The Australian reports the latest Newspoll records both parties down on the primary vote, the Coalition by one to 38% and Labor by two to 37%, making room for the debut appearance of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party on 5%. The Greens and One Nation are both unchanged, at 9% and 4% respectively. The two-party preferred headline moves a point in favour of the Coalition, from 52-48 to 51-49 – a lot more on that shortly.
Movements on personal ratings are slightly to Bill Shorten’s favour – he is up two on approval to 39% and steady on disapproval at 51%, and his 45-37 deficit on preferred prime minister is an improvement on his 46-35 in the last poll. Scott Morrison is steady on approval at 45% and up two on disapproval to 46%. Respondents were also asked which leader they most trusted to keep their campaign promises, with Morrison very slightly favoured over Shorten by 41% to 38%. The poll was conducted from Friday to Sunday, with Thursday dropped from the usual field work period because of the public holiday, from a larger than usual sample of 2136, the norm being around 1700.
Beyond that, there is a good deal to unpack. This is the first time a result for the United Australia Party has been published, but the tables in The Australian today reveal the party was on 3% in the poll a fortnight ago, and 2% in the poll the week before that. As Peter Brent discusses in Inside Story, pollsters have an important decision to make in deciding whether to include a minor party in the primary question, or saving it for those who choose “other” out of an initial list – a decision that will have a bearing on their result. I assume the publication of the UAP result in the latest poll marks its elevation from the second tier to the first, but the publication of the earlier results may suggest otherwise.
Then there’s the two-party preferred, which raised eyebrows as the primary votes are of a kind that would normally be associated with 52-48. The answer, it turns out, is that a preference split of 60-40 in favour of the Coalition is being applied to the UAP vote. The rationale is explained in an accompanying piece by David Briggs, managing director of YouGov Galaxy, which conducts Newspoll. First, Briggs confirms this is also what it has been doing with One Nation preferences since the start of last year, earlier statements having been less exact. Of the decision to extend this to Palmer:
With the UAP there is no historical trend data we can refer to in order to estimate the likely preference flow to the major parties. We do know, however, that in the 2013 election 53.67 per cent of the Palmer United Party vote was directed to Coalition candidates. That was without a preference deal, but in the forthcoming federal election the Liberal Party will swap preferences with the UAP and this can only result in an even higher proportion of UAP votes being directed to the Coalition.
In point of fact though, the Palmer United Party’s approach to preferences in 2013 was to put Labor last in every seat (as best as I can tell — its how-to-vote cards are preserved here). I don’t believe this arose from a deal as such, and it didn’t seem to attract any publicity at that time. However, the fact remains that every Palmer United voter who followed the card ended up in the Coalition’s two-party preferred tally, which is no different from the situation at the election to come.
Briggs also points to the party breakdowns from the aforementioned question on leader most trusted to deliver on campaign promises, which found Morrison to be favoured 53-13 among UAP voters – a significant lead, even accounting for the fact that there would only have been around 100 UAP voters out of the poll sample.
The Newspoll preference split may well be vindicated in time, but for now it’s merely a hypothesis. The dynamics of Palmer’s preferences could actually prove rather complex, if the Western Australian election of 2017 is any guide. The Liberals cut a deal with One Nation in that campaign, and they indeed got a bigger cut of their preferences, from the roughly 50-50 split of the 2016 election (out of the 15 lower house seats the party contested) to 60.6%.
However, this may have had less to do with how-to-vote cards than the backlash One Nation suffered as a result of the deal, which the polls of the time indicated had cost them as much as a third of their existing support – presumably among the kind of voter most likely to preference Labor. Since the Liberals were tainted by the deal as well, nobody doubts that it backfired on them, despite its “success” in delivering a higher share of preferences from a diminished One Nation.
As Labor prepares a rhetorical onslaught against Scott Morrison over the Clive Palmer deal, we may well be about to see a similar dynamic play out federally. However, this too is merely a hypothesis. The bottom line is that extrapolating two-party preferred from primary votes right now unavoidably involves an uncomfortable amount of guess work. For better or worse though, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate will continue to be guided by previous election results in allocating preferences – and, notably, the addition of the Newspoll numbers has made almost no difference to it.
