Newspoll: 50-50

Scott Morrison gains further momentum in his remarkable but apparently voteless approval rating turnaround.

Courtesy of The Australian, the first Newspoll in three weeks is consistent with the last in suggesting the coronavirus surge in approval for Scott Morrison in translating into only a modest dividend on voting intention, on which the two parties are now tied after the Coalition opened up a 51-49 lead last time. On the primary vote, the Coalition is down a point to 41%, Labor up two to 36%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation down one to 4%. Despite that, Scott Morrison has gained further on his huge approval rating boost in the last poll, up seven to 68% — a level not seen since Kevin Rudd reached 70% in late 2008 — while his disapproval rating is down seven to 28%. Anthony Albanese is respectively steady at 45% and down two to 34% (I assume — the report says 36%, but this would be unchanged on last time), and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is now 56-28, out from 53-29. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1519.

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.

827 comments on “Newspoll: 50-50”

Comments Page 15 of 17
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  1. Well the CovidSafe app has been hacked already and scammers are sending out fake notices via it. Is this some sort of world record?

  2. The nice Chinese Ambassador to Australia has made a sweeping series of direct and indirect threats to wreck the chances of the Australian economy recovering.

    The real civilizational, political, economic and geo-strategic damage inflicted by Trump and mini-me lackeys like Morrison, aided and abetted by fuckwits like Johnson, is now being laid bare.

    Shorter Xi: if you don’t kowtow you’re rooted.

    https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1908570/china-envoy-threatens-australia-boycott-over-virus-inquest-demand

  4. My favourite in the children’s hospital as a student 40+ years ago was
    5pt syndrome. Instantly sackable these days

  6. CC

    Reported in The Age online yesterday….

    The global death toll from coronavirus has passed 200,000. There are more than 2.8 million known cases of infection but more than 798,000 people have recovered, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally

  9. I doubt if Covidsafe has been hacked.
    It is more likely a scattergun scam just like the one that tells me the security of my NAB account is at risk. This is odd as I have never had a NAB account

  11. Today’s Mumble on Scotty’s high approval ratings and party votes at the election.

    There’s a general assumption among politics-watchers that high approval ratings bode well for elections, and that party support will follow when push comes to shove. The last federal election provided mild evidence for that, with Morrison always easily ahead of Bill Shorten on personal measures, and then that last-minute miracle. But election 2019 was an outlier on several fronts (including opinion poll fails for possibly six months, or even longer).

    The usual dynamic is the opposite: when a party leader is miles ahead of an opponent, it seems to artificially inflate his or her party’s vote. Then, during the election campaign, both measures significantly decline. A dramatic example came in 2001, after the Tampa, September 11 and children overboard, when John Howard entered the October campaign hugely dominant personally, and also with double-digit two-party-preferred voting-intention leads. That government ended up, on election day, with a vote of 51 to Labor’s 49.

    Kevin Rudd’s messianic standing pushed a similar trajectory in 2007. Labor went into that campaign on around 56 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote but its share fell during the campaign. The party’s eventual 52.7 per cent was lower than had been registered in any survey since Rudd took over as leader a year earlier.

    http://insidestory.org.au/the-man-the-times-the-party/

  13. Oakeshott Country @ #709 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 6:57 pm

    I doubt if Covidsafe has been hacked.
    It is more likely a scattergun scam just like the one that tells me the security of my NAB account is at risk. This is odd as I have never had a NAB account

    Yes I constantly get those for Commonwealth Bank even though I haven’t had an account with them in over 15 years.

  15. Oakeshott Country @ #711 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 8:57 pm

    I doubt if Covidsafe has been hacked.
    It is more likely a scattergun scam just like the one that tells me the security of my NAB account is at risk. This is odd as I have never had a NAB account

    There’s every possibility you are correct. I was simply relaying what the Channel 9 News broadcast tonight.

  16. “I doubt if Covidsafe has been hacked.
    It is more likely a scattergun scam just like the one that tells me the security of my NAB account is at risk. This is odd as I have never had a NAB account”

    Yes, the hoax text is a phishing attempt not a hack.

  17. A common admission diagnosis was “acopia”, ie inability to cope. They discourage that now, mainly for funding reasons.

