Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

The second federal poll since the election finds the Coalition back where it started after an apparent post-election bounce in the previous poll three weeks ago.

Newspoll’s first result in three weeks, and second since the election, turns up a surprise in recording a shrinking in the Coalition’s lead from 53-47 to 51-49 – which, if meaningful, would mean an end to the honeymoon period and a return to where things stood at election time. On the primary vote, the Coalition is on 42%, down two points on the last poll and up 0.6% on the election result; Labor is on 34%, up one point and 0.7%; the Greens are on 11%, steady and up 0.6%; and One Nation are on 4%, up one point and 0.9%.

Leadership ratings are likewise consistent with the fading of a post-election sugar hit, with Scott Morrison down three on approval to 48% and up six on disapproval to 42%. Anthony Albanese’s ratings also seem to be trending from mediocre to respectable, with his approval up two to 41% and disapproval down to 34%, leaving him shading Morrison by a point on net approval. However, this hasn’t translated to preferred prime minister for some reason, on which Morrison holds a healthy lead of 48-30, out from 48-31 last time.

The poll was conducted by online and automated phone surveying from a sample of 1623, from Thursday to Sunday. Full report from The Australian here. As before, we remain in the dark as to how the pollster’s methods have been adjusted since the election failure, if at all. However, the size of the movements, and the lack of anything obvious to explain them, suggests the poll has not been subjected to the smoothing method that Newspoll must have been using before the election to give it its uncanny and, as it turned out, misleading consistency.

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.

1,157 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  1. Itza,
    I won’t tell you about the perfectly baked and delicious Ricotta Lemon Cake, with Lemon Curd and whipped cream, I made today then. 😀

  2. When will you people acknowledge Bill Shortens complete inability to sell a manifesto.

    His and Labors failure is down to lack of political talent.

  3. Tristo and Nicholas have fairly guzzled the kool-aid this morning.

    We already have one party – already widely known and recognised in the community – that have been doing pretty much exactly what the dynamic duo prescribe for years, and for what?

    10% of the vote.

    Taking a wild stab in the dark I’m guessing that such a move by Labor would simply pit them against the Greens for that 10% market share. Really ‘going out on a limb’ I reckon that such a move would do zero, zip, zilch in attracting any of the 52.5% of voters that didn’t vote for Labor – either as a primary vote – or as a preferential vote. I actually reckon that a lurch hard left would shave another 10% off labor’s primary vote and most of that wouldn’t come back to labor (or the Greens) as a preference vote.

    Furthermore, the dynamic duo’s prescriptions are completely unrelatable to that small cross section of folk that actually determine elections in this country: the fickle, feckless and generally thick punter in voter land who gives zero fucks for politics and who make their minds up from a very base of actual information.

    I like that Tristo and Nicholas are interested in politics. Personally, if I was the only voter – or at least representative of the voters that matter, I reckon I’d sign on to at least half of what

    I am not sure that actually care much for actual political outcomes though, other than tooting their own horns about how cleaver and virtuous they both are. Let’s face it, if the goods they are pedalling as shit hot, then the greens would have replaced labor as the dominant non tory political force 20 years ago and – not only that, would have secured a better than 50% 2PP vote as well.

    What is like to see is something – anything – from our Green friends and fellow travellers that focuses on how to get that demographic back and voting for the progressive side of politics. A non LNP vote for either for labor or greens would be fine by me.

  4. The ALP didn’t necessarily pick the wrong fight for their tax reform policies, but they certainly picked the wrong election campaign to push them.

  5. Rex
    Political partisans will hardly if ever find fault with people connected to their party, but will remember every misdemeanor from the other side.

  6. We already have one party – already widely known and recognised in the community – that have been doing pretty much exactly what the dynamic duo prescribe for years,

    Not true. The Greens have not challenged the myths about how government finance operates. So far they have perpetuated the myths such as the claim that the government needs to borrow its own currency, the claim that all new spending needs to be offset by tax increases or spending cuts, the claim that the private sector, not the government, decides interest rates. The Greens parliamentarians are not very interested in macroeconomics. But behind the scenes there are party members such as Marcus Champ who are working to change that. He wrote this piece about the need for a Job Guarantee:

    https://greens.org.au/magazine/time-has-come-jobs-guarantee

  7. Depressing.

    Power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and New South Wales’s Lake Macquarie region have been named on a list of the world’s biggest hotspots for toxic air pollution.

