Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

The fourth Newspoll since its wrong call at the election continues to credit the Coalition with only a modest lead on two-party preferred, with the minor parties continue to lift and Scott Morrison recording the opposite of a US visit bounce.

The fourth Newspoll since the federal election credits the Coalition with a 51-49 two-party lead, unchanged on the last poll three weeks ago, with both major parties down on the primary vote – the Coalition by one to 42%, and Labor by two to 33%. The Greens and One Nation are both up a point, the former to 13% – their best result from Newspoll since 2015 – and the latter to 6%.

Scott Morrison’s personal ratings have deteriorated, either despite or because of his activities in the United States last week, his approval down two to 47% and disapproval up four to 43%. Anthony Albanese has bounced back four on approval to 39% after a six-point drop last time, but the report in The Australian does not relate his disapproval rating (UPDATE: Steady at 40%). Morrison’s preferred prime minister reading goes from 48-28 to 50-31, as respondents apparently becoming more inclined to pick a side.

The poll was presumably conducted as usual from Thursday to Sunday – no sample size is provided, but the norm is around 1600. More to follow.

UPDATE: The sample was 1658, of which 900 came from online surveys and 758 from automated phone polling. Also featured is a question on which relationship Australia should prioritise out of the United States and China, who came in at 56% and 25% respectively. The split was 70-18 among Coalition supporters, 46-32 for Labor, 60-24 among men and 51-26 among women.

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.

1,439 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  1. Melon….I have not questioned your motives. Kindly do not question mine.

    My contributions here are mine alone. I will argue for them here and elsewhere.

    My interest in this is no less than yours. I believe my reasoning is correct. If you want to reduce GHG emissions from coal, reduce demand for coal by substitution. This works. Punters will buy it.

    Abandon the embargo. It will not work. It would make things worse. It already has.

  5. If you want to use less coal, reduce demand for it. Reduce its price.

    What better way to reduce demand for something than reducing its price. Economics 101 with briefly.

  7. The central bank should focus on running the payments system and enforcing strong underwriting standards for the banks. Maintaining true full employment with price stability and sustainable resource use is the job of fiscal policy.

    Monetary policy (interest rate adjustments) is a steering wheel that isn’t connected to anything.

    Businesses base investment decisions on their expectations of profit. If they can’t see a justification to expand production because consumer spending is stagnant and they have significant unsold inventory already, they won’t borrow more, even if interest rates fall.

    Households base borrowing decisions on their existing debt levels, their degree of job security, and their expected income. If households are already heavily indebted, their wages are stagnating, and their employment is precarious, they won’t borrow more, even if interest rates fall.

    We want bank lending – whether it’s to businesses or to households – to be based on high quality credit analysis.

    If there isn’t enough spending in the economy to provide a secure decently paid job everybody who wants one, that is a problem of fiscal policy, not monetary policy.

  8. PO…the things you mention are operable because of their effect on supply and/or demand.

    They do not change the way markets function.

    The single best thing to do in the electricity market is to add to supply from renewables and liberalise the trade in electricity. This works.

    I have a friend who works in power in WA. As he says….there’s so much power available here we can’t get anyone to take the fucking stuff. The result is coal will close here within a few years.

    That is not the end of the story. But it is a lot better than we see in other places where coal is very badly politicised and exploited by the Right and the Greens….to the detriment of every other interest.

  10. Melon….I have not questioned your motives. Kindly do not question mine.

    You’ve questioned the motives of those opposing Adani, saying that they’re only doing it to hurt the Labor party. Which is self-evidently preposterous, but make sense to somebody who looks at every issue purely through the lens of party loyalty. That’s not me questioning your motives, just pondering how somebody can perform such impressive contortions of logic and reason in defense of the indefensible, and drawing the obvious conclusions from your posting history.

  12. Player One @ #1057 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:02 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1053 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 8:59 pm

    Sorry, P1, it seems like you have a disciple. I’ve just got in after watching The Block. And what do I find? Groundhog Day.

    And Labor certainly has a fair share of groundhogs here 🙁

    I think The Greens win hands down. It’s like all that matters to them. Political reality certainly doesn’t. They are like the sirens wailing while the house burns down. In this case, the planet.

  13. RI @ #1059 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:06 pm

    The single best thing to do in the electricity market is to add to supply from renewables and liberalise the trade in electricity. This works.

    Sure, if you don’t actually give a stuff about … you know … greenhouse gas emissions.

    The single quickest (and only proven) thing to do in the electricity market is to impose a carbon price. This works.

