Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

A slight lead for the Coalition in the first results to emerge from a new-look Newspoll, which has dropped automated phone calls in favour of an exclusively online polling method.

Big news on the polling front as Newspoll unveils its first set of results based on what The Australian describes as “an improved methodology following an investigation into the failure of the major published polls”. The old series had been limping on post-election with results appearing every three weeks, but this latest result emerges only a fortnight after the last, presumably portending a return to the traditional fortnightly schedule.

The poll credits the Coalition with a two-party lead of 51-49, compared with 50-50 in the result a fortnight ago, from primary votes of Coalition 41% (up one), Labor 33% (down two), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 5% (down two). Interestingly, both leaders’ personal ratings are a lot worse than they were in the old series: Scott Morrison’s approval rating is at 43% (down three) with disapproval at 52% (up nine), while Anthony Albanese is at 38% approval (down four, though he was up five last time) and 42% disapproval (up five, though he was down seven last time). No news yet on preferred prime minister, which is presumably still a thing (UPDATE: Morrison’s lead narrows from 46-32 to 46-35).

On the methodological front, the poll has dropped robopolling and is now conducted entirely online. The sample size of 1519 is similar to before (slightly lower in fact), but the field work dates are now Thursday to Saturday rather than Thursday to Sunday. In a column for the newspaper, Campbell White of YouGov Asia-Pacific, which conducts the poll, offers the following on why robopolling has been abandoned:

A decade or so ago, most ­people had landlines and they tended to answer them. There was very little call screening. This meant getting a representative sample was easier and pollsters did not need to be so skilled in modelling and scaling their data. The truth is, the old days are never coming back. In order to do better, we need to consider what we can do differently. We’ve seen a consistent pattern overseas where telephone polling has become less accurate and online polling more so as fewer people answer phone calls and more and more people are online.

White further notes that “annoying and invasive” robopolling is “answered largely by older people or those who are very interested in politics”, while “busy people who are less interested in politics either don’t answer or hang up”. He also reveals that the new series will “weight the data by age interlocked with education and have precise quotas for different types of electorate throughout Australia”, consistent with YouGov’s methodology internationally.

Hopefully the restated commitment to “greater transparency” means we will shortly see comprehensive details of demographic breakdowns and weightings, a commonplace feature of British and American polling that Australian poll watchers could only envy. Stay tuned.

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.

968 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  1. guytaur @ #153 Monday, November 25th, 2019 – 10:41 am

    A reminder for Labor.

    It only needs to have a gain of two seats.

    The majority is with the science. That means on climate change you can ignore the coal spruikers. You can win seats in Brisbane and Western Sydney.

    The tradies won’t be threatened by electric cars.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50536200

    Another reminder for Labor, at the May election you just had to hold your seats and win one or two off the most diabolically useless government in living memory….

  2. Labor have 68 seats. They would need 76 to have a bare majority. Numbers would be even after providing a speaker….75-1-75….and they would rely on the speaker’s casting vote. To be on better ground, they need 77 seats, an increase of 9 on the current numbers before the effects of redistributions.

    It’s anyone’s guess where Labor can pick up 9 seats. The conflation of Greens with Labor mean Labor will likely win no seats in QLD or WA. The LNP commence any election with an enormous head start.

  3. guytaursays:
    Monday, November 25, 2019 at 11:21 am

    This is big. With other streaming services having arrived I think it’s a big hit to Foxtel’s revenue stream.

    https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/foxtel-threatens-to-cut-ties-with-rugby-union-20191124-p53dlt.html

    What’s so exciting about having to pay for something that used to be free?

    Every new provider means you have to fork out more money if you want to watch something they have locked up. 🙁

  4. ItzaDream says: Monday, November 25, 2019 at 10:53 am

    You’re always as young as the person you feel !

    *********************************************************************

    As Mae West put it – “It’s not the men in your life that counts. It’s the life in your men.”

  5. Mike Bowers has just received a phone call saying there are camels being led across the Kings Avenue bridge looking as though they are on their way to parliament.

    There’s three of them. No word on wise men, or any spotting of gold, frankincense or myrrh.

    Just another week in parliament.

  6. mundo

    Yep. The best part of the plan was to inflame rural and regional voters with comprehensive threats to their jobs and their way of life, down to the last rodeo, and to follow this up with an Adani Convoy to rub it all in, along with vociferous threats by Di Natale to blackmail Labor into delivering all this by way of the Senate BOP.

    It worked like a charm. For Morrison.

    All those who Killed Bill for six years, all those who ranted about same old same old for six years, got what they deserved: Morrison and different, not same.

    Morrison hoovered up the rural and regional seats and Government along with it.

  7. RI

    Labor does not need a majority. It would be nice for them. They don’t need a majority though. It can be another hung parliament.

  8. mundo @ #201 Monday, November 25th, 2019 – 11:33 am

    guytaur @ #153 Monday, November 25th, 2019 – 10:41 am

    A reminder for Labor.

    It only needs to have a gain of two seats.

    The majority is with the science. That means on climate change you can ignore the coal spruikers. You can win seats in Brisbane and Western Sydney.

    The tradies won’t be threatened by electric cars.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50536200

    Another reminder for Labor, at the May election you just had to hold your seats and win one or two off the most diabolically useless government in living memory….

    Useless is too kind mundo. It implies just treading water. This mob are very useful to their string pullers – earth rapers, sky fairy gods, fat wallets, and selves most of all – so maybe the word you are looking for is malignant: describing an abnormal growth from abnormal cells which spread and destroy and consume at the expense of the normal, till death unless otherwise treated.

  9. BW

    I note how you are using the LNP talking point about having a just transition is calling for ending jobs.

    Go all out with the coal spruikers. Use their talking points.

    Don’t pretend you are for the environment when you do.

  10. The Anti-Labor voices-assembled have 83 seats. Labor have 68. That is a margin of 15 in favour of the Anti-Labor numbers. In what arithmetic universe would 2 extra seats enable Labor to displace the LNP, who have 77 seats?

  11. The magic 9 that Labor will need for next election will come from the following:
    Bass, Chisholm, Boothby, Swan, Braddon, Reid, Longman, Leichhardt, Robertson, La Trobe, Casey, Deakin, Brisbane, Lindsay & Hasluck.

    I reckon that Labor Party Gains are more likely from Tasmania and the Suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney than the regional expansion that the likes of Briefly propose. In a big wash of Red or green, the likes of Higgins could see a non-liberal very soon…

  13. From Perth to Canberra in this weather? Maybe he walked at night.

    Remeikis.

    One of the press gallery keepers of all knowledge has just let me know the camels are on their way as part of one man, John Elliot’s, crusade to raise awareness of melanomas.

    He has walked from Perth to Canberra with the camels.

  15. Alpha

    Albanese has made a good start with Sydney.
    Fixing the toxic NSW Branch is the best move he has made for electability.

    A public show so voters can see the likes of Obeid will never rise in Labor again.

    If it’s the only thing he does as leader Albanese will have made a historically significant reform of the party and its future prospects.

  16. Is Trump’s house of cards about to collapse? That’s a pretty damning letter of acknowledgement of termination by the US Secretary of Navy and you can be sure there are many others of the same mind.

  19. The reality is the LNP have a fairly secure hold on the House. They will be looking for gains in Victoria, NSW, WA and Tasmania. Further inroads in QLD are also possible, if unlikely.

    They will run their usual themes, which all distil repression one way or another – repression of labour, repression of the economy, repression in the environment – while cultivating fear-of-the-foreign. They will curry fear of China and counter-pose that with cordiality toward Trump. They will defile refugees. They will play anti-political theatre domestically.

    Things are bad in the economy and bad in the environment. Bad and getting worse. There is fear. There is resentment. There is mistrust. There is retreat. There is anger. This will all get worse. And voters will rally to the Right, as they always have in this kind of context.

  20. AZ

    ‘Bass, Chisholm, Boothby, Swan, Braddon, Reid, Longman, Leichhardt, Robertson, La Trobe, Casey, Deakin, Brisbane, Lindsay & Hasluck.’

    Bass, Longman and Leichhardt are regional seats. So they are unlikely gains.

    An additional consideration is that there are four Labor-held regional seats that might go the other way in the next election. Eden Monaro, for example, has a margin of less than one per cent. Gilmore was won off the back of some extraordinary behaviour by the Liberals.

    Labor’s attitude to regional policies and to regional sensitivities needs to be fundamentally recast. The Greens need to think long and hard how they go about wedging Labor in relation to the regions.

  21. RI

    We get it. Labor is rooned said Hanrahan.

    We have to be Liberal Lite. We can’t win on Labor values.

    I am not a rusted on Labor voter and I can see how ruinous for Labor that style of thinking is. Conceding defeat is no way to fight.

  22. Alpha Zero says:
    Monday, November 25, 2019 at 11:47 am

    The magic 9 that Labor will need for next election will come from the following:
    Bass, Chisholm, Boothby, Swan, Braddon, Reid, Longman, Leichhardt, Robertson, La Trobe, Casey, Deakin, Brisbane, Lindsay & Hasluck.

    I reckon that Labor Party Gains are more likely from Tasmania and the Suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney than the regional expansion that the likes of Briefly propose. In a big wash of Red or green, the likes of Higgins could see a non-liberal very soon…

    I do not propose ‘regional expansion’. Australia is being painted Blue. The Liberals have an overwhelming advantage in QLD and WA and in the rural areas of NSW, Victoria and SA. They have a historic lock on the affluent glades in the capitals. They are positioned to keep on winning, supported in this by the various other Anti-Labor voices….by the surrogates, substitutes, reserves, shotguns, tributaries, ensigns, deputies and clones that ride with the LNP.

  26. For those concerned about what Labor should do to be competitive in 2022, I thought Albo gave a good speech on Friday.

    Would people like some excerpts?

  28. The conflation of Greens with Labor drives voters away from Labor towards the Right. The hostility directed to Labor by the Greens helps herd Green-loyal voters, preventing them from drifting back to Labor. Together with the strategies of the Right, dysfunction on the Left is driving stagnation – political stagnation. We’re accustomed to wage/income stagnation. We’re familiar with policy-stagnation and institutional inertia. We also face political atrophy now. This is a part of a politics of ‘anxiety and depression’….the culture-wide manifestation of futility and failure.

    We are immersed in this. Our politics is not immune to it. Rather, we can see it manifested in our politics.

  30. RI, I have witnessed at a state level, areas of Higgins and Kooyong be painted red or green. I reckon the demographic changes there will help push those into the ALP column at some point soon rather than the regions. I think the ALP path to victory is via the suburbs. There will be a big city/country divide in this country and it is being expanded by team blue. It might suit them now, but longer term it could burn them. Think what Alberta is to Canada…

  31. Great thread by Rick Wilson in regards the traitors deluding themselves they are serving a more noble purpose by staying in the Trump government. History will judge them, hopefully.

    Rick WilsonVerified account@TheRickWilson
    2h2 hours ago
    1/ Speaking of that, the idea that *anyone* inside the Trump Admin is “the Resistance” or “the Steady State” or ANYTHING other than complicit in his corruption, illegality, and overall fuckery is a risible lie.

    https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1198751253540593666

  32. ‘Alpha Zero says:
    Monday, November 25, 2019 at 12:19 pm

    RI, I have witnessed at a state level, areas of Higgins and Kooyong be painted red or green. I reckon the demographic changes there will help push those into the ALP column at some point soon rather than the regions. I think the ALP path to victory is via the suburbs. ‘

    The ALP holds just 4 out of the 34 large state regional seats. It could lose two more (Gilmore and Eden-Monaro) in the next election.

    Essentially the current situation is that Labor needs to capture around half of all regional seats in order to resume level pegging with the Coalition in the suburbs.

  33. Fantastic story about how Ivanka Trump pretends to be intelligent, with an actual quote at the end of the piece about Donald Trump’s hero, the 17th POTUS, Andrew Jackson:

    When is a quote from a historical figure not to be trusted? When it is tweeted by a Trump.

    …On Thursday evening, after a final (for now) dramatic day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against her father, the first daughter wrote: “‘A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.’

    “Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835.”

    …So Ivanka’s tweet was on message. But, alas, it wasn’t Tocqueville.

    As historians with Twitter accounts made clear, it was in fact a paraphrase drawn from the Frenchman’s seminal work Democracy in America, which was published between 1835 and 1840 and is, according to the Guardian’s Nicholas Lezard, “still relevant [as] everyone can find something in it that is recognisably correct”.

    The incorrect lines Ivanka found were from the 1889 book American Constitutional Law by John Innes Clark Hare.

    It was also swiftly determined that Trump had most likely not found the 130-year-old lines on Google Books, or even while paging through a dusty tome ordered from the Library of Congress in order to mine the history of her father’s predicament for aperçus fit to toss over canapés at some Kalorama or Georgetown salon.

    Instead, Innes Clark Hare’s words were published on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal on 25 October, under the headline “This impeachment subverts the constitution”.

    …Tocqueville’s masterwork, meanwhile, contains lines about another president which may seem quotable to readers consumed with the impeachment inquiry.

    In volume one, the Frenchman quotes “the first newspaper over which I cast my eyes, upon my arrival in America”, and its judgment of Andrew Jackson.

    …The article quoted by De Tocqueville calls Jackson a “heartless despot solely occupied with the preservation of his own authority” and adds:

    ‘Ambition is his crime, and it will be his punishment too: intrigue is his native element, and intrigue will confound his tricks, and will deprive him of his power: he governs by means of corruption, and his immoral practices will redound to his shame and confusion. His conduct in the political arena has been that of a shameless and lawless gamester. He succeeded at the time, but the hour of retribution approaches, and he will be obliged to disgorge his winnings, to throw aside his false dice, and to end his days in some retirement, where he may curse his madness at his leisure; for repentance is a virtue with which his heart is likely to remain forever unacquainted.’

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/23/ivanka-trump-tweet-de-tocqueville-factcheck

    🙂

  34. @guytaur

    I would estimate that Labor would need a gain six to eight seats in order to form government. Because I doubt Katter, Haines, Sharkie and Steggal will support a Labor minority government.

  35. Ingrid M
    @iMusing
    ·
    10m
    Q: “how certain can we be that the CCP has not succeeded in infiltrating the parliament, indeed in the same seat [of Chisholm]”? Eleanor Hall, World Today.
    A: “the short answer is, we can’t” – Paul Monk, former Defence Dept analyst.

  38. What exciting news will he have , the “End Times” have officially started and it is all Labor’s fault, declare the arrival of the Sacred Surplus ? From Amy’s blog.

    10m ago 12:19

    Scott Morrison has just called a press conference for 12.30.

    It’s in the PM Courtyard – the serious, serous press conference locale.

  40. Thank you, Hong Kong citizens!

    Hong Kong’s voters have turned out in record numbers to deliver a landslide for pro-democracy campaigners and a powerful rebuke to the government in local elections that were widely seen as a proxy referendum on the city’s protest movement.

    Both in absolute numbers and in turnout rates it was easily the biggest exercise in democratic participation that Hong Kong has seen, with many voters waiting more than an hour to cast their ballots.

    When polls closed at 10.30pm on Sunday, nearly 3 million people had voted, representing more than 71% of the electorate and nearly half of Hong Kong’s population. Many had never voted before.

    According to preliminary results from partial counts, pro-democracy politicians should have control of 17 of the city’s 18 district councils, a sea change in Hong Kong politics, where pro-Beijing and government politicians have enjoyed a wealth of resources and support from the elite sectors.

    …Stephen, a retired businessman in his 60s voting in the affluent Mid-Levels neighbourhood, said: “This will send the message to the government that they should be more humble. It’s your job to serve people, and not beat people up if they don’t listen to you.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/hong-kong-residents-turn-up-for-local-elections-in-record-numbers

  41. “The Chinese have bought into a model of policing where they believe that through the collection of large-scale data, run through artificial intelligence … they can in fact predict ahead of time where possible incidents might take place,” said James Mulvenon, an expert in the verification of Chinese government documents who serves as the director of intelligence integration at SOS International.

    “Then they are pre-emptively going after those people using that data, before they’ve even had a chance to actually commit the crime.”

    The documents also give an insight into how China considers any foreign connection a cause for suspicion, and is pushing its campaign across national borders.
    …
    Uighurs living abroad have described attempts to lure them home, often through requests from relatives, or to pressure them into spying on neighbours. Those who return to China frequently disappear into the camps.

    Dual nationals have been rounded up and detained, despite protests from foreign relatives, or diplomats representing their second nationality. Those in Xinjiang are questioned about relatives in other countries, and communication with loved ones abroad has ground to a virtual halt.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/china-cables-revealed-power-and-reach-of-chinas-surveillance-dragnet?CMP=soc_568&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1574644539

  42. My own view, this is exciting times.

    We are about to move to a carbon free economy. It is a revolution. It brings opportunists and risks.

    The Liberals want to pretend it doesn’t have to happen, the Luddites.

    As they stand the Greens want to pretend that it will only happen if they force the issues, which is nonsense, it is happening, but it creates a big problem for Labor

    Labor future is to develop policies to minimize the risk and take full advantage of the opportunities, and to sell them.

  45. lizzie

    There are various scams in the avicultural industry involving the breeding of birds that look like Paradise Parrots.

    The prices paid are said to be quite astronomical.

  46. Ingrid M @iMusing
    ·
    1m
    interesting that the coverage almost invariably refers to the CCP trying to infiltrate “the parliament”, rather than the Liberal Party. And where are comparative analyses eg to the circumstances under which Dastiyari left the Senate, or to nazis infiltrating the Nationals?

  47. poroti @ #238 Monday, November 25th, 2019 – 12:32 pm

    What exciting news will he have , the “End Times” have officially started and it is all Labor’s fault, declare the arrival of the Sacred Surplus ? From Amy’s blog.

    10m ago 12:19

    Scott Morrison has just called a press conference for 12.30.

    It’s in the PM Courtyard – the serious, serous press conference locale.

    It’s to do with an Aged Care funding announcement I believe.

  48. Boerwar @ #220 Monday, November 25th, 2019 – 11:59 am

    AZ

    ‘Bass, Chisholm, Boothby, Swan, Braddon, Reid, Longman, Leichhardt, Robertson, La Trobe, Casey, Deakin, Brisbane, Lindsay & Hasluck.’

    Bass, Longman and Leichhardt are regional seats. So they are unlikely gains.

    An additional consideration is that there are four Labor-held regional seats that might go the other way in the next election. Eden Monaro, for example, has a margin of less than one per cent. Gilmore was won off the back of some extraordinary behaviour by the Liberals.

    Labor’s attitude to regional policies and to regional sensitivities needs to be fundamentally recast. The Greens need to think long and hard how they go about wedging Labor in relation to the regions.

    Labor won the 2PP down here in Tasmania by a mile.
    Albanese has to spend time in Bass and Braddon. They’re easily win backable.

  49. Boerwar

    It’s obviously advanced a little since I worked out a theory. No doubt my novel failed to gain interest because (a) it didn’t contain enough hot sex and (b) in the publishing game, it’s not what you know, it’s who…etc.

  50. Morrison trying to take credit for calling a RC into the Aged Care sector. Even though he was dragged kicking and screaming, again, to do it by the Labor Party.

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