    A new report by Greenpeace, published on Monday, used satellite data published by Nasa to analyse the world’s worst sources of sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution, an irritant gas known to affect human health and one of the main pollutants contributing to deaths from air pollution worldwide.

    The greatest source of SO2 in the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and other industrial facilities.

    Australia ranks 12th on a list of the top-emitting countries for human-caused sulphur dioxide emissions and is singled out in the report for air pollution standards that allow power stations to emit sulphur dioxide at higher rates than in China and the EU.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/19/australian-power-stations-among-worlds-worst-for-toxic-air-pollution?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet

  8. Victorian Building Authority operations executive director Mark Rossiter said the surveyor had repeatedly approved the use of the dangerous materials and had a history of disciplinary action.

    “The VBA’s action will ensure this building surveyor cannot continue to sign off on non-compliant building work and jeopardise the safety of Victorians,” he said.

    The authority did not disclose where the developments were located.

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/surveyor-suspended-for-approving-flammable-cladding-on-five-towers-20190819-p52ikq.html

  9. Could I just say that Greenpeace releasing another alarum is not going to change one person’s mind, whose mind isn’t already on their side in support of them. What they have to figure out is how to make people care who presently don’t.

  10. In an astonishing display of projection, Scott Morrison has blamed the public service for the “trust deficit” in politics.

    He then goes on with the most contradictory set of instructions on how they will change in order to win back the respect of “the forgotten middle class”.

    Morrison wants a “diversity of viewpoints” whilst warning public servants that they must be “an enabler of government policy, not an obstacle”.

    Whilst claiming to respect the public service’s professionalism, he demands that they “get on and deliver” government policy and that Ministers set the agenda rather than becoming “captive of their department” – giving birth to a new three-word slogan “respect and expect”.

    Replete with Morrinsonisms about “quiet Australians”, moving outside the “Canberra bubble”, and an obscure analogy about football and farm animals (?), it is hard to decipher what he is actually trying to say in this waffling diatribe.

    It sounded a lot like “shut up and do as you are told”.


    This was Morrison spin all over – it’s not our fault there is a lack of trust, it’s theirs, and I’m the man to whip them into line.

    https://theaimn.com/stale-conventional-wisdoms-and-orthodoxies/

  11. “When will you people acknowledge Bill Shortens complete inability to sell a manifesto.
    His and Labors failure is down to lack of political talent.”

    No, Rex. It wasn’t the salesmanship. It was the manifesto. I liked it, but too many voters thought it was too-much-too-soon. In these uncertain times, Australian voters are skittish.

    You’ll have to accept that most Australians do not see the world the same way you do. This is not a moral judgement, it’s a fact.

  12. C@t

    I agree. Those who don’t believe ‘Greenies’ simply drop these analyses into a box and shut the lid. Perhaps if the environment minister woke up and put such facts into a report … oh, sorry, just for a moment I forgot we don’t have one.

  13. mikehilliard
    ‘The ALP didn’t necessarily pick the wrong fight for their tax reform policies, but they certainly picked the wrong election campaign to push them.”

    Yep, agreed. Right now, there’s no appetite for revolution.

  14. How good is Alex Hawke’s self delusion!

    Alex Hawke MP @AlexHawkeMP
    · 23h
    Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s strong leadership rejecting those things that Australia simply could not agree to at the Pacific Islands Forum was both understood and respected by Pacific Leaders.

  15. Now Dave Sharma on ABC defending MickMack’s theory of Pacific island survival. What he means is…
    Why is it necessary for the DPM’s comments to be ‘translated’ by an ex diplomat?

  16. Winemakers from the Goon region of South Australia are today celebrating after international trademark laws were changed to allow only cask wine from the region to be labelled as “Goon”.