  14. Just because someone is not our there responding the way YOU think they should (public displays of indignation, despair and and fanatic commitment to a high profile ethically pure position ) does NOT mean they are supporters of what you oppose. That’s the kind of “With us or Agin us” absolutist framing so beloved of the RWNuttjobies and BlueGreens.

    They may well be opposing it as well, just in a more constructive and nuanced way…

    Sorry if it makes me a fanatic but I just don’t agree that you can effectively oppose something by supporting it!

  15. The substitution process….

    1. Reduce demand for coal, resulting in
    2. Reduced price for coal, resulting in
    3. Reduced supply of coal

    Very simple. Always works.

  16. P1,

    briefly’s point is really very simple.

    If the development of a cheap substitute for a commodity drives the market price below its production cost, the commodity will stop being produced.

    In the case of demand for energy, which is inelastic, the effect on total quantity demanded is minimal, so the energy produced by the new technology directly substitutes for the old (coal). The effect on price, which is set by the marginal producer, is that it is progressively determined by the production costs of the next cheapest coal producer, until all coal is removed from the system.

  17. PO…. coal is being retired in WA without a carbon price. It was retired in SA without a carbon price. It will be obsolete in Victoria without a carbon price.

    It is not necessary. It would only thwart the political support that now exists for renewables.

  18. And now for something completely different. Please!

    This is a brilliant analysis of how the Right Wing Conservative media machine has whirred into overdrive over the Trump Impeachment inquiry by the Democrats:

    A buffer: “The right-wing media provides a buffer for the Trump administration and his congressional supporters that makes accountability more difficult,” Robert Faris, research director at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center who wrote a book about disinformation and radicalization in American politics, told Power Up. “Partisan media is a narrative-generating machine that is armored against fact checking which explains a lot of where we are right now.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/powerup/2019/10/01/powerup-trump-s-right-wing-media-darlings-go-to-war-during-impeachment-inquiry/5d9237ef602ff14beb3daa67/

  20. RI @ #1066 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:10 pm

    The substitution process….

    1. Reduce demand for coal, resulting in
    2. Reduced price for coal, resulting in
    3. Reduced supply of coal

    Very simple. Always works.

    Sure. And reducing the price of a product doesn’t in turn increase the demand for it 🙁

    Can someone please remind me what planet we are currently on? I seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere around Alpha Centauri.

  21. RI

    Is indeed making the point that a cost benefit analysis will see the end of coal.

    So are Watermelon and P1.

    They are just using different assumptions. RI is using the LNP one that excludes damage to the environment as a cost.

    Unlike two NSW court judgements

  23. As history will attest, the best and indeed the only way to bring about systemic change is to ask powerful people nicely. That works a treat.

  24. guytaur…the NSW judgment was based on the losses in agriculture and water rather than the atmosphere. I read it.

    The point in any case is to do things with respect to electricity that work. My reasoning is correct. Coal-fired production is being retired. To accelerate retirements in coal plant accelerate the installation of renewables. This is feasible and is happening and does not attract opposition. On the contrary, voters and consumers like it.

  25. RI @ #1069 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:13 pm

    PO…. coal is being retired in WA without a carbon price. It was retired in SA without a carbon price. It will be obsolete in Victoria without a carbon price.

    One coal plant in WA is partially closing. Out of a couple of dozen coal and gas plants.

    It is not necessary. It would only thwart the political support that now exists for renewables.

    And – even worse – it would thwart the political support that now exists for coal.

  26. All this supply/demand shit is beating about the bush.

    The only question that matters is will blocking the Adani mine contribute positively or negatively to the world total quantity of greenhouse gas emissions?

    Some people are pretending that price effects mean that the total quantity of greenhouse gases produced by Adani will cause its own perfect offset. I don’t know if they actually believe it themselves, and suspect they don’t, which is why they don’t say it but only imply it.

  28. PO…coal is only useful as a production input. If better inputs are available it will be displaced.

    What you want to do will increase the price of coal…which would depress demand for it….but is only another way of achieving a similar result, but would be one in which some coal mines would benefit at the expense of consumers.

    Your prescription has no public support. This is a problem in a democracy.

  29. guytaur….I don’t have a subscription to the SMH…can’t read their links usually….the NSW decision clearly referred to agriculture and water and noted that the emissions were “problematic”. The decision. Was not based on GHGs….maybe should have been but in fact was not.

  30. Re C@t @9:13.
    “The right-wing media provides a buffer for the Trump administration and his congressional supporters that makes accountability more difficult,” Robert Faris, research director at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center who wrote a book about disinformation and radicalization in American politics, told Power Up. “Partisan media is a narrative-generating machine that is armored against fact checking which explains a lot of where we are right now.”