  18. Bushfire Bill @ #696 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 8:44 pm

    If you believe the virus originated in Wuhan, you’re a racist bastard, redneck White Australianista.

    No, that’s not the case. If you believe the virus originated in Wuhan, you are possibly correct – although it would perhaps be better to keep your mind open, as this is not by any means proven.

    But if you post offensive racial stereotypes about the chinese – their behavioir, habits and state of civilization – then yes, you are a racist bastard, redneck White Australian.

    Some of us can tell the difference.

  20. Considerable advertising for the app on MasterChef tonight.

    Unusually, it’s authorised by the CMO, not the normal “Australian government”.

    Stuart Robert is supposed to be in charge of the app, not the CMO. Where does the buck actually stop if things go wrong?

  22. This is a public service announcement. Well, it should be in so far as it should settle the argument about the origins and the genesis of COVID-19. In 2019!

    No matter where you go online these days, there’s bound to be discussion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick. A new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.

    The reassuring findings are the result of genomic analyses conducted by an international research team, partly supported by NIH. In their study in the journal Nature Medicine, Kristian Andersen, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA; Robert Garry, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans; and their colleagues used sophisticated bioinformatic tools to compare publicly available genomic data from several coronaviruses, including the new one that causes COVID-19.

    The researchers began by homing in on the parts of the coronavirus genomes that encode the spike proteins that give this family of viruses their distinctive crown-like appearance. (By the way, “corona” is Latin for “crown.”) All coronaviruses rely on spike proteins to infect other cells. But, over time, each coronavirus has fashioned these proteins a little differently, and the evolutionary clues about these modifications are spelled out in their genomes.

    The genomic data of the new coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 show that its spike protein contains some unique adaptations. One of these adaptations provides special ability of this coronavirus to bind to a specific protein on human cells called angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2). A related coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in humans also seeks out ACE2.

    Existing computer models predicted that the new coronavirus would not bind to ACE2 as well as the SARS virus. However, to their surprise, the researchers found that the spike protein of the new coronavirus actually bound far better than computer predictions, likely because of natural selection on ACE2 that enabled the virus to take advantage of a previously unidentified alternate binding site. Researchers said this provides strong evidence that that new virus was not the product of purposeful manipulation in a lab. In fact, any bioengineer trying to design a coronavirus that threatened human health probably would never have chosen this particular conformation for a spike protein.

    The researchers went on to analyze genomic data related to the overall molecular structure, or backbone, of the new coronavirus. Their analysis showed that the backbone of the new coronavirus’s genome most closely resembles that of a bat coronavirus discovered after the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, the region that binds ACE2 resembles a novel virus found in pangolins, a strange-looking animal sometimes called a scaly anteater. This provides additional evidence that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 almost certainly originated in nature. If the new coronavirus had been manufactured in a lab, scientists most likely would have used the backbones of coronaviruses already known to cause serious diseases in humans.

    So, what is the natural origin of the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic? The researchers don’t yet have a precise answer. But they do offer two possible scenarios.

    In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.

    The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.

    https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/

    The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 . Andersen KG, Rambaut A, Lipkin WI, Holmes EC, Garry RF. Nat Med, 17 March 2020. [Epub ahead of publication]

    I honestly can’t see why people are being so aggressive in their defense of China. All the evidence points to the virus germinating there. They’re just the facts. If it had been proven to have happened somewhere else then that would also simply be a statement of fact, not a racist sentiment. It is offensive to be accused of racism simply because you are laying out the evidence.

  23. Where does the buck actually stop if things go wrong?

    The Minister takes any credit and the public servant gets any blame if things go wrong.

  24. Player One @ #722 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 9:06 pm

    Bushfire Bill @ #696 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 8:44 pm

    If you believe the virus originated in Wuhan, you’re a racist bastard, redneck White Australianista.

    No, that’s not the case. If you believe the virus originated in Wuhan, you are possibly correct – although it would perhaps be better to keep your mind open, as this is not by any means proven.

    But if you post offensive racial stereotypes about the chinese – their behavioir, habits and state of civilization – then yes, you are a racist bastard, redneck White Australian.

    Some of us can tell the difference.

    You’ve been asked not to persist with this offensive rubbish by the Moderator.

    But, as ususal, neither you nor the Moderator gives a fuck.

  25. OC:

    I doubt if Covidsafe has been hacked.
    It is more likely a scattergun scam just like the one that tells me the security of my NAB account is at risk. This is odd as I have never had a NAB account

    The reason that scammers adopt this (untargeted) approach in Australia is that the concentration of customers in the four big banks means the hist rate is high enough to be cost effective.

    The App has not been ‘hacked’, the scam messages are simply text messages. They are not even targeted at people who’ve downloaded the App.

    The hit rate for the scam messages will currently be very poor; as more people download the App, it will increase.

  31. That hoax message doesn’t even really seem like a phishing attempt, more like plain old disruption/disinformation/outrage generation.

  34. Telethon Kids Institute
    ·
    Our researchers have had a lot of questions from you – our community – about whether kids should be going back to school for term two. In turn, they wanted to ensure they were arming parents and carers with the reliable, evidence-based information to make an informed decision.

    Two of our infectious diseases specialists and a researcher from The University of Queensland have examined the data around kids and coronavirus. Here’s what their research is telling us.

    https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-its-safe-for-kids-to-go-back-to-school-137064?fbclid=IwAR1FTRJgkr-IWzf5NVXQDDUuo-z_i4vk81EhBFoR8JcNZs4DgJqBmuWM5mQ

  37. Diogenes:

    A common admission diagnosis was “acopia”, ie inability to cope. They discourage that now, mainly for funding reasons.

    Were there various different classes of “acopia”?

    People do sometimes say “I can’t cope”, I suspect there is rather a difference between that and a resident’s diagnosis of “acopia”

    Automatic analysis of doctors’ notes is a huge challenge BTW (and surgeons seem to be the worst offenders, some even inventing their own patient ID schemes)

  38. What’s the point in posting to pissant partisans on PB most of the time, particularly those that obviously have enough obsession to drag out old stories again and again to try and appeal to their own shallow cabal.

    Weirdly I find myself sympathetic to the Constantly Insufferable for the first time ever here. I believe they are also right about the bats and Yunnan villagers, the latter who it turns out had been getting along fairly OK with both bats and coronavirus at the time, possibly for quite a while.

    Could be that it’s another factor, like massive air pollution in industrialised urban zones or other immunologic, genetic, metabolic or environmental factors, that is a big part of the morbidity and mortality of many people newly exposed. After all most, we are repeatedly told, are actually not affected too badly, to the point where quite a few don’t even realise they might have been exposed.

    On Viruses, including coronavirus, they are basically everywhere and there is mounting evidence they are integral to ecological system and processes, and as previously stated, factors like ecological changes being wrought by humans can have a profound effect on the presence or emergence of “new” viruses.

    Our disruption and degradation of natural systems and reduction in biodiversity are likely altering the global virome and leaving ourselves as more of a target. We will never remove them from the ecological systems upon which we and all life depends. We can only manage, hopefully, how they affect us.

    From researchers at Marie Bashir Institute of Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, at Sydney Uni, online last Nov.

    Trends in Microbiology – Opinion
    An Ecosystems Perspective on Virus Evolution and Emergence
    https://doi-org/10.1016/j.tim.2019.10.010

    Highlights

    The high abundance and diversity of viruses in nature, often in the apparent absence of disease, suggests that they are naturally embedded into global ecosystems at all ecological scales.

    Studies of virus ecology and evolution need to refocus to understand the role played by viruses in global ecosystems rather than only on pathogens that emerge following host jumping.

    Viruses alter interactions between host individuals, populations, and ecosystems, impacting ecosystem health, resilience, and function. Host ecology in turn impacts viral abundance and diversity.

    Viruses account for extensive biodiversity and have abundant links within ecosystems. An ecosystem with higher diversity has higher functional redundancy and is more resilient to change. The natural virome may therefore be beneficial to ecosystem function.

    —

    Outstanding Questions

    How does host ecology (such as behaviour, diet, trophic level, intra/interspecific interactions, and population density) impact viral diversity and abundance?

    What impact do viruses (both pathogenic and nonpathogenic) have on hosts at individual, population, community, and ecosystem scales?

    How frequently does cross-species transmission result in overt disease?

    How will changes in abiotic conditions as a result of climate change, such as in average temperature and rainfall, impact viral diversity and abundance? What impact will this have on disease emergence?

