Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor

Labor slightly widens the lead it opened in the previous Newspoll, and Anthony Albanese maintains his ascendancy as preferred prime minister despite a slight fall in his personal ratings.

The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead widening from 51-49 to 52-48 since the previous poll three weeks ago. Both major parties are down on the primary vote, the Coalition by two to 38% and Labor by one to 35%, while the Greens are up one to 13% (equalling their best result since 2011) and One Nation is steady at 4%. Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are unchanged after the hit he suffered in the previous poll, at 37% approval and 59% disapproval, while a spike in Anthony Albanese’s ratings last time has failed to completely stick, with his approval down three to 43% and disapproval up three to 40% (compared with 40% and 41% in the poll before). However, Albanese maintains the lead on preferred prime minister he opened up in the last poll, which is out slightly from 43-39 to 43-38. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1510.

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.

831 comments on “Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. Where on earth did this ‘logic’ come from?

    LB@laurenbull_
    · 56m

    Jesus Christ. Fran Kelly just asked a Monash uni VC if coronavirus has shown that universities are “overexposed” to China. Absolutely WHAT is this line of questioning

  2. Andrew_Earlwood @ #92 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 8:50 am

    “ When ‘your’ generation gets to be oldsters please do not be surprised to find that they are no different to all the previous generations. As I said, 20 years ago all was to be good as the 64+ demographic shuffled off. In 20 years you will hear the same bitching about the greedy oldies.”

    It is already happening to a certain degree. I just hope that ‘we’ wont end up as thick headed and greedy-stupid-entitled as Boomers. But if that hope proves false, I’ll settle for an oldies brigade that isn’t as demographically dominant as the undead Builder and Boomer cohorts currently are.

    +1

    I don’t have a problem with the Builders. It is the Boomers that seem to have been the first to believe that their welfare should take priority over their kids welfare. It’s a bit like believing in “trickle down” economics.

  3. Watching a medical TV program last night. One part concerned bowel cancer surgery which I found more than interesting. A large bowl full of bowel shown after surgery.

    No wonder I lost weight and after a few months wait, another chunk was removed (moi) so that at my last colonoscopy (clap hands now) Dr. C. said to his offsider “there’s hardly anything left to examine.”

    Reading down thread, apparently my brain, as I age, is becoming more grasping and mean and nasty and everything. What fun is old age, hey ❗

  4. frednk @ #53 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 5:51 am

    One thing is for sure, Albanese’s leadership is secure. Hard to start leadershit with these numbers.

    “Both major parties are down on the primary vote, the Coalition by two to 38% and Labor by one to 35%”

    Not exactly a great performance when your primary falls while the Government is an even bigger shambles than usual. These numbers are an improvement (or a decline for the Coalition, more like), but nothing to celebrate.

  5. lizzie

    Because local universities have become very very dependent on foreign students’ $s. Should that supply dry up many would be in deep shit. Is such a dependency a good thing , especially if it dependent on just a single “market” ?

  6. lizzie @ #99 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 9:15 am

    Where on earth did this ‘logic’ come from?

    LB@laurenbull_
    · 56m

    Jesus Christ. Fran Kelly just asked a Monash uni VC if coronavirus has shown that universities are “overexposed” to China. Absolutely WHAT is this line of questioning

    My guess is that the exposure is in the manner of financial entities being exposed to say, coal, timber etc

    The universities may be exposed to students from China so that fewer students would mean less loot. 💰

    Poroti – you’ve done it again. 🐨

  7. Republican Senators are now saying the impeachment process will have chastened Trump, that he’ll be a different president now. Talk about delusional!

  8. poroti

    My thought would be that exposure to Chinese dollars already represented possible problems without needing to mention coronavirus.

  9. a r @ #104 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 9:20 am

    Not exactly a great performance when your primary falls while the Government is an even bigger shambles than usual. These numbers are an improvement (or a decline for the Coalition, more like), but nothing to celebrate.

    Labor partisans here are celebrating that their primary vote is not falling quite as fast as their opponents primary vote. How good is that?

    I’m sure many will also see it as evidence that Labor’s new “let’s try having no policies and see if anyone notices” strategy is actually paying dividends.

  10. Ross Gittins

    A lack of trust in modern politics is making economic reform impossible

    https://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/a-lack-of-trust-in-modern-politics-is-making-economic-reform-impossible-20200202-p53wx6.html

    But though we’re discovering the miracle election-winner’s various shortcomings, it’s a mistake to think one man is the cause of our reform problem. It’s possible to argue things have got steadily worse in the revolving-door period since the departure of John Howard, but the greater truth is that the problem’s systemic.