    We’re in a worse position in Australia. The Right Wing Noise Machine dominates. To the extend that we have a “liberal media” so hated by the US Right, it’s pretty much at the fringes (e.g The Guardian, Saturday Paper, etc) with the ABC effectively neutered.

  31. Watermelon @ #1079 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:25 pm

    Some people are pretending that price effects mean that the total quantity of greenhouse gases produced by Adani will cause its own perfect offset. I don’t know if they actually believe it themselves, and suspect they don’t, which is why they don’t say it but only imply it.

    I don’t think you understand the true genius of briefly’s argument …

    By opening new coal mines, we increase supply, which reduces the price. I think we can all follow so far. Then this in turn (and I’m not entirely clear on this bit, but briefly assures me it is the case) eventually reduces demand (perhaps because all the coal plants wear out; faster? Or is it that the coal is burnt faster, which means we run out of coal sooner?). Anyway, the end result is that we all move to 100% renewables, and the fact that the planet has warmed by 5 or 6 degrees by this time is just an unfortunate little side effect.

    Brilliant!

  32. Melon

    All this supply/demand shit is beating about the bush.

    The only question that matters is will blocking the Adani mine contribute positively or negatively to the world total quantity of greenhouse gas emissions?

    The short answer is that the proposed embargo would have at best no effect at all. It might make things worse wrt GHGs.

    If you want to reduce coal combustion, change generation technologies.

    Abandon the Embargo

  34. RI @ #1082 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:29 pm

    What you want to do will increase the price of coal…which would depress demand for it….but is only another way of achieving a similar result, but would be one in which some coal mines would benefit at the expense of consumers.

    I think I see where you are going wrong. A carbon price does not increase the price of coal, nor benefit coal mines. It increases the cost of using coal by coal consumers, which actually depresses the price of coal for coal producers.

    Finally, I think we may be getting somewhere!

  35. Dandy Murray @ #1073 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:10 pm

    briefly’s point is really very simple.

    If the development of a cheap substitute for a commodity drives the market price below its production cost, the commodity will stop being produced.

    That’s potentially one way to get people to stop using something. Particularly if you don’t really care about when (or if) people actually stop using it.

    Other equally valid ways are to force its price up so high that either nobody can afford it or no economically rational actor would use it over other alternatives, or to just ban it outright. Those work better if you care about having a fast transition that minimizes the amount of use between now and when usage completely stops.

    What was done for asbestos?

  42. Great graphic. But, they also highlight the problem. Only half the electorate actually vote. So, these sort of polls are hardly predictive. It’s all about who turns up on the day.

    And Trump is the best motivator for people to get out and vote.

  43. guytaur says:
    Tuesday, October 1, 2019 at 9:48 pm
    Speaking economics

    How good is Austerity

    Fiscal, financial and labour repression….the consequences of Lib rule. This Howard replayed.


  44. a r says:
    ..
    What was done for asbestos?

    The answer is complex.
    The banning of the export of all asbestos products occurred in 2017.
    Last mine closed down in 1980.
    Banning of use started in 1967.
    World production and use goes on.

  45. I have an advantage over other bludgers, inasmuch as I have observed at close quarters what happens when a market for a raw material becomes saturated with a competing substitute. The demand falls. The price falls. Supply shrinks. Production declines to the point that it barely exists.

    I have seen it first hand. Prices falling by more than 80% under the influence of pressure from substitutes…falling to such levels that production of the original commodity cannot occur.

    This was driven by investment in substitutes. Remarkable and irresistible.

  47. I should have added this quote, I’ll do so now.

    If partisans on one side of a political question respond to a survey more readily than partisans on the other side, you can get a polling error. The results in your poll won’t match the real-world opinion you’re trying to measure — instead, the poll will be skewed by how willing some people are to respond to a survey.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a-big-enough-news-story-like-impeachment-could-warp-the-polls/

    To any pollsters, the scientific method has a few centuries now of producing good outcomes. Please, take a look. I really want to get beyond treating polls as the latest interpretation of a chicken sacrifice.

  48. Confessions @ #1098 Tuesday, October 1st, 2019 – 9:57 pm

    Great graphic. But, they also highlight the problem. Only half the electorate actually vote. So, these sort of polls are hardly predictive. It’s all about who turns up on the day.

    And Trump is the best motivator for people to get out and vote.

    And which is why, perhaps counter intuitively, I think polls in Australia have more error than polls where voting is not compulsory.

  49. Comparing Electricity and asbestos is interesting.
    In Australia 50+ die a year from electrocution, we tolerate this.
    700+ a year from asbestos; we don’t tolerate this, but the USA tolerates their death rate ( it is not banned in the US)
    800+ from car accidents, we tolerate this.

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