Newspoll: 55-45 to Labor

After a Victorian election result decided entirely on state issues, a poll shows the Coalition doing every bit as badly at federal level.

A weekend to forget for the Coalition has been compounded by Newspoll’s finding that its federal operation is down yet another point, putting Labor’s lead at 55-45. Its primary vote is down a point to 34%, the equal lowest since the 2016 election, while Labor is steady on 40%, the Greens are unchanged on 9% and One Nation are up two to 6%. Scott Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is down slightly, from 43-35 to 42-36. Nonetheless, Scott Morrison’s personal ratings have improved since a fortnight ago, with approval up four to 43% and disapproval down five to 42%, while Bill Shorten is up two to 37% and steady on 50%. The poll will have been conducted Thursday to Sunday and the sample around 1700, although it’s not specified in the online report.

UPDATE: The sample size was 1717.

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.

2,597 comments on “Newspoll: 55-45 to Labor”

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  1. Re landslides, I hope next year that the Coalition are smashed so badly that they have no chance of returning for at least two terms, hopefully three or more. Not Kevin07 or Hawke 83 but 1975 in reverse. Much of today’s leadership and up and comers booted out. Once in Opposition, the remaining Liberals will tear themselves apart, change leaders annually. What’s left of their current talent pool will waste their careers in Opposition or, more likely these days, head instead for greener pastures in the business world.

    The right wing coalition will come back eventually, hopefully not for a decade. After all, they are the natural political home of maybe 40% of Australians. But when they do come back they will hopefully be a sensible Centre-right grouping aligned with the interests of that 40%, not with those of Big Business, the fundamentalists and the extremists, able to convince some in the Centre to support them without lies and fear-mongering.

    Meanwhile, the adults will have sorted out climate and energy mess, restored balance to our social security, health, education and taxation systems, started repairing the NBN, restored Australia’s international reputation and rolled back the vandalism of Howard, Costello and Abbott and his successors.

  8. Ross,

    In Immigration Morrison stayed strictly on message. It might not have been great for open government nor those of us looking to tear him down. But it made absolutely sure the government’s message was the message most people got to hear.

    He wasn’t as clear in Treasury, but after Trumble made a bit of a habit of throwing him under a bus he stuck pretty closely to the agreed bullshit.

    If he had just done something similar. Just grabbed something and made it his raison d’etre and stuck to his lines on it like shit to a blanket…

    He wouldn’t win the next election, but he probably wouldn’t be a joke either.

  9. Rossmcg

    Not just his political career. Prior to that there is a pattern of him leaving a position early and it being in less than “happy happy joy joy” circumstances.

  10. In the local chemist the morning was the ‘Seniors newspaper’. I don’t know if it was published bfore the election, altho I suspect it was, because one of the headlines on the front cover was
    wtte
    “Labor will steal your retirement income.”

  11. Just in regard to this federal ICAC proposal, I was sort of hoping it would not go ahead at this stage and Labor would be able to take it to the election. It has obviously got widespread support in the community and would be a very popular policy for them to run with. If it’s all done and dusted beforehand however the government and cross benchers can claim a lot of the credit.

    That’s how I am reading it anyway.

  12. Bill Shorten tweets

    Today the Liberals voted for a National Integrity Commission. But then said they were only “considering” it. Subsequently they dismissed it as a “fringe issue”.

    Labor supports a National Integrity Commission 100%. It’s as simple as that.

  13. Steve777

    I hope next year that the Coalition are smashed so badly that they have no chance of returning for at least two terms, hopefully three or more.

    _______________________________________

    As I argued earlier, I don’t think the size of the buffer matters any more, as long as the numbers are not on a knife edge. The real challenge is what the party does in power. A good government will hold power even with a small majority. A bad government will be swept away no matter how big the majority.

  14. If the Govt has to support a national integrity commission, the Nats are going to go ballistic. Any commission will start off with nothing to do except investigate the last govt. It will be a bloodbath.

  15. Bear in mind also that the campaigns of the endorsed Labor candidates for the Federal election are in full swing

    Including in Chisholm and Deakin with high profile candidates

  16. Steve777,
    I agree with much of what you say, but there is a global element to this as well and I don’t know that it will shake out in the Liberal Party as easily and as quickly as we would hope, due to the overarching influence of the Religious Right. 13% of the Victorian Liberal Party are now Mormons, for example, as against 0.03% of the population in general. Now that they have finagled their way into positions of power in that State branch, I don’t think they’ll be blasted out easily. These people are used to being missionaries and evangelists and are in it for the long haul.

