Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

Improvement for Bill Shorten on preferred prime minister, but otherwise a steady result from Newspoll – which also offers seat polls supporting talk of tight races in Herbert, Corangamite, Bass and Lindsay.

Courtesy of The Australian, what I presume will be the second last Newspoll for the campaign records Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 51-49, with both major parties up a point on the primary vote, the Coalition to 39% and Labor to 37%. The Greens are steady on 9%, One Nation down one to 4%, and the United Australia Party steady on 4%.

Talk of a good week for Bill Shorten last week may not have made much different on voting intention, but his personal ratings are significantly improved, with a four point lift on approval to 39% and a four point drop on disapproval to 49%. He now trails Scott Morrison as preferred prime minister by 45-38, down from 46-35. Morrison’s own ratings are little changed, with approval steady on 44% and disapproval down one to 44%. The poll was slightly unusual in its field work period in being conducted from Thursday to Saturday, where usually it continues to Sunday, and its 1644 sample is consistent with Newspoll’s normal form, but not with its earlier campaign polls, which ran to around 2000.

Also from Newspoll today, the following seat polls:

Herbert (Labor 0.0%) The LNP leads 52-48, a swing in their favour of 2.0%. Primary votes are LNP 35% (up four on an earlier poll on April 20, and compared with 35.5% at the 2016 election), Labor 30% (up one, 30.5% in 2016), Greens 7% (up two, 6.3% in 2016), Katter’s Australian Party 13% (up three, 6.9% in 2016), One Nation 7% (down two, 13.5% in 2016), and the United Australia Party 14% (down seven, interestingly enough). Sample: 550.

Lindsay (Labor 1.1%) Liberals lead 52-48, a swing in their favour of 3.1%. Primary votes are Liberal 44% (up three on an earlier poll on April 20, and compared with 39.3% at the 2016 election), Labor 39% (up one, 41.1% in 2016), Greens 4% (steady, 3.6% in 2016), United Australia Party 6% (down one). Sample: 577.

Corangamite (notional Labor 0.0%): Labor leads 51-48, a swing in its favour of 1.0%. Primary votes are Liberal 42% (43.7% in 2016), Labor 37% (34.1%), Greens 10% (12.1%) and United Australia Party 4%. Sample: 573.

Bass (Labor 5.4%): Labor leads 52-48, a swing to the Liberals of 3.4%. Primary votes are Liberal 40% (39.2% in 2016), Labor 39% (39.7%), Greens 10% (11.1%), United Australia Party 4% and Nationals 2%. Sample: 503.

There should also be a YouGov Galaxy seat poll from Boothby coming through around noon, courtesy of The Advertiser, so stay tuned for that. And as usual there is below this one Seat du jour, today dealing with the Brisbane seat of Petrie.

I also had two paywalled pieces for Crikey last week. From Friday:

As psephological blogger Mark the Ballot points out, the chances of at least a mild outlier failing to emerge reduces to just about zero once you reach the sixth or seventh poll — never mind the ten we actually have seen during the campaign so far, plus a couple of others that preceded it if you want to stretch the point even further. One possibility is that we are witnessing the natural tendency in us all to seek safety in numbers, which in the polling game is known as herding.

From Wednesday:

In the United States, debates about early voting occur against a broader backdrop of partisan warfare over voter suppression. Democrats favour longer periods to facilitate ease of voting and Republicans oppose them, reflecting the fact that conservative voters are on balance wealthier and have greater flexibility with their time. In Australia though, Crikey’s own Bernard Keane was almost a lone wolf last week in arguing against the notion that democracy loses something if voters are not appraised of the full gamut of parties’ campaign pitches before making their choice.

UPDATE: The Advertiser has just unloaded its promised YouGov Galaxy poll from Boothby, which shows Liberal incumbent Nicolle Flint with a lead of 53-47, essentially unchanged on her current margin of 2.7%. With the disappearance of the Nick Xenophon Team, both major parties are well up on the primary vote – Liberal from 41.7% (on YouGov Galaxy’s post-redistribution reckoning) to 47%, Labor from 26.9% to 37% – with the Greens on 9% (8.2% at the previous election) and the United Australia Party on 3%. The poll was conducted on Thursday from a sample of 520.

The poll also finds Scott Morrison leading Bill Shorten 49-36 as preferred prime minister; 29% saying replacing Malcolm Turnbull with Scott Morrison had made them more likely to vote Liberal, 34% less likely and 33% no difference; and 37% saying they were less likely to vote Labor because of franking credits and capital gains tax, compared with 24% for more likely and 32% for no difference.

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.

1,411 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. beguiledagain,

    I do not know Nath from a bar of soap, but if he has an OAM, then I would give him quite a bit of credit for that.

    I know three OAM holders very well (I guess that just makes your point about them being over awarded), and in each case they were well and truely deserved.

    Nath (hello to you 🙂 ) has a special talent of getting under people’s skins, and I think is not as serious as he sound with some of his emphatic points.

    I grew up in a family of teachers, academics and barristers, and we just loved heated discussions, rhetoric and the general craic (chewing the fat). However, I have had to learn, after offending a surprising number of people, that not everyone finds such strident discussions fun.

    I now pull my punches, as there is not so much of my family left, unless I am with my older two offspring, and we are sharing cheese and red wine. I think they imbibed the family atmosphere, and love irony and do not take such discussions seriously.

    But these days, there are jobs, children, mortgages, and a new generation, their friends, do not really seem to get irony. So, occasionally when something political happens, I get the phone call when they are in the car “What do you think about this?” “Can you believe it?”

  2. And now Nath, the question Ihave been burning to ask you after my sojourn in Fontainbleau (A Proudly Napoleonic Imperial city – I do not think you would like it):

    What do you think of Oliver Cromwell?

  3. Douglas and Milko @ #1396 Tuesday, May 14th, 2019 – 3:21 am

    Nasty black – ops by someone in Cowan:

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-14/labor-condemns-racist-flyer-targeting-anne-aly/11109564

    Unfortunately very similar to what happened to Cameron Murphy in the NSWstate seat of East Hills in 2015. A Liberal staffer was eventually charged, but the smear campaign did a lot of harm.

    Same thing happened to Ed Husic the first time he ran for his seat, centered on the Hill’s district in Western Sydney. The opponent was a Pentecostal (Hillsong I am pretty sure) member. Campaign saying that he was a Muslim and would introduce god only knows what ……

    Own goal IMHO

  4. D&M to clarify, I wasn’t saying nath had an OAM, but Steven Bradbury. My personal opinion is that far too many honours are given out, often for things where the person was just doing what they were doing as a job for large sums of money. I’m not judging them for that but that should surely be enough recognition.

  5. Bloody Essential squibbing it today. Waiting for essential is what has been keeping me going through the really boring hackwork I have been doing today.

    Although, I will admit that I have got a couple of bottles of hefferweizen from the local kiosk to help me finish said hack work off. I should be drinking Kölsh around these parts I guess, but I do love that (unfortunately calorie rich) weitzen.

  6. Itep,

    D&M to clarify, I wasn’t saying nath had an OAM, but Steven Bradbury. My personal opinion is that far too many honours are given out, often for things where the person was just doing what they were doing as a job for large sums of money. I’m not judging them for that but that should surely be enough recognition.

    Thanks! Thought you must all know which luminary the poster known as Nath actually was.

    Also, I do agree that many OAMs are given out for people who are paid a large amount of money todo their job, and the OAM is just given for doing the job.

    Of course, the people I know are all community nominated, but even to get a community nomination means that you know people who know how to do a nomination, and that even OAMs exist.

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