed-out US President could run for Vice-President. Even if he/she wanted to and legally could, he/she presumably couldn’t take over if the President died or was kicked out.
Every time Abbott opens his mouth, no matter what he says, the underlying message is always the same.
“The morons in the press that got me to the Lodge are the biggest danger to this Nation there is”.
Bernadi will at least be good for letting them put in Australian Conservatives rather than Christian parties the way he’s vacuuming them up. I agree that “Christian parties” is a bit of a questionable grouping because when you make groupings like that it implies the others aren’t.
Kevin Bonham, do we know how Essential polls it’s panel? I have an impression, and I’m not sure where I picked it up, that they send out requests to the panel, and then stop when they reach their quota’s.
If that is the case then there is an element of self-selection. If a certain set of supporters are fired up about something they are more likely to quickly respond to the survey, and what is firing them up may not be reflected in the electorate as a whole. Indeed, many issues that fire up a party base often turn off everyone else.
If this is the method I’m sure they have ways to limit this.
Anyway, it’s good to have a new pollster, we will have to see how they do in a few elections to determine how well we trust them.
The rule about presidential terms was supposed to also be two terms only in Russia but Putin managed to get around that by having sh#tloads of legal opinions that it meant 2 consecutive terms.
Not quite so easy to pull a trick like that in the US.
[Every time Abbott opens his mouth, no matter what he says, the underlying message is always the same.
“The morons in the press that got me to the Lodge are the biggest danger to this Nation there is”.]
Yeah, shame that these morons give real journalists like Adele Ferguson a bad name.
There have been discussions to that effect but the universal legal consensus is they can’t due to eligibility for the President being a prerequisite to the Vice Presidency.
Such requisite doesn’t exist in any of the offices in the line of succession and, in the instance they are ineligible (e.g. a foreign born cabinet member), they are just skipped over in the line of succession.
The VP’s role is spelled out in the constitution (with additional responsibilities added at the pleasure of the President) and, tie-breaking vote in the Senate aside, is essentially a back-up President. The 25th amendment cemented the VP’s role in this regard.
elaugaufein @ #132 Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 11:01 am
The defining characteristic of the so-called “Christian” Parties is the complete absence of the values of he who they profess to follow.
They are simply frauds.
For anyone who’s following Claude Taylor (@trufactsstated) on Twitter – stop. He is just a chancer trying to cash in on #TrumpRussia. He describes himself as a “mid-level (Bill) Clinton staffer”. Turns out he sold bumper stickers for Clinton-Gore.
And anyone following Louise Mensch needs to stop following, and even block her. Her ties to the alt-right, Murdoch, Cambridge Analytics, the Koch Brothers and many more are too deep to beleieve she’s suddenly had an epiphany. At best, she’s another chancer trying to cash in on #RussiaGate, at worst she’s a definite spreader of disinformation.
I have to look into the exact specifics of the Russia situation but, from what I understand, Putin got around it because it prohibited the President from serving more than two consecutive terms. Meaning he can just sit one out and he’d be eligible again – exactly what he did when he got Medvedev to be his puppet for four years (interestingly, as he was appointed PM during that term, had Medvedev vacated, Putin would’ve become President again via line of succession.)
Also worth noting that, as of the 2012 election, Presidential terms are six years long, so Putin can have 12 years (2×6 year terms) of rule (until 2024) before he has to pull another manoeuvre like that.
(Assuming, of course, that Putin doesn’t decide to retire, get deposed or just drop the pretense of constitutional democratic rule by then…)
(Or die… but that’s unlikely – as I believe he might be a cyborg)
Dan,
I don’t have the time to follow the Trump stuff on a daily basis, but I enjoy being kept up to date by the posters here. I’m sure he will come undone, even with his base, at some point.
As far as I’m concerned people can slur Trump with any old made up crap they like. It is what he does.
Campbell Newman has called for Turnbull to resign. Things are really going to hell for them, aren’t they?
Leadership spill in the next 2-4 months?
Someone posted this earlier and I have just got around to reading it.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/inside-melbournes-secret-suburban-hydro-power-system-20170626-gwyv5e.html
Fascinating!
Apart from these “mini-hydro” generators spread around the suburbs, there are also other types of mini-generators spread around the state as I discovered a few months back. My son lives in Berwick and one of his eldest daughters friends mentioned a “power station” up on a hill where there were some high voltage transmission lines.
I assumed he was wrong and it was some sort of sub-station. I was wrong! There really is a small power station there powered by bio-gas from a land-fill rubbish tip that filled in an old quarry. Read about it here: http://caseycardinialinkstoourpast.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/narre-warren-landfill-gas-fuelled-power.html
My curiosity drove me a bit further and I was astonished to find just how many generators there are in Victoria. List here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Victoria_(Australia)
It seems like a growing trend and we will see a lot more of these mini and micro power stations, apart from the obvious roof-top solar.
Good Morning
What a good day. Cardinals not above the law. No matter what the outcome of the case this is good to see.
Finally the Catholic Church may just get it.
‘Finally the Catholic Church may just get it.’
I know where I’d like to see them get it.
washingtonpost: Top-ranking Vatican cardinal charged with sex offenses in Australia wapo.st/2t2QAIp
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/880238418080522240
TheMrJoshTaylor: Good one @mirandadevine I think you actually mean #HuntingSexualPredators instead of #HuntingCatholics or you can keep defending abusers
jacksonw____: Statement from Cardinal George Pell pic.twitter.com/y7wkDwoRq3
https://twitter.com/jacksonw____/status/880238930905321472
I wonder if arbitrary federal changes to the GST like that would stand up to the inevitable High Court challenge.