The second fortnightly federal voting intention poll by YouGov for Fifty Acres records a three point increase in the Coalition primary vote, now at 36%, with Labor down one to 33%, the Greens steady on 12% and One Nation steady on 7%. The combined vote for all other parties is down two to 12%, making it slightly less unusual than that score than Newspoll and Essential Research, who respectively have it at 8% and 10%. However, what’s very unusual is a respondent-allocated two-party preferred result that gives the Coalition a lead of 52-48, the reverse of what the result would be if 2016 preference flows were used, as per the other pollsters. I don’t quite have the confidence to lead a post with “52-48 to Coalition” based such an unorthodox reading, so I’ll be using primary votes for my YouGov headlines for the time being.
The poll also found 60% support for same-sex marriage, with 28% opposed; health and hospitals were rated the most important election issue by 45%, followed by pensions on 33% and job security and unemployment on 31%; 56% supportive of a tax on companies that used robots to fund support for those who lost jobs as a result; and 54% expressing concern at indigenous languages falling into disuse, but only 33% believing the government should do anything about it. The poll was conducted online from Thursday to Tuesday, with a sample of a little over 1000.
UPDATE: The Australia Institute has published results of a poll conducted in South Australia by ReachTEL, which shows (after allocating the forced response question from the 7.1% undecided) federal voting intention in the state at 34.3% for the Liberals (down 0.8% on last year’s election), 32.1% for Labor (up 0.6%), 14.9% for the Nick Xenophon Team (down 6.4%), 6.6% for the Greens (up 0.4%), 4.6% for One Nation (didn’t field lower house candidates) and 3.9% for Australian Conservatives (unchanged on the Family First vote). There’s also a separate question on Senate voting intention, and while I have my doubts about such an exercise, it has the Liberals on 30.1% (down 2.5%), Labor on 26.1% (down 1.2%), the Nick Xenophon Team on 21.7% (unchanged), the Greens on 8.2% (up 2.3%), One Nation on 4.8% (up 1.8%) and Australian Conservatives on 5.2% (up 2.3% on the Family First vote, for the most encouraging poll result the party has yet received).
The poll also records strong support for the ABC, with 40.4% wanting its funding increased, 33.4% kept as is and only 17.5% reduced; 64.8% opposed to the government cutting funding to the ABC to get support on relaxed media ownership laws from One Nation, with 16.5% supportive; and 56.3% supportive of a strong online presence for the ABC “even if it effects the commercial viability of commercial media outlets”, with 16.4% opposed (the anti-ABC numbers across the three questions being notably similar). The automated phone poll was conducted from 1589 respondents on June 29.
Oh Henry…
Went to see McCartney on his 96 tour. Parramatta Stadium, around the half way line. He was great playing lots of the rocking Beatles numbers, not too much soppy stuff. So obviously I’m on my feet.
And I might have been the only one not in the first couple of rows that was. I was getting complaints FFS. I couldn’t believe it. Paul fucking McCartney was tearing it up and all these wankers were sitting like it was a school concert.
Those dopes sat and moped through the entire show. Then they got up for the encore. You guessed it. Hey Bloody Jude and Mull of Fucking Kintyre. I wanted to be sick.