    “If you want to release a “Goon” style cask wine from grapes not grown in the Goon Valley it must now be labelled as “sickly tasting cheap piss easily carted from party to party by swaying teenagers”,” said Charles Chunder, president of the Goon Winegrowers Board. “We’ve spent many years building up the reputation of our product and we want kids who are pooling their pocket money to buy a 4 litre cask to feel confident they are getting an adult to buy them the real thing.”

    “As long as it gets me shitfaced I don’t care what they call it,” said renowned goon connoisseur James “Simmo” Simpson. “As long as it tastes roughly the same going back out as it does going in I’ll still drink it.”

    Wines with the Goon label are now likely to attract a premium price of about 50 cents extra for a 4 litre cask, provided they contain the minimum requirement of 14% methylated spirits.

  17. So Nicholas, are you actually saying that folk that take home a $100K pa+ or aspire to, and generally wear hi-vis to work – and have to date only shown an interest in public affairs if it involves a discussion of whether Sophie Monk bleached her quim or went the full Brazilian for her TV comeback on the Bachelorette or something as equally inane – are in truth really really really aching to be sold on MMT or a Green New Deal or a high taxing gubberment funded Jobs Guarantee?

  18. Kakuru says:
    Monday, August 19, 2019 at 4:44 pm

    mikehilliard
    ‘The ALP didn’t necessarily pick the wrong fight for their tax reform policies, but they certainly picked the wrong election campaign to push them.”

    Yep, agreed. Right now, there’s no appetite for revolution.
    ——————————
    But this is why it was the wrong fight, the polices may have been sound but were not aligned with how the electorate is currently thinking but I think the ALP’s negative gearing policy had largely been accepted and wouldn’t have hurt as much as some other policies did.

  19. Kakuru
    says:
    No, Rex. It wasn’t the salesmanship. It was the manifesto.
    ___________________
    There are still many who worship at the feet of the very ordinary Bill Shorten, both on PB and elsewhere. It is ironic because it has been Shorten who has defined and indeed lead the Labor Party to all its recent humiliations and defeats. Shortens’ ambition to be PM destroyed Rudd and then to better position the ALP for his leadership he brought down Gillard and installed Rudd back. He has failed twice as LOTO yet now he leaks against Albo and tried to get another candidate installed. As long as he is around, the destabilising and leaking will continue until he is reinstalled as leader.

  20. Is it possible I ask
    that
    Showers, nay floods of exquisitely produced and distributed

    Is designed to, and will indeed remove green house gasses from the atmosphere of Planet Earth – making the world safe for everlasting, even unto the glorious second coming of (whomsoever is coming (not the postman)) exploitation by well meaning and generous folk of the meritorious persuasion ❓

  21. The prime minister of Tuvalu is considering pulling his country out of Australia’s seasonal worker program, after comments by Australia’s deputy prime minister that Pacific islanders threatened by climate change would survive because “many of their workers come here and pick our fruit”.

    “I thought the Australian labour scheme was determined on mutual respect, that Australia was also benefiting,” Enele Sopoaga told RNZ.

    “We are not crawling below that. If that’s the view of the government, then I would have no hesitation in pulling back the Tuvaluan people as from tomorrow.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/tuvalu-threatens-to-exit-australias-seasonal-worker-program-after-deputy-pms-comments?CMP=share_btn_tw

  22. Tax reform proposals by the ALP will always be attacked and misrepresented by the Coalion, their media allies and any well-funded vested interests that are affected. The ALP should do what the Coalition does and simply say that they will reduce “waste and mismanagement” before the election and carry out reforms once in office.

  23. Kakuru
    says:
    Monday, August 19, 2019 at 5:23 pm
    nath – no matter how much you hope and pray, Shorten is not returning as ALP leader.
    ______________________________________
    Shorten could have let Ed Husic continue in his role as Shadow for Government Services, but he wanted the job of an up and comer rather than be out of Shadow Cabinet.

  24. Correct, Steve777. The Coalition never tell the electorate exactly what they are going to do if they win the election, before the election. Then, if they win the election they simply claim a mandate to do whatever the hell they hid from the electorate before the election.

