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 2 of 23
1 2 3 23
  1. god help Australia if shorten is elected – the country will be stuffed – recession coming and good so the country can see the folly of the labor party policies that will destroy the country – BUT – as a self funded retiree I will be safe and I’ll divert my franking credits elsewhere – maybe time to migrate to another country while the socialists destroy the country
    still not over yet – Shorten may do a Daly yet

  2. You all have short memories. Gillard got a PV of 38% in 2010 and nearly lost. Shorten needs 40% before he can be confident. This is still a close contest.

  3. Guytaur, Firefox- most critics of Di Natale seemed genuine. I understand that Greens members and supporters feel it necessary to defend their leaders’ tactics but suspect its backfiring.

  4. “Firefox

    I thought the same. I am not a Greens member either.

    Its only partisans that saw only attacks on Labor.”

    Exactly. RDN is much harder on the Coalition than he is on Labor.

    Labor seem to think it’s ok for them to constantly attack the Greens but that we’re only ever meant to criticise the Coalition because their beloved ALP can do no wrong.

  5. I like those numbers! I highly doubt that Newspoll would be restricting their poling of One Nation at this point; surely they would only do this once nominations have closed and we know exactly which seats they are ccontesting. I won’t breath easy until 76 seats are in the bag, but it is looking good.

  6. Bree

    You are in dream world the coalition will not win the election as nobody like car sales man Morrison as he is only for the big end of town

    And plus you will not gain any seats in Victoria as people are over knifing PM in midterm

  7. The problem for Morrison based on those numbers is he is not picking up votes from Labor which he will need to do to become competitive. Taking votes off ON has a limited impact.

  8. “Two Newspolls in a row now where the Coalition primary vote is up (now 39%). If the Coalition primary vote is 40% or higher on election day, PM Morrison will win. Coalition starting to look good in Victoria now as well, we will win Melbourne Ports and Indi, in addition to Lindsay, Herbert and Braddon.”

    Atta girl Bree.

  9. john @ #51 Sunday, April 14th, 2019 – 10:22 pm

    god help Australia if shorten is elected – the country will be stuffed – recession coming and good so the country can see the folly of the labor party policies that will destroy the country – BUT – as a self funded retiree I will be safe and I’ll divert my franking credits elsewhere – maybe time to migrate to another country while the socialists destroy the country
    still not over yet – Shorten may do a Daly yet

  10. Kate.
    Yes genuine Labor people believing the Scapegoting myths.

    They all come from the premise if only we had more time the LNP would not have been unable to undo the climate legislation
    If Labor had not had its leadership wars. If facts had prevailed. Etc

    Blaming the Greens is to ignore that fact legislation was passed.

    I don’t want a repeat. This is why I want Canada style media laws. It would keep facts on the table in national debate

  11. The government’s strong economy line is going to get old very quickly, a rerun of ‘Jobs and Growth™’ from 2016.

  12. I just want to wake up on May 19 with a PM who has a plan, united team and can just focus on policy. Is that so much to ask for?

  13. “The problem for Morrison based on those numbers is he is not picking up votes from Labor which he will need to do to become competitive. Taking votes off ON has a limited impact.”

    Are those votes going from One Nation to either Labor or especially the Coalition from anything that the majors have done? Or is it because of One Nation shooting themselves in the foot, pun intended. I’m thinking it’s more likely to be the latter.

  14. We live in a democracy, comparisons of policies and actions (including by party politicians and especially during election campaigns), which often extends to criticism, is a key part of democracy.

    The Greens are not ALP members or pledged candidates, therefore they are under no obligation not to criticise the ALP.

  15. Change from last weeks Newspoll, distributing Green & ON prefs to ALP-LNP as they went in the 2016 election (ie Greens 78-22, ON 50-50):

    Last week: ALP 47, LNP 43, Oth 10.

    This week: ALP 48, LNP 43, Oth 9.

    This is definitely a firming up of Labor’s position compared to a week ago.

  16. The Coalition have no good story to tell, no record to be proud of. “Events” have precluded planned race-baiting, so they’re just left with lies, even more egregious than usual, plus smear, with the support of billionaire media barons and Big Money.

  17. I don’t think people realise that a surplus that comes in from miners doing better is different from National debt that is double that from when Labor had government. Why is not Labor highlighting this ? Can someone enlighten me?

  18. Insiders ABC
    @InsidersABC
    · 13h
    “I have reached out to @billshortenmp. At the moment, he seems more intent on adopting the Liberal Party’s energy and climate policies than talking to the Greens.” @RichardDiNatale

    Penny Wong’s answer

    “This is the same old line the Greens used when voting with Abbott and co to torpedo Labor’s climate plan. A decade of inaction followed. I know the Greens’ priority is often on differentiating from Labor, but surely the priority is to elect a government that will act on climate.”

  19. john @ #51 Sunday, April 14th, 2019 – 10:22 pm

    god help Australia if shorten is elected – the country will be stuffed – recession coming and good so the country can see the folly of the labor party policies that will destroy the country – BUT – as a self funded retiree I will be safe and I’ll divert my franking credits elsewhere – maybe time to migrate to another country while the socialists destroy the country
    still not over yet – Shorten may do a Daly yet

    Stream of consciousness drivel.

    Better piss off quick, then. I suggest Brazil. Right up your alley.

  20. DS says:
    Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 10:24 pm
    You all have short memories. Gillard got a PV of 38% in 2010 and nearly lost. Shorten needs 40% before he can be confident. This is still a close contest.
    ————————————-

    You have an even shorter one. In 2010, the Abbott Coalition got over 43% PV and DID lose. They are 4% under that right now.