The table below compares the results from Newspoll model with two alternative approaches that might have been taken. The results are imprecise in that they rely on the rounded primary votes published by Newspoll, but it’s nonetheless worth noting that the Newspoll method gives Labor 51.4%, suggesting the headline figure was likely rounded in their favour. The next two columns along, under “Past election: A”, apply UAP preferences using Palmer United’s 53.7-46.3 split from 2013, and One Nation’s using the almost 50-50 split from 2016. The last two columns, “Past election: B”, are how it would go if the UAP was treated as just another component of “others”, and thus given the almost 50-50 split such votes followed in 2016.
| Newspoll method | Past election: A | Past election: B | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L-NP | ALP | L-NP | ALP | L-NP | ALP | |
| Primary | 38 | 37 | 38 | 37 | 38 | 37 |
| Greens | 1.6 | 7.4 | 1.6 | 7.4 | 1.6 | 7.4 |
| UAP | 3.0 | 2.0 | 2.7 | 2.3 | 2.5 | 2.5 |
| One Nation | 2.4 | 1.6 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Others | 3.6 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 3.4 |
| TOTAL | 48.6 | 51.4 | 47.9 | 52.1 | 47.7 | 52.3 |
The only reason Getup is effective is all the volunteers, nothing about astroturfing at all.
The conservatives don’t have anything like it because they don’t have any decent message to believe in or get behind.
Poor Alex – hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
lefty e @ #722 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:36 pm
I also found out today that Clive Palmer is getting his candidates to get their friends to hand out UAP HTVs. For no pay!
Spotted in Banks helping out Chris Gambian..
B-phalus
Are you Compact Crank redux?
Compact Crank – GetUp gets a much greater percentage of its funding from individual donations from private citizens.
And for an “ALP front”, the issues that it chooses to promote/highlight are remarkably not in line with ALP policy – if it were an astroturf operation by the ALP it would be a particularly incompetent one.
But it’s not an astroturfing operation – it’s a collaboration of a bunch of ordinary people who want to advocate for more leftish political positions. I know that’s a terrifying proposition for the LNP/Murdoch power establishment, but it is actually a grassroots organisation.
sprocket_ @ #747 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 1:50 pm
I am hoping that the young Mr Turnbull is about to name names…
Bucephalus @ #741 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:49 pm
Proof or it didn’t happen.
a r @ #758 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 2:00 pm
If only GetUp! disclosed donations on their website we could verify such claims.
Bucephalus @ #741 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:49 pm
Bollocks.
I joined GetUp! a long, long time ago simply because the values they espoused matched mine. It had nothing to do with any party they may or may not be affiliated with, nor any Union. They also get $10/month from me. Likewise hundreds of thousands of others. Especially after the Coalition tried to get them banned in this term of parliament. We all rallied to their cause.
I mean, I thought conservatives such as yourself were all for Free Speech? Except when it disagrees with your own jaundiced world view, or threatens your primacy, eh? 🙂
sprocket_ @ #750 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:57 pm
Yep. 😀
“leaving me no room to decline without being rude.”
It’s not rude to politely say “no thanks” when someone tries to hand you a how-to-vote card. Even though I strongly oppose them in pretty much every way, I always just smile and say no thanks when Nats volunteers try and hand me theirs.
grimace @ #757 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:58 pm
The candidate is staying stum as is Turnbull. May be a Police inquiry underway.
Apropos of nothing much. But it’s interesting that Corman is discussed right after Turnbull is quoted confirming he sent an email to a Lib MP’s office.
Bucephalus @ #747 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:54 pm
He’s more of a man than you will EVER be! He has principles that he sticks by. Unlike you, who is a Marxist.
‘If you don’t like my principles, I have others.’
Groucho Marx
Oops! Liberal candidate from hell, running for Chisholm likes Chinese only…
Liberal candidate Gladys Liu has denied she favoured Chinese migrants in comments from 2016 that suggested “not as good migrants” from other countries were less hard-working, had too many children and lived off welfare after coming to Australia.
Liu, who is standing in the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, made the previously unpublished 2016 comments in answer to a question in a Guardian Australia interview about attitudes among Chinese-Australians towards crime in Melbourne and other migrant communities.
“They blame those migrants who are not as hard-working as the Chinese, not as disciplined in terms of respect for others,” Liu said. “They do distinguish themselves from those not as good migrants, if you know what I mean. Because there are different kinds of migrants. Some are very hard-working, do everything well for the family, for the country. Whereas others they just come in, and they reproduce, and have many children, and they take welfare from the government.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/29/liberal-candidate-gladys-liu-criticised-work-ethic-of-non-chinese-migrants
Quite a few in here have mentioned preference deals and HTVs.
It perplexes me a little that this is of any real concern to major parties.
In the case of Clive Palmer’s awful rehash of the UAP, it is clearly a protest party. Anyone who votes for the guy is very unlikely to be ‘told’ how to vote any more than they did for PUP. So having people on the ground is not going to be important for HTVs… more for visibility and getting the party in the heads of ‘box deciders’.
By contrast, the major parties historically have a better take up with HTVs as the rusted on Sheeple vote the way the party wants. It made excellent strategic sense that the ALP would go after Clive’s preferences, since they could conceivably draw from soft Coalition bleed through preferences. In the event that they weren’t successful, it was good strategy for Bill to criticise Clive for not paying his workers (and fair enough, btw) to seek to diminish any effect the Coalition may now secure.
I suspect that Bill might have shut up about the workers if he had managed to snaffle that deal. 😉
Greensborough Growler @ #758 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 4:04 pm
And who is boss dog in the WA Liberal Party, plus has time on their hands because they aren’t fighting for a seat in the Lower House?
Surely the Belgian Waffle wouldn’t be involved in a fake poll stunt? Find this far fetched.
Bucephalus @ #741 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 3:49 pm
———————————-
Getup regularly conduct protests against my local state member who is a minister in the Qld Labor government. Strange behavior for an ALP front. Stop making it up and do a bit of research.
C@tmomma @ #767 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 4:06 pm
Exactly!
Cormann has a lot to lose if the Libs were to lose Curtin methinks.
sprocket_ @ #768 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 2:08 pm
I’ve seen extreme stress make people do strange and stupid things many, many times.
sprocket_ @ #768 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 4:08 pm
Not confirmed. But, join the dots, comrade.
a r @ 4.00pm
$1.2 million from the CFMEU: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-13/getup-accepting-union-donation-hypocritical/2335234
Then of course there is the $100,000 from Shorten’s AWU.
Plenty more where that came from.
“The left-leaning activist group has added to its board Daniel Stone, Labor’s former digital director who worked on last year’s federal election campaign, and Stephen Monk, an IT executive with social-media links to many prominent ALP identities.
GetUp!’s chairman is Phil Ireland, an active Labor Party member and NSW convenor of the party’s environmental action network.
Others with Labor links to GetUp! include: Bill Shorten, a member of the original board in 2006 and donor of at least $100,000 in union cash as seed funding; Sam McLean, formerly GetUp!’s national director and now an adviser to Mr Shorten; and Lachlan Harris, a GetUp! staff member who later became Kevin Rudd’s media adviser.” – from the Australian – would you like the link?
An astroturfing operation is one that just pops up, usually literally overnight, with a poncey, but neutral sounding name like ” Climate Science Institute” or ” Taxpayers’ Forum” (they’re quite easy to manufacture), an instant web site, untraceable management, uncertain membership and shadowy funding, that represents itself as a grassroots organization.
The “grassroots” and “overnight” aspects are similar to the real Astroturf, which is instant fake grass that looks real, until you have a closer look.
In GetUp’s case, whatever it is not, it IS a genuine grassroots organization of some long standing, not an astroturf operation.
Just voted in SA- could not believe how many of the 18 Senate Groups were right wing sh*ts…I could only get to 4 good guys, before having to hold my nose and rank the last 14 groups….
Is there a debate on tonight? If so where and when?
C@tmomma,
Calling me a Marxist actually made me laugh and I thank you for that.
…from the Australian – would you like the link?
You make-a da funny, right Horsey?
Tony Morris acting for L’holm. I’d like to say I’m surprised.
Sykesie
I recall a study showing support for minor parties is always overstated in campaign polls and drops off when the cold lead pencil is in the hand.
Peter Stanton,
You don’t understand how a deception plan works?
The foaming at GetUp cracks me up. Love it ! 😆
AusPolStats
@AusPolStats
Political parties in the news yesterday:
Liberal – 257 articles
Labor – 191 articles
Other – 108 articles
National – 46 articles
LNP – 36 articles
Greens – 26 articles
#AusPol
Powered by NewsAPI
6:00 AM · Apr 27, 2019 · AusPolStats
C’mon CC, tell us about the deep state and false flag operations, please!
Seriously, sign up for the GetUp mailing list (it’s free!) and you’ll see how actually mundane it is.
Bucephalus @ #774 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 4:15 pm
something to do with tanks ?
Bucephalus
Unions built the Labor Party
They are workers of Australia.
Besides it’s old news that they donating to Labor.
You should worry about tax avoiders giving money to liberals and Clive Palmer not paying workers.
National Party not looking after rural regional Australia
So ScumMo is now replying on preferences from a group of racists who went to USA to beg for gun money, and a “millionaire” who wont pay worker entitlements.
Assuming Clive is not taking questions, somebody should ask ScumMo if any deals were done to get Clive’s preferences? Will the court investigations of Clive’s companies be completed?
Jackol,
Where did I mention deep state?
The anti-Adani stuff against QLD ALP doesn’t take any skin off the ALP because they pick up the prefs from the Greens anyway. Makes good copy, though.
“after Turnbull is quoted confirming he sent an email to a Lib MP’s office“
I think Alex said “close to an MP” even more cryptic, but Alex knows & so does the Daily
There are probably people who have suffered more grievously at the hands of the legal system, but the families of those maimed and who died at Bundaberg Hospital are high up there and Tony Morris QC was a contributor to that with his fucking up of the inquiry.
According to the Kouk’
Stephen Koukoulas
Verified account
@TheKouk
6m6 minutes ago
More
The leaders debate tonight is preceded by Bargain Hunt and Aircrash Investigation – do I sense a trend?
I always find it funny that the Left get up in arms with the LNP preference deals from people that they correctly consider extremists and yet are happy to accept the preferences from the anti-human progress neo-marxist ecofascist extremists of the Greens.
Get Up promotes itself very much as a progressive political movement, rather than aligning to any one party. This is useful for avoiding the scrutiny of the AEC and avoiding being labelled as a political organisation.
It appears that they are perhaps, more correctly, anti-conservative in the sense of being actively against those candidates who are religious, voted No or abstained in the SSM or have shown any indication of being sceptical of AGW.
In that sense, you would expect most of the benefit to flow towards the Left leaning factions of the ALP and perhaps Greens candidates in some electorates, whilst their vitriol may mostly be pissed all over LNP conservatives or those few ALP members that remain in their Christophobic sights.
I have zero respect for this vile group after the last week. All bile and no accountability.
“And for an “ALP front”, the issues that it chooses to promote/highlight are remarkably not in line with ALP policy – if it were an astroturf operation by the ALP it would be a particularly incompetent one.”
This is true. Getup are often far closer to the Greens’ position than they are to Labor’s. Adani is a perfect example of this. Getup, like the Greens, completely oppose Adani. Labor on the other hand either support Adani or sit on the fence trying to have a bob each way, depending on where they are in the country.
“I was looking forward to putting Porter last in Pearce until I saw the basket of deplorables that crawled out of the primordial soup to nominate for Pearce. I couldn’t bring myself to preference the likes of PHON, the Australian Christians, the UAP or the SFF above Porter. I will spend all day Saturday door knocking as penance for not putting Porter last.”
Fear not for your soul grim…….the doGs above will understand. 🙂
Gotta love the Advertiser’s framing of the Sturt poll. Effectively “It’s all over. Shut it down!” etc. If it was a Labor candidate defending a Labor seat and the result was 53-47 (on the back of high third party preferences), they’d call it “knife-edge”
The Advertiser make the Daily Telegraph look like Green Left Weekly.
Unnecessary redundancy is redundant. 🙂
Stephen Koukoulas@TheKouk
The leaders debate tonight is preceded by Bargain Hunt and Aircrash Investigation – do I sense a trend?
” Surely the Belgian Waffle wouldn’t be involved in a fake poll stunt? Find this far fetched.
I’ve seen extreme stress make people do strange and stupid things many, many times.”
My inner bitch would put money on it being a Cash staffer. 🙂
At the same time as the Debate kicks off tonight I will be settling in to listen to a piano recital, so I look forward to reading PBers’ blow by blow accounts of the event.
Been busy most of the day so am behind the times a bit, but I did catch Dan Tehan’s interview with Fran this morning. Good Grief!