  25. zoomster
    says:
    Monday, August 19, 2019 at 5:41 pm
    Ah, nath – the obsession continues.
    Why bring up Shorten? No one else did.
    _______________
    Because Shorten is leaking against Albo. No doubt you are pining for his return, seeing your much deeper and personal hatred for the LOTO.

  26. C@t

    Just can’t resist the ad hominem scan you.

    The discussion was specifically about your claim that Quiggin should have referred to 70 year olds, not 60 years old. I replied to your criticism of Quiggin’s stats. You were wrong. I showed you that you were wrong. But you are never ever wrong are you.

    The discussion was never about your unicorn, ie the Whitlam tertiary reforms.

    Over and out.

  27. The Deputy PM’s “Let them pick fruit” comment was very disrespectful. He has no excuse for such disdainful and insulting remarks, other than being an idiot. Insulting Tuvalu and its people in this way should be a sacking offence. At the very least he should be made to give a clear and unqualified apology.

  28. Steve777 @ #228 Monday, August 19th, 2019 – 5:35 pm

    Tax reform proposals by the ALP will always be attacked and misrepresented by the Coalion, their media allies and any well-funded vested interests that are affected. The ALP should do what the Coalition does and simply say that they will reduce “waste and mismanagement” before the election and carry out reforms once in office.

    I remember John Hewson’s Fightback campaign which was pilloried by the same groups.

    My recollection was that Hewson was a Lib at the time.

  29. Steve777

    At the very least he should be made to give a clear and unqualified apology.

    Not if the view is in accord with his boss’ view 😉

  30. What proof is there that Shorten is leaking against Albo? Nath has a personal obsession which surely must rise from some real or imagined past history between them. I refuse to read his paranoid rubbish.

  31. lizzie
    says:
    Monday, August 19, 2019 at 5:50 pm
    What proof is there that Shorten is leaking against Albo? Nath has a personal obsession which surely must rise from some real or imagined past history between them. I refuse to read his paranoid rubbish.
    ____________________
    Oh I don’t know. The first high level Shadow Cabinet leak in years. One that paints Shorten as a hero of integrity and Albanese and his supporters, Wong and Burke, as secretly opposed to the Integrity Commission:

    Three of Labor’s most senior figures including Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese argued against a new federal anti-corruption watchdog because some feared it would “make it very hard to govern”…..former leader Bill Shorten faced fierce internal opposition during debates over the policy, including from his tight-knit leadership group members Penny Wong and Tony Burke.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-labor-figures-including-anthony-albanese-argued-against-anti-corruption-watchdog-20190801-p52d15.html

  32. Bruce Haigh @bruce_haigh
    6m
    #auspol Morrison says he wants to reform the Public Service to better meet the needs of the middle class. Nonsense. The IPA, using Morrison as their mouth piece, wants the PS politicised. It wants IPA supporters and sympathisers apppointed to senior PS positions.

  33. Funny that the only time in recent history there wasn’t endemic leaking from the ALP frontbench was when Shorten was the leader. Almost spooky…..

  34. Mexican “ALP had plenty of material for a waste and mismanagement campaign but didn’t go with it.”.

    Agree. Not just waste but having at least the appearence of corruption. Dodgy deals with no due process, lack of transparency, $444 million to mates purportedly to protect the Reef, $122 million for an unnecessary plebiscite to placate the far right faction…

    GG “I remember John Hewson’s Fightback campaign which was pilloried by the same groups.

    My recollection was that Hewson was a Lib at the time.”

    Different times, different situation:
    – a quarter of a century ago
    – the GST affected absolutely everyone
    – Fightback was clumsiliy sold (that’s a similarity to Labor’s 2019 proposals)
    – Labor had been in Government for 10 years.
    – Lobbyists and interest groups weren’t as organised and powerful as they are now
    – Media was more diverse and less biased
    – unions were more powerful

  35. zoomster, how galling it must be for you to have your beloved Shorten replaced by Albo. The man you despise more than any other. The man who was rude to you on that fateful Canberra morn. The man who refused your friend a selfie.

  36. …and there are men I despise an awful lot more than Albo. Trump, Morrison, Dutton, Boris Johnson, Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Lyle Shelton…just for starters.

    I’m just not obsessed with them, the way you are about Shorten.

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