    I think there is more likely to be a split, into a Christian Conservative party along the lines of Family First, and a truly Liberal Party again, rather than the Liberal Party reconstructs itself under the one roof.

  18. The real challenge is what the party does in power. A good government will hold power even with a small majority. A bad government will be swept away no matter how big the majority.

    True.

    But these idiots are making such a strong case for being slaughtered who are we to deny them?

  19. If there is a ‘smashing’ for the Liberals at the next election what would the flavor of the survivors be ? Are the nutters largely in safe seats or does the safe seat balance lie with the so called “moderates” ?

  20. lizzie @ #459 Monday, November 26th, 2018 – 3:28 pm

    In the local chemist the morning was the ‘Seniors newspaper’. I don’t know if it was published bfore the election, altho I suspect it was, because one of the headlines on the front cover was
    wtte
    “Labor will steal your retirement income.”

    That paper is owned by a conservative Liberal donor.

  22. Dan G, sorry i was not insinuating any redneckiness on the West… but i do believe WA has been federally a >50% Coalition 2PP voting and polling state for the overwhelming share of the last 2-3 decades. When last did the ALP hold a majority of seats in WA?

    Asha/Rocket, for all ScoMo’s faults i dont think being unintelligent is one of them. He was forward-thinking enough to strategise his vote when Turbull rolled Abbott. If he wanted to maximise his chances of being a longer term PM, i would have thought he’d back JBish for the job now – but probably realised she wouldnt get up against Dutton (or would get skewered by the right wing even if she somehow did).

    I’m guessing he has some longer term understanding as the default vote of moderates after the election (who are they going to vote for as leader?) – especially if can contain the loss to ~15 seats. Maybe he figured one can never turn down being PM even if its for a short time (and not be forgiven for letting Dutton lead them into oblivion). Maybe he figured that if Dutton led into an election, he’d need at least 2-3 terms to get a chance to win an election in his own right… and the glory of PMship and the private sector goodies that follow make it worthwhile… the Costello woulda shoulda thing.

    Had Hewson pipped Keating back in ’93, i spose its tenable PJK could have hung around as opposition leader? Short tenure, respectable loss – can see it working. Unf the losses borne by Kirner/Lawrence/Keneally were such thumpings that they couldnt continue?

  27. C@t:

    Well, it may well have been a bad joke. I thought the sarcasm was pretty bloody obvious, myself – particularly given my many previous instances of arguing with and/or mocking Rex’s opinions re Bill Shorten and polling success – but I’m obviously rather biased when it comes the success or lack thereof of my comedy stylings, so I’ll just go with the old John Howard standby and suggest that it’s a matter best left for others to judge.

    But I find it pretty bloody hilarious that you can accuse me of being a nasty piece of work who wantonly attacks you when:

    A) Before today, I’ve probably posted roughly six times here during the last two weeks. On not one of those instances did I say a single damn word to you.

    and

    B) After posting a three sentence comment that was not directed towards you in any way, nor an attack on anybody else here (with the possible exception of Rex, who I can’t deny I was taking the piss out of a bit), you decide to respond with the following:

    Nice try, Asha, but no banana. Go get a room with Rex. Your, ‘look over there at Bill Shorten! Isn’t he unpopular!?!’, just like all the tired old Liberals like to monotonously say, is irrelevant. And what’s more, it’s misleading. Because you know who has been leading Labor to Newspoll win, after Newspoll win, after Newspoll win?

    Bill Shorten.

    And there’s no way, no matter how you may want to posit that the polls would be better if he were not leading the Labor Party, that you can say that with ANY certainty, because the guns of the Murdoch media and the government would just be trained on whoever was Leader of the FPLP. Plus, there would be the basis for a massive scare campaign about instability and chaos, again, in the Labor Party.

    Hey, Asha, I think I can hear Rex calling you.