    It’s hard to think of any major improvements made by five prime ministers over the past 12 years, with the possible exception of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (which we’re still busy stuffing up).

    The carbon tax was a significant reform before Tony Abbott abolished it, but Labor had sabotaged its mining tax long before Abbott got to it. Malcolm Turnbull took one look at the great goal of increasing the goods and services tax and realised it was politically impossible without full compensation of low to middle income-earners, but net of compensation it would have raised peanuts.

    There’s little doubt that the life of ministers has become pretty much all day-to-day tactics and no long-term strategy. This both explains and reinforces the long-established trend – which Morrison now freely acknowledges – for ministers to prefer the advice of the ambitious young punks in their office to the advice of their department.
    :::
    Why are politicians no longer game even to seize the moment to do something real when everyone’s demanding that something be done? Because years of declining standards of political behaviour mean that trust in political leaders is now lower than ever. There’s strong survey evidence of this.

    Neither side of politics is trusted to take tough measures that are genuinely in everyone’s interests. It’s got to be a trick. Mainstream politicians are trusted only when they run scare campaigns against the other side’s reform plans. But hope springs eternal that some populist rabblerouser may have the answers.

    The more impotent mainstream politicians are seen to be, the more disillusioned voters will turn to populist saviours – and the more the main parties will themselves turn to populist diversions and trickery. Freeing ourselves from this vicious circle won’t be easy.

  11. [‘The misconduct was apparent on the face of the audit office report. Auditor-General Grant Hehir was scathing of the way the grants were doled out. In its examination of which clubs got what, the Auditor-General’s office found “bias”. Political bias.’]

    I have a feeling that Hehir’s tenure will be cut short. You don’t cross this evil mob without consequences.

  13. Bob Katter is officially handing over the leadership of his party to his son, Queensland Katter’s Australian Party MP, Robbie Katter.
    :::
    No word on his plans for his seat – but he can’t just hand that over to his son – that’s a byelection.

  15. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst warned Sunday that Republicans could immediately push to impeach Joe Biden over his work in Ukraine as vice president if he win the White House.

    “I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened,” Ernst said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Joe Biden should be very careful what he’s asking for because, you know, we can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, right the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him.’”

    The grounds for impeachment, the first-term Republican said, would be “for being assigned to take on Ukrainian corruption yet turning a blind eye to Burisma because his son was on the board making over a million dollars a year.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/ernst-warns-of-gop-push-to-impeach-biden-over-ukraine-if-he-wins

  17. Pegasus @ #113 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 9:34 am

    Bob Katter is officially handing over the leadership of his party to his son, Queensland Katter’s Australian Party MP, Robbie Katter.
    :::
    No word on his plans for his seat – but he can’t just hand that over to his son – that’s a byelection.

    What about the really important issue … who gets the hat?

  18. The Guardian:

    So Angus Taylor is currently NOT being investigated by the AFP – it has a referral for an investigation and is deciding what to do with that referral.

  20. “Reading down thread, apparently my brain, as I age, is becoming more grasping and mean and nasty and everything. What fun is old age, hey ❗”

    ***

    Awww. Not ALL Boomers are mean, haughty, entitled and/or conservative. Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of a Boomer who gets it. Sadly, he seems to be a rare exception to the rule, but proof that you can’t tar everyone with the same brush. The haughty, conservative Boomers do definitely need to be called out though, just as haughty, conservative Xers/Millennials/Zeds do too.

  22. Paddy Manning

    Gas-ping for policy

    In a climate emergency, more public money for fossil fuels

    https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2020/31/2020/1580446758/gas-ping-policy

    The Morrison and Berejiklian Coalition governments have delivered a dud of a bilateral energy deal today that, if it is a template for the deals minister Angus Taylor plans to do with other states, confirms this summer’s ongoing climate emergency has taught neither government a thing. Almost laughably, it appears to revolve around finally getting the Narrabri coal-seam gas project up and running. If ever there was a dubious CSG project, it is the one that energy company Santos has been trying to foist on Narrabri for so many years, after buying it in a fit of stupidity from Eastern Star Gas (chaired by former Nationals leader John Anderson) umpteen years ago. Ever since, Santos has been trying to persuade the NSW government to approve it, with a succession of flimsy arguments that ignore two basic facts: it will not lower gas prices soon, if ever, and the locals don’t want it. As a pretext for supporting an unspecified investment in renewables some time down the track, investing massive public subsidies in gas (and possibly coal [$]) right now is so poor it scarcely qualifies as a pea-and-thimble trick.

