Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor

The first published opinion poll of the campaign records no change in Labor’s modest yet decisive lead.

The Australian brings us a second Newspoll in consecutive weeks, perhaps portending weekly results from now to the election. It shows no change from last week on two-party preferred, with Labor maintaining its 52-48 lead, but both major parties are up on the primary vote – Labor by two and the Coalition by one, leaving them tied on 39%. The Greens are steady on 9% and One Nation are, interestingly, down two to 4%. All we are told of the leaders’ ratings at this stage is that they are “virtually unchanged”. Scott Morrison is unchanged on 45% approval and up one to 44% disapproval; Bill Shorten is unchanged on both measures, at 37% and 51%; and preferred prime minister is likewise unchanged, at 46-35 in favour of Morrison. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1697.

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.

1,119 comments on “Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor”

Comments Page 14 of 23
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  3. Greensborough Growler
    says:
    Looks like Gough and Murray Weiderman when Coach. You do know where Collingwood finished in 1976?
    _________________________________
    At the bottom of the ladder or at the top. Doesn’t matter, the glory of the Collingwood Football Club is forever.

  4. Nah, EGW, I’m pretty sure that my preference helping Animal Justice get elected vindicated my position. It was anything but a meaningless gesture. Had I only voted 1 Greens and 2 Labor then Animal Justice would have had one less vote when it came down to them vs the right for the final spots. You’ve clearly demonstrated you’ve got no idea how prefrencing works. I hope that this experience has helped to educate you somewhat and that next time you will take a couple of minutes to fill out your ballot paper properly so that your vote has the maximum impact possible, just as mine did.

  5. Is there a list somewhere of all the crap things that have been done over the past six years which just require undoing rather than a whole new policy direction?

    Will a new Labor government work through such a list?

  6. Let’s take a harder look at the Greens UBI.
    $20,000 is pitiful, really.
    Truly pitiful.
    The Greens are being very, very mean here.
    Still here are the sums.
    20,000,000 adults at $20,000 an adult gets us to $400 billion a year.
    Now, even if the Greens manage to screw much much more out of the body economic, that is still going to leave nothing at all for health, transport and education.
    Let alone for the 500,000 new dwellings they have promised: estimated cost ANOTHER $150,000,000,000.
    You can sort of see why the Greens want to talk about anything and everything else, particularly how Labor is not good enough, and not the costings and funding for the Greens policies.
    No wonder the Greens are polling around a third lower than at their peak.
    Sensible environmentalists who know that numbers do mean something real, are deserting the Greens and moving back to Labor.
    Good on them, I say.

  7. guytaur
    I know that you are not a Greens member or supporter but perhaps you could shed some light on how the Greens are going to fund the $400 billion UBI?

  8. Lord Haw Haw
    Labor is being positive rather than being negative. So no ready use list.
    Labor HAS said it would reverse the Liberal’s penalty rate cuts.

  9. BW

    No idea here sorry.

    I assume a lot of it would be going for Scandinavian style tax rates especially on corporations

  11. ‘guytaur says:
    Monday, April 15, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    BW

    No idea here sorry. ‘

    Well, perhaps Firefox could come up with some funding suggestions. He is, after all, right on absolutely everything else to do with the Greens.
    And I hope he desists from the usually silly I told you that at ten minutes past three in the morning two weeks ago!

  19. Scott Morrison again claims he does not have an AFL team, despite The Australian revealing he is on-the-record as a Western Bulldogs fan

  21. A knee surgery, four back surgeries, a sex scandal, a chipped tooth, an arrest, a prescription drug problem, no swing, the chipping yips, and a sliding cop. That’s a partial list of what’s occurred in Tiger Woods’ life since he last won a major at the 2008 U.S. Open. He’s 43 years old now. And he just won the Masters for the first time in 14 years, his 15th career major victory. You choose the hyperbole of where this achievement ranks in Masters history, golf history, and sports history. But it’s pretty high in all of those!

    https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/tiger-woods-2019-masters-win-greatest-major-victory.html

  22. I have not been able to follow the thread today.
    I do hope that everyone was polite and engaged only in deep and meaningful policy discussion about things like how the Greens are funding for their various excellent policies such as a free home for 500,000 people and a free $20,000 for every single adult in Australia including even Ms Gina Rhinehardt and also the Mr Pratt whose family owns more than the poorest several million Australians combined.

  23. Firefox
    I am not talking about a petite trial in NSW that is not going to happen because the Greens got less than 10% of the vote in NSW.
    What the voting public is entitled to know is how much the Greens think their national UBI is going to cost taxpayers.
    Fair is only fair.
    Over to you.

  24. “Were one forced to make a straight choice between Leyonhjelm and Latham, whom would one choose?”

    Reminds me of the 04 election. Mass murdering war crim Vs total nutcase far right extremist, even though he was hiding it at the time. Truly a no win situation.

  25. I thought Morrison was pretty scary already:

    Time for PM to get scary

    Unless Scott Morrison starts campaigning like he’s in opposition, Shorten’s home and hosed.

    ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN
    Business Columnist (Oz headline

  26. s d
    I can forgive Morrison lying about not being a dogs fan. Among the constellation of his lies, that is a very, very minor porky.
    Still, it does go to the number 1 theme of the election: trust.
    If you leave the Dogs in the lurch, what are you?

  27. Morrison is the Vince Farrer of the election. He’ll be lucky if he’s even in reserve grade by election day.
    Morrison never had chooks as a child in Bronte. This fact is all you need to know about an awkward Morrison.
    Climate change, his Pentecostal church of choice and his ability to tell porkies with a wanton self belief is all because of the absence of chooks. The only chooks in the eastern suburbs of Sydney are the imported Roosters, they too fly away,as Morrison did to land himself in the Shire mate.
    And you can’t say ‘Shire’ without adding ‘mate’. And if you don’t know any of the above, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway.
    A copper’s son from Bronte, with no chooks, didn’t join the surf club, didn’t get pissed at the Charing Cross hotel before he was 16 and attended (as distinct from went to) SBH, where they played shit Rugby, now supports the Sharks and is delusional enough to think that the punters will elect him at the next election.
    The punters writing and reading PB will be barking mad by May 18th. (if they aren’t already)

  28. Extracting the UBI funding proposals from the Greens is like extracting a molar from a Rottweiler without benefit of a general.
    When you are exhausted, your hand has been savaged, the molar is still stuck in the jaw – festering away, the dog is in an uproar, and nobody is any the wiser.

  29. “Firefox
    I am not talking about a petite trial in NSW that is not going to happen because the Greens got less than 10% of the vote in NSW.
    What the voting public is entitled to know is how much the Greens think their national UBI is going to cost taxpayers.
    Fair is only fair.
    Over to you.”

    That is the Greens’ policy. We want to trial it first. There is no policy for a national UBI yet. I have provided you with the costings of our current policy, which at the moment is just for a trial in NSW which would cost $55 over three years.

  30. I think Joan Evatt is the mum of the member for Summer Hill.

    She has been blogging bush lawyer stuff for a while.

  32. OK, so we have established that when DiNatale said that the Greens were going to do a national UBI he mean that the Greens were not going to do a UBI.
    Apart from that, $55 over three years?
    Really?
    Treasury do it for you?

  33. “Extracting the UBI funding proposals from the Greens is like extracting a molar from a Rottweiler without benefit of a general.
    When you are exhausted, your hand has been savaged, the molar is still stuck in the jaw – festering away, the dog is in an uproar, and nobody is any the wiser.”

    That’s because you’re asking for costings for a policy that does not yet exist. Our policy if for a trial in NSW, which has been fully costed.

  35. Good one, GG!

    “Scott Morrison again claims he does not have an AFL team, despite The Australian revealing he is on-the-record as a Western Bulldogs fan

    It was only puppy love.”

  36. “OK, so we have established that when DiNatale said that the Greens were going to do a national UBI he mean that the Greens were not going to do a UBI.
    Apart from that, $55 over three years?
    Really?
    Treasury do it for you?”