    What role does the virome play in ecosystem resilience and health? How often are viruses beneficial to ecosystems?

  40. If you believe the virus originated in Wuhan, you’re a racist bastard

    How about “if you believe it matters at this point where the virus originated, you’re an idiot”?

    The virus is everywhere (except maybe Svalbard and Antarctica).

    The future reservoir of infections is likely to be the USA and Europe.

  42. WTI oil is down once again today ( by 18%) and I cannot see any change to the storage constraints that caused last weeks chaotic fall into negative territory for May contract last week. I reckon that the June contract will also go negative and it will go negative sooner than the May contract did (so about the 15th of May). Demand is not going to rise to meet the supply within a month despite the OPEC cuts.

  43. Quoll, was that you last week, who phoned Phillip Clarke on the ABC Night Line program, arguing that air pollution was the cause of Corvid-19?

    It’s just that I’ve not heard of that novel and brave proposition since, from anyone but yourself.

  44. Fulvio Sammut @ #743 Monday, April 27th, 2020 – 9:38 pm

    Quoll, was that you last week, who phoned Phillip Clarke on the ABC Night Line program, arguing that air pollution was the cause of Corvid-19?

    It’s just that I’ve not heard of that novel and brave proposition since, from anyone but yourself.

    I have seen a scientific study that found Covid-19 particles can stay suspended longer and penetrate farther in air that had a high count of particulate pollution.

    Don’t have a link, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

  45. I’ve worked out my position on the app: I’ll be downloading it – just as soon as our elected representatives get a look at the legislation. 🙂

  47. Mexicanbeemer says:
    Monday, April 27, 2020 at 7:23 pm

    Guytaur
    Bernie calls himself a socialist and his local fans and i take it that you are one of them did talk up the idea of American embracing socialism.

    Both the Australian left and right love American politics but Australia does many things differently and i would say in many cases better than Americans do it with the health system being one of them.
    ——————————————————-

    And of course you’ve been to Canada and investigated its “everything bulk-billed,” no co-payments, no gaps, all diagnostic tests covered, “specialists included” system. Private hospitals are rare and there is no private health and hospital insurance because it isn’t necessary. Canadians have not seen doctors’ or hospital bills for more than half a century.

    And you’ve come to the conclusion that Australians don’t deserve something like that because you’re satisfied with your two-tier, expensive, wasteful public-private travesty that is called Medicare.

    Stop defending the indefensible and go out and campaign for real universal medicare.

    You could also do some research for a change and look at the NHS in the UK and the health systems of most European countries. You can take along davidwh, that other apologist for the private health insurance and private hospital industries. Then tell us why you prefer a dogs-breakfast that serves only vested interests and not the average Australian.

    You will be shocked, shocked, I know, to learn that full-on Medicare when it was introduced in Canada more than 50 years ago was passed by a minority government. And guess what, the current minority Trudeau government will probably soon introduce a national pharmacare program and it will also be passed into law by Parliament.

    .

  49. This is another very good discussion on Qanda. I reckon the best thing for the show was Tony Jones’s departure.

  50. Pollution made COVID-19 worse. Now, lockdowns are clearing the air.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/pollution-made-the-pandemic-worse-but-lockdowns-clean-the-sky/

    “When new evidence emerged this week that dirty air makes COVID-19 more lethal, it surprised no one who has followed the science of air pollution—but the scale of the effect was striking. The study, which must still undergo peer review for publication, found that the tiny pollutant particles known as PM2.5, breathed over many years, sharply raise the chances of dying from the virus.

    Researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed data on PM2.5 levels and COVID-19 deaths from about 3,000 U.S. counties covering 98 percent of the U.S. population. Counties that averaged just one microgram per cubic meter more PM2.5 in the air had a COVID-19 death rate that was 15 percent higher.

    “If you’re getting COVID, and you have been breathing polluted air, it’s really putting gasoline on a fire,” said Francesca Dominici, a Harvard biostatistics professor and the study’s senior author.

    That’s because the fine particles penetrate deep into the body, promoting hypertension, heart disease, breathing trouble, and diabetes, all of which increase complications in coronavirus patients. The particles also weaken the immune system and fuel inflammation in the lungs and respiratory tract, adding to the risk both of getting COVID-19 and of having severe symptoms.”

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