    The time for using gas as a transitional fuel to renewables is gone, as RenewEconomy’s editor Giles Parkinson wrote yesterday. …
    :::
    The Greens today were rightly apopleptic, calling the deal “climate criminality”. Australian Energy Daily describes it as a “divide and rule” strategy, with Canberra playing the states against each other. I’d describe it as divide and fool strategy – the fools are us taxpayers, handing our money over to fossil-fuel companies to keep emitting carbon dioxide for longer, even while the country is burning.

  23. [“If you can’t show empathy in one of Australia’s biggest natural disasters, I’m sorry, but what use are you?” she says during an Ipsos focus group conducted for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.]

    To be fair, it’s difficult to show empathy when you’re on the spectrum Morrison is.

  25. clive’s nephew running for local Townsville council elections in the ‘not the UAP’ independent party…headed by former UAP Candidate Greg Dowling…

  27. BK says:
    Monday, February 3, 2020 at 9:49 am
    In the AIM John Lord proclaims that you cannot be a leader and a bare-faced liar at the same time
    _____________________________

    Sadly you can be a Prime Minister and a bare-faced liar at the same time. Conclusively proven here and in the UK and the production of proof is ongoing.

  28. poroti @ #123 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 9:36 am

    lizzie

    It has been a worry for a while. The virus and the hit it may make to the universities just an example of how quickly it may go south and is beyond their control.

    Check out table 2 on this page. It shows the % of overseas students at post and undergraduate levels at each university. Some remarkably high numbers.

    https://www.universityrankings.com.au/international-student-numbers.html

    Tell me about it – I’m still fielding the phone calls. In a sense, we were lucky – the balloon went up before the start of the academic (and clinical) year. One of the NSW cases was a UNSW student, with no confirmed secondaries here – yet. Still waiting for the tertiaries.

  29. Firefox @ #118 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 9:41 am

    Awww. Not ALL Boomers are mean, haughty, entitled and/or conservative.

    I used to do this one for the fellow oldies in my wife’s nursing home. 🎸🎸🎸🎸

    ♫ Oh Lord it’s ♪ hard to be ♫ humble
    ♪ When you’re ♫ perfect in every ♪ way
    ♫ I can’t wait to ♪ look in the ♫ mirror
    ♪ Cause I get better ♫ looking ♪ each day
    ♫ To know me is ♪ to love ♪ me
    ♪ I must be a hell ♫ of a ♫ man
    ♫ Oh Lord It’s hard to ♪ be ♪ humble,
    ♫ But (big finish now) ♫ we’re ♪ doing ♪ the best ♫ that we ♪ can.

  30. On Election Eve, PM’s Office Gave $15m To Rich Party Donor From Money Set Aside To Tackle Black Poverty

    https://newmatilda.com/2020/02/03/exclusive-on-election-eve-pms-office-gave-15m-to-rich-party-donor-from-money-set-aside-to-tackle-black-poverty/

    The day before the 2019 federal election, the Morrison Government gave more than $15 million to one of its biggest political donors, from funding set aside to alleviate grinding Aboriginal poverty.

    Just three months earlier, that political donor – retail giant Wesfarmers, at one time the wealthiest corporation in the country – announced a record half-yearly profit of $4.5 billion.

    The government grant came from through the controversial Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS), the Morrison government’s main Aboriginal affairs funding pool, which has been the subject of numerous controversies.

    Just one month after the contract was approved, the IAS was the focus of fresh damning revelations – an Australian National Audit Office report which revealed the IAS still has no effective framework in place to evaluate any outcomes, despite expending more than $5 billion over five years.
    :::
    The Greens’ long-serving spokesperson on Indigenous issues, Senator Rachel Siewert was shocked by the level of funding provided to Wesfarmers.

    “Government grants should not be going to multimillion dollar businesses when so many in the Aboriginal community doing extremely valuable, community led work struggle to get any funding,” Senator Siewert said.

    “Many organisations were cut off from funding when the IAS was first introduced.

    “Wesfarmers should not be getting money that is meant for First Nations peoples and it contravenes their supposed policy ensuring that Aboriginal organisations are getting funded to develop and deliver programs.”

    New Matilda invited Labor spokesperson Linda Burney to provide comment shortly before publication. Ms Burney did not respond.

  31. What would happen if the Nats voted Brigid back as Deputy leader tomorrow

    She would have to be given a ministry and a place in Cabinet

    ie she would have been sin-binned for 3 days

    But Canavan and Littleproud are probably in much stronger positions now.

    What are Barnaby’s chances?

  32. TPOF says: Monday, February 3, 2020 at 9:52 am

    Sadly you can be a Prime Minister and a bare-faced liar at the same time. Conclusively proven here and in the UK and the production of proof is ongoing.

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

    Or even worse – a LIAR and a PRESIDENT

    President Trump is up to 16,241 false or misleading claims

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/20/president-trump-made-16241-false-or-misleading-claims-his-first-three-years/

  33. Frank Bongiorno – Remembrance of rorts past: why the McKenzie scandal might not count for a hill of beans

    https://theconversation.com/remembrance-of-rorts-past-why-the-mckenzie-scandal-might-not-count-for-a-hill-of-beans-130793

    This is essentially the political world in which we live now. McKenzie was forced out because of a political calculation that the damage of her holding on had become too great, and that her removal would not cause intolerable turbulence in the Coalition. But it is unclear that the scandal has done the government much lasting damage in any case.

    …But what if the overall effect of this scandal is simply to confirm for the minority of voters paying attention that politicians are self-serving and untrustworthy, and politics an elaborate racket?

    Scott Morrison’s prime ministership is a creature of the Trump era. He knows that it is right-wing populists who have yielded the benefits of the collapse of political trust. His celebration of quiet Australians carries the message: “Let us get on with things and we’ll see you in three years”. His Sunday afternoon political stitch-up wasn’t elegant, but it will serve its immediate purpose of taking a bit of heat out of the affair. There are still few signs that anything like a majority of voters are alive to his confidence tricks.

  34. Those Greens who are sick of being rightly apoplectic for the last 30 years could do something real for a change:

    Take Di Natale’s Greens New Deal CO2 Emissions Strike Pledge:

    1. Reduce personal housing footprint to the world average. Not only reduces one of Australia’s major sources of emissions, it would free up housing space for 100,000 homeless peeps.
    2. Refuse to fly except in emergencies. Massive CO2 emissions in every single phase of travel.
    3. Sell car. The electric car will only be truly electric when it is built using renewables. Not there yet. Plus there is the environmental impact on water and mining tenements.
    4. Eat low miles, low storage, low refined food, non-irrigated foods, and low storage energy foods.
    5. Eat no dairy and no beef products. Stop methane in its tracks.
    6. Wear the same clothes and shoes until they wear out. Why not? Global fashion is a big emitter.
    7. Do not use cans. At all. No need.
    8. Stop drinking alcohol. 1.5kg of emissions per bottle of wine.
    9. Stop smoking dope. Turns out that dope production is a big emitter of CO2.
    8. Do not live in houses which use hardwood in construction. Bad karma. Kills koalas.
    9. Despatch dogs and cats. Win win here. Dogs eat emissions equivalent of around half a ton of CO2 per annum. Cats not only eat emissions equivalents, they also eat scads of small native animals.

  35. billie @ #130 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 7:00 am

    What would happen if the Nats voted Brigid back as Deputy leader tomorrow

    She would have to be given a ministry and a place in Cabinet

    ie she would have been sin-binned for 3 days

    But Canavan and Littleproud are probably in much stronger positions now.

    What are Barnaby’s chances?

    She can only be voted back as deputy leader if she nominates. She won’t however.

  36. [‘Former Nationals’ leader Barnaby Joyce will run for the leadership of the party if there is a spill triggered by the resignation of deputy leader Bridget McKenzie over the “sports rorts” saga.’]

    Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  37. Voters turn on PM over ‘pathetic’ response to bushfire crisis

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/voters-turn-on-pm-over-pathetic-response-to-bushfire-crisis-20200202-p53wy9.html

    Ipsos found that this vocal support for Mr Morrison was a “minority” view in the focus groups, which comprised nine people in Sydney and eight in Melbourne selected to be broadly representative of different age groups, voting backgrounds and suburbs.

    But Ipsos concluded there was “little confidence” Labor leader Anthony Albanese would have provided better leadership.

    “Participants did not seem to think he would have made the same mistakes as Morrison, but he was seen as bland by most voters, including those who had voted Labor at the last federal election,” the research firm concluded.

    “Weak, bland, wishy-washy”

  38. Just been to the local shopping centre. The Department of Health have Coronavirus posters stuck to the wall above the hand dryer with Preventative Health measures and advice about what to do if you experience symptoms.

    I imagine if they are in Woy Woy they are everywhere.

  39. Good news that Barnyard daS Beetenrooter is about to mount up again!! Will be interesting to see how many votes he gets. Really, there is no joy to be had for the Nats in this. If nothing else it establishes Barny with credentials as a persistent lurker /stalker waiting the opportunity to fwark them up. 🙂

  40. “Sanders is not a Boomer. He is a pre – OK Boomer. He is THAT ancient!”

    ***

    I was actually thinking about this before I posted that. Yes, Bernie was born in 1941. Boomers are typically considered to be born between 1945-65ish. However, I think he is also too young to be considered a Builder either. He grew up in the post-war era, as did the rest of the Boomers, rather than growing up during the inter-war period or during WWII (yes, Sanders was born during the war, but was still very young by the time it ended). WWII clearly had a huge impact on him though, which is unsurprising considering his Jewish heritage.

    “A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.” -Sanders

  42. Firefox @ #140 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 10:16 am

    “A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.” -Sanders

    Damn. There goes the blog for the rest of the day 🙁

  43. @RonniSalt
    ·
    23m
    He (Barnaby) needs to do another one of those promotional videos, like the one he put out before Christmas where he maniacally flung hay over the backs of cattle with bird shit on his head and screamed at the sky.

    That’ll help his chances.

    Afterthought. Perhaps it really would. 🙁

  44. C@tmomma @ #138 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 10:11 am

    Just been to the local shopping centre. The Department of Health have Coronavirus posters stuck to the wall above the hand dryer with Preventative Health measures and advice about what to do if you experience symptoms.

    I imagine if they are in Woy Woy they are everywhere.

    Woy Woy, Wuhan. Sound fairly similar.

  46. Voters can be very self interested and selfish when voting, but calling people stupid won’t win the argument, nor does it win votes.

    Bellwether @ #96 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 8:57 am

    LongMemory82 @ #85 Monday, February 3rd, 2020 – 8:43 am

    PuffyTMD – calling voters stupid, wow your attitude will definitely win the next election for Labor. Are you sure you don’t work in Chris Bowen’s office ?

    Time has shown that the small proportion of the voting public that dragged the LNP across the line nine months got it terribly wrong. To refer to them as idiots is not too wide of the mark. For anyone who took even the most cursory interest in politics in the six months lead-up to the election it was absolutely crystal clear that this was a government that had run it’s meandering course and was in terminal decline. Those within with anything more than a smattering of brain cells were jumping ship.

  47. @YaThinkN
    ·
    39m
    This bloke on ABC at the moment, a former NSW Auditor-General is very good. Pointing out some blatant stuff, like Auditor-General report is more legit than PM’s ex staffer, re a Fed ICAC, no federal pollie EVER charged by AFP for these offences, yet states have, etc…

    Apparently according to Scomo standards, Auditors-General have no authority to make judgements about anything.

  49. Love the demographic-bashing (boomers, builders, Australian people in general) from some posters on here.

    Let’s blame the voters for the poor policy judgements made by the Labor leadership in the run up to the last election. Of course it was unbelievably selfish for some boomers, etc. to vote against Labor’s tax grab on their lifetime savings in order to fund some policy ideas (cancer treatment, child care) that looked like they were made up on the run. Of course it was unreasonable for them to expect Labor to explain exactly what it wanted to do with the money it was going to take off them. And what about when Shorten couldn’t even remember the extra tax on superannuation he had proposed: surely that’s a forgivable mistake from an aspiring PM?

    This line of argument is as stupid as the comment made by a senior British Labour figure after that party’s even greatly election catastrophe in December” “the people of the UK don’t deserve Jeremy Corbyn.”

    Politics is first and foremost a market place and, if the voters don’t like your product, that’s your problem, not theirs. Albo completely understands this. Many posters on here don’t seem to: but then, we also seem to have quite a large contingent who reckon Bernie is a shoo-in for President.

    BTW, the worst results for Labor last year appear to have been in the outer suburban areas which, last time I looked, are dominated by the under-40s. The leafier suburbs and the blue collar areas where lots of boomers and builders live seem to have been stronger for Labor.

    To sum up: if you’re looking for scapegoats for Labor’s poor showing in the last election, try starting with the party leadership.

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