    The trial is the first step mate. We want to give it a proper test so we can see how it goes and then develop the national policy based on the results. What’s wrong with that?

  37. “Were one forced to make a straight choice between Leyonhjelm and Latham, whom would one choose?”

    Choice 1: cyanide (and then workout how to make them eat it)

    Choice 2: Latham – he will be a disaster for PHON (and I predict will no longer be in the party within six months) and will remind people why they really need to think about who they vote for in the upper house.

  38. $55
    That IS cheap.
    Let’s see. There are about 800 working age adults in the trial.
    $55 divided by 800 comes to around 6.8 cents over three years.
    Say, rounding it down, 2 cents a year per person.
    I think I can predict the results of the trial before it starts.
    But the Greens will probably still want to waste the $55 anyway.

  41. That $20k figure can’t be correct.
    Surely they’re not that far removed from reality that they haven’t thought through how to pay for this shit.

  42. At 2 cents a year per working adult the Greens should just forget the trial an implement the UBI straight away. Just do it.
    It is going to cost peanuts.

  43. UBI is a bad idea because it is macroeconomically unstable. It has no inflation control built into it. It doesn’t directly add to productive capacity, but it directly adds a lot to demand.

    If the federal government replaced all existing social security and welfare spending with a UBI set at $21,700 (the maximum base rate for the pension) per year for every Australian citizen and permanent migrant aged 15 years and over (20.2 million people), it would be necessary for the federal government to increase its total spending by well over 50 percent. To put that into context, the federal government spends about $490 billion per year in total. To make the extra spending non-inflationary, it would be necessary to double the GST, and increase every marginal income tax rate by 10 to 15 percentage points, and scrap all existing tax deductions (including the tax deductions for superannuation). Obviously it would be an uphill struggle to sell that magnitude of tax increases to voters, and frankly it wouldn’t be worth doing because of the macroeconomic problems with a UBI.

    It is much better to target a generous Basic Income at people of retirement age, people who are sick or injured, and people with disabilities.

    Guarantee good quality employment to all who want it. Increase the quality of all jobs by providing a good public option for jobs.

    Guarantee good quality public services and public infrastructure to everyone.

    Those are things that are worth guaranteeing to everyone, and that can be guaranteed without causing the macroeconomic problems of a UBI.

    UBI doesn’t challenge the commodification of vast swathes of our social and cultural lives.

    In that sense, UBI isn’t ambitious enough. It doesn’t challenge the neoliberal logic of treating the individual consumer as the most important unit in society.

    There are many problems that require solutions that are public, collective, and shared. Those are the problems that a government is supposed to address. A UBI is not that kind of solution. A UBI is based on the myth that our problems are fundamentally private and individualistic in character.

    There is no point in guaranteeing everyone a certain income if people don’t actually get decent public services and infrastructure and can’t afford decent housing and can’t get decent employment when they want it.

    Guarantee the services and the infrastructure to everyone; guarantee good quality employment to all who want it; and provided a targeted Basic Income for people of retirement age and for people with constraints on their capacity to work.

    That is a much better approach than UBI.

  45. steve davis @ #667 Monday, April 15th, 2019 – 3:49 pm

    Scott Morrison again claims he does not have an AFL team, despite The Australian revealing he is on-the-record as a Western Bulldogs fan

    And do you know why he is probably not stumping for the Western Bulldogs this season? Because they have been losing and he doesn’t want to be associated with a team of losers so close to the election. THAT’S how cynical this man is.

  46. “Scott Morrison again claims he does not have an AFL team, despite The Australian revealing he is on-the-record as a Western Bulldogs fan”
    William thinks he deserves credit for this. I’m not sure why. He has clearly been caught lying (again).

  48. “$55
    That IS cheap.
    Let’s see. There are about 800 working age adults in the trial.
    $55 divided by 800 comes to around 6.8 cents over three years.
    Say, rounding it down, 2 cents a year per person.
    I think I can predict the results of the trial before it starts.
    But the Greens will probably still want to waste the $55 anyway.”

    Not even going to bother if you’re going to be silly mate.

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