  21. I’ll just leave the inanity of this statement sitting out there:

    “I have reached out to @billshortenmp. At the moment, he seems more intent on adopting the Liberal Party’s energy and climate policies than talking to the Greens.” @RichardDiNatale

    ———————————–

  22. @DS

    The problem with your argument is that in 2010, the Coalition achieved a primary vote of 43 percent. They’re not close to it and have less than five weeks to get there.

  23. Incidentally I do believe the Greens are perfectly entitled to criticise Labor. They have every right. Whether its a great tactic is another matter.

    I understand that taking votes from Labor is part of the business model but it probably cuts both ways.

  24. “Labor seem to think it’s ok for them to constantly attack the Greens but that we’re only ever meant to criticise the Coalition because their beloved ALP can do no wrong.”

    Labor can do plenty wrong. That’s not the point. Labor doesn’t attack the Greens for sport. Labor simply reacts badly to threats: Your states MO is to “force”, “demand” and “insist” that a government formed by a majority of votes in a majority of seats – one that includes millions of votes from your despised “moderate” and “centre” people should bend the knee to a party with less than 10% of the vote – drawn from an extremely narrow and frankly smug cross section of society. Shenanigans to that. I’m all for working with you, but threaten me? Go fuck yourself.

  25. Insiders ABC
    @InsidersABC
    · 13h
    “I have reached out to @billshortenmp. At the moment, he seems more intent on adopting the Liberal Party’s energy and climate policies than talking to the Greens.” @RichardDiNatale

    Penny Wong’s answer

    “This is the same old line the Greens used when voting with Abbott and co to torpedo Labor’s climate plan. A decade of inaction followed. I know the Greens’ priority is often on differentiating from Labor, but surely the priority is to elect a government that will act on climate.”

    This is the same old tired propaganda that Labor trots out time after time. The Greens offered to go back to the negotiating table with Rudd over his ineffective CPRS to try and improve it. Rudd choose to try and pass it with Turnbull’s help instead. Then the Greens forced Labor kicking and screaming “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” to introduce the much more effective Carbon Price. Labor then proceeded to hand Abbott power by spending three years engaged in a civil war.

    I like Penny Wong, I honestly do, but she’s in the wrong party. Lets remember that until very recently Labor didn’t even support marriage equality. I honestly don’t know how she put up with that for so long. Now she’s putting up with half baked climate change policies instead. The Labor Left is so powerless against the dominant Right faction.

  26. By the way, every election is different. People pull all sorts of bullshit polling trends out of past campaigns, but there is actually very little data to draw past/present comparisons and what there is is totally compromised by huge variables such as the character of the competing parties, the state of the economy, the mood of the population, etc.

  27. The Labor Left is so powerless against the dominant Right faction.
    ___________________
    Alot of this is to do with the SDA. They should never have been brought back into the ALP. They have been a Catholic conservative racket that has mysteriously built a power patronage model on the back of hundreds of thousands of supermarket workers, which they defrauded for decades. Their story will long echo through Australian political history as one of our strangest artifacts.

  28. TPOF

    The only thing I can see from the polling which has been constant. This might be number 52 loss for the LNP on about same 2pp.

    Labor only needs a net gain of one seat. By that polling they will do better.

    Edit: And the NSW election had little impact.

  29. I believe Penny Wong recognises 2 things many Greens do not:
    1) you need to be in power to have power
    2) incremental gains through pragmatism makes for more lasting change

  30. Christ – the list posters who I immediately just scroll past is growing by the day, including some I didn’t expect to at first inspection.

  31. Firefox

    I like Penny Wong, I honestly do, but she’s in the wrong party.
    _______________________________

    Depends on what she wants to achieve in politics. She definitely belongs in the Greens if she wants to achieve 100% of fuck-all. Otherwise, she is far more likely to achieve far more if she stays where she is. I suspect that she has calculated all this very carefully and come to the same conclusion.

    As for marriage equality, gay people, like straight people, are more than their sexuality and resist being defined by it. LGBTQI people are across the whole spectrum and their whole fight is to not be typecast as belonging in some political party or the other because that party is more positive about their sexuality when the broader values of the party is what attracts them.

  32. PV changes from 2016 election to this Newspoll:

    Coalition: -3.1
    Labor: +4.3
    Greens: -1.2
    One Nation: +2.7
    Others: -2.7

    Interestingly, this breaks up neatly into two shifts:
    1) The rise in Labor’s vote equals the combined fall in the Coalition + Greens vote. A rejection of the far right (Coalition) and far left (Greens), leading to a return to the “sensible centre” (Labor)?
    2) The rise in ON (relative to 2016) equals the fall in Others. ON acting purely as a “sponge” for the “pox on all their houses” cynics vote?

  33. It is a definitely close contest. 52-48 isn’t enough. There’s 5 weeks of disinformation and smear, pushed by most of the mainstream media, to come, while Labor’s message will be mostly ignored or misrepresented. A narrow win or, God help us, a hung Parliament, won’t be enough, the noise machine will just keeps going. The Coalition needs to be crushed if we are to have more than just a pause of a couple of years in the ongoing wrecking of the country to serve Big Money.

  34. “Fifefox patronising Penny Wong – says it all really………”

    Patronising the backwards Labor Right actually. You must have missed the part where I said I liked Wong. Maybe you thought I was being sarcastic? I genuinely meant that.

  35. mundo says:
    Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 10:53 pm
    Hey John, the socialists gave you your franking credits you great nong….

    ________________________________

    Not the ones he received when he pays no tax. That was a Howard/Costello special.

  36. Jen

    Like the Greens in the ACT.

    Given history the Greens are doing better than the Australian Democrats.

    It may not be to the liking to Labor to have a competing party. However that does not make the Greens evil incarnate. It would be good to have some recognition of this.

Comments Page 2 of 23
1 2 3 23

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *