Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

The debut reading for Clive Palmer’s party in a national Newspoll result is 5%. Two-party preferred status: it’s complicated.

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

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.

1,496 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor”

Comments Page 21 of 30
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  2. Rational Leftist says:
    Monday, April 29, 2019 at 6:38 pm

    Labor leader Bill Shorten is vowing to give Australian women a better chance at equal opportunity and fair pay in an election policy that also commits to appointing a woman as the next governor-general.

    And Julia Gillard, being the only woman in existence, is the inevitable choice… if she… earns it.
    __________________________
    He might feel he owes her something for pulling her down. I haven’t said that it would be a bad choice, just that it might be a reason she’s willing to make nice.

  5. OK, doing my homework for the Victorian Senate — so far I’m looking at (besides Labor ) Independents for Climate Action, and the Secular Party and perhaps the Pirate Party.

    Anyone I’ve left out that I shouldn’t have (I’m talking minors here!) or anything I should know about the above before casting my vote?

  6. Fulvio Sammut @ #952 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 6:38 pm

    So what exactly is the dirty tactic in Curtin?

    Is it the Liberal light who said a Reachtel poll found that the Liberals had dropped 20%, which was widely circulated?

    Or the subsequent report, also widely circulated, that there had been no Reachtel poll?

    Or something else?

    It’s the false association with Alex Turnbull and the defamation of Reachtel who did not run any such Poll.

  10. Looks like GWN is broadcasting the Victorian Ch7. Weather is focused on Victoria to the exclusion of other parts of the country.

  12. zoomster @ #1003 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 6:50 pm

    OK, doing my homework for the Victorian Senate — so far I’m looking at (besides Labor ) Independents for Climate Action, and the Secular Party and perhaps the Pirate Party.

    Anyone I’ve left out that I shouldn’t have (I’m talking minors here!) or anything I should know about the above before casting my vote?

    Be sensible and vote HEMP. One day people will see medical sense.

  22. Roger Miller

    The West Australian wasn’t “fooled” by it – they reported what the Candidate told them. It was Stewart who got suckered.

  27. nath says:
    Monday, April 29, 2019 at 5:10 pm
    Rumour is that Gillard is playing nice with Shorten despite knifing because She wants to be GG. Rudd doing the same because he wants support to run the U.N. Something for everyone. Feeney to be U.S ambassador for sure. Look at his twitter page. It’s all about U.S and global issues.

    Don’t forget Landeryou. He will be part of the inner sanctum for sure.
    Andrew Landeryou and Kimberley Kitching, the new power couple of Australian politics.

  32. frednk @ #987 Monday, April 29th, 2019 – 6:39 pm

    Rowe summed it us.
    Fake polls.
    Polls that are fake.
    Trolls out if force.
    Holding this cricket bat is getting tiresome; the team has gone; let us swing it and put captain chump out of his misery.

    Can’t help thinking that if the likes of Bucephalus, Lincoln, Mundo, Nath and Rex etc were out door knocking/campaigning on the street for their LNP friends, the ALP might be struggling. There again, if their abilities are as poor as they appear here, perhaps their door knocking/campaigning in the real world might help the ALP.

  37. Hm…”we’re doing great and delivering jobs for young people” on the one hand, and “youth suicide is one of our biggest problems” on the other. Seems contradictory to me.

  40. Bucephalus, he was thirty years ago. Appointed by a very popular government of the time. He was the last. I remember meeting him in primary school when he was GG

  41. Chloe is there too.

    She’s probably there because she wants Bill to appoint her as High Commissioner to London or something… :p

  42. ‘LOL Scotty reckons the coalition have economic management credentials.’

    Don’t laugh, so does the average punter, because people keep saying it….and Labor never offers a counter argument….

  45. Peter FitzSimons
    @Peter_Fitz
    ·
    59m
    Stand by, sports fans. This might be about to get interesting. #auspol
    #watergate
    Quote Tweet

    Lisa Wilkinson
    @Lisa_Wilkinson
    · 1h
    Tonight on @theprojecttv Hamish confronts Barnaby Joyce with previously unreported links he had within the #watergate saga. #auspol
    Bridget O’Flynn Retweeted

    Lisa Wilkinson
    @Lisa_Wilkinson
    ·
    1h
    Tonight on
    @theprojecttv
    Hamish confronts Barnaby Joyce with previously unreported links he had within the #watergate saga. #auspol

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