    Fun fact about my bad joke: it wasn’t a very original one either. As was even pointed out a page or two back, it’s a pretty common routine here for people to post faux-Rex comments about how much better the polling situation would be if Shorten wasn’t leader. Yet, I was my own silly little contribution you zeroed in on. Now, I wonder why that would be?

  28. lizzie @ #461 Monday, November 26th, 2018 – 3:28 pm

    In the local chemist the morning was the ‘Seniors newspaper’. I don’t know if it was published bfore the election, altho I suspect it was, because one of the headlines on the front cover was
    wtte
    “Labor will steal your retirement income.”

    I am pretty certain it is a Newscorp rag.

  29. Sorry, my bad, it references this:

    This amounts to nearly 13 per cent of all those now in key positions within the Liberals’ organisational wing, compared to just 0.3 per cent of all Australians who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

  31. I’m trying to work out whether the absence of so many government MPs for Kerryn Phelps’s maiden speech is due to plain bad manners or whether they are all congregating in corners and offices in Parliament House wringing their hands in incomprehension and terror.

  32. Yet, I was my own silly little contribution you zeroed in on. Now, I wonder why that would be?

    Because I’m over it after a 55-45 Newspoll. As I pointed out elsewhere, I have been out of the loop most of the day, so I didn’t know about your comment of a couple of pages ago. Honestly, it’s not you, it’s Rex. I just thought you had been infected with his buggy commentary. As I said, without emojis it was hard to know whether it was a pisstake or serious. My apologies.

  35. So Labor’s win in Victoria is entirely down to Morrison and if we get a federal ICAC, it will put journos careers at stake because it will encourage political interference in the ABC….

    I’m not even sure how to describe this kind of chutzpah.

  36. Thank you Cat,
    That is going to be real trouble for the Libs. Zealots in power in Victoria and nutjobs in Queensland, Abbotabads in NSW, what a mess.

  37. C@t & Silver Bodgie

    I kinda guessed it had a Liberal slant. 🙁
    It was all the more depressing because the Coalition won here on Sat.

  42. My facebook feed today !!

    Advance Australia

    Our country has been slowly drifting further and further away from our mainstream values and freedoms. This has occurred not because of any single momentous event, but rather through a series of incremental changes pushed through by the left-wing activists without your permission or say so.

    etcetera etcetera etcetera….

  43. Expat Follower:

    You know, I don’t know if I’d call Morrison stupid either, at least broadly speaking. In many respects, he is probably very intelligent. Most who manage to reach his level of political success are – even Abbott, much as we may love to mock him. But, on the evidence so far, my personal opinion is that he has shown himself to be very stupid politically. (The same can be said for Turnbull. By all accounts, he’s a very intelligent man who was a brilliant lawyer, but he was a political moron. HV Evatt was in much the same situation sixty years ago.*)

    Who knows, maybe caucus has indeed promised they would keep him on as leader if he staunches the bleeding. Problem is, the way things are going, he’s making the bleeding worse. More likely, come election night, he will prove the convenient whipping boy for the rest of the party to blame the loss on and avoid any reflection on the actual causes for their thrashing.

    On Keating, I reckon he would have proved a poor opposition leader post-1993 for the same reason almost all defeated PMs are poor opposition leaders. They have too much baggage and their political capital has been spent. Keating, in particular, was never well liked from the get-go, and while he probably would have proved a devastatingly effective opposition leader if he held the position before becoming PM, I think he would have crashed and burned if he took on the job after losing office, even against Hewson.

    * Before anyone gets up in arms, I am not suggesting Morrison’s career before politics is in anyway comparable to the Doc’s.

  44. guytaur

    Tehan just said in a presser that the government opposes the NSW ICAC model.

    Well of course, it has one fatal flaw………….despite all efforts it wallops Coalition people as well Labor.

  47. From Amy.
    .

    Now this is how you do a social media video:

    James Campbell
    (@J_C_Campbell)
    Much watch Labor video featuring Liberal President Michael Kroger explaining why they won on Saturday…. pic.twitter.com/Dqn4VZjyEn

    https://t.co/Dqn4VZjyEn
    November 26, 2018

  49. Orr @ the RC into Bank fraudsters

    Every bank should sack its PR arm & outside firm & never rehire them ever. Orr hammering NAB motherhood statements
    Orr exposes Ken Henry as a total bullshit artist .

    I now understand why Rudd picked him… like minds

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