As brought to you by The Australian, Newspoll maintains its sedentary ways in its latest poll, which repeats the previous result three weeks ago in recording a dead head on two-party preferred. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 37%, while the Coalition on 42%, the Greens on 10% and One Nation on 3% are all unchanged. Despite a seemingly difficult week for Scott Morrison, he gains one on approval to 64% and drops one on disapproval to 32% and widens his lead as preferred prime minister from 57-29 to 61-26, as Anthony Albanese drops three on approval to 38% and rises two on disapproval to 45%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1504.
There was also a poll on Friday from Roy Morgan, which sometimes publishes its regular federal voting intention polling and sometimes doesn’t. In this case Labor was credited with a bare lead of 50.5-49.5, from primary votes of Coalition 40%, Labor 34.5%, the Greens 13% and One Nation 3.5%. The poll was conducted over the previous two weekends online and by phone from a sample of 2824.
Between Newspoll, Roy Morgan and Essential Research, there are now three pollsters who rate the situation as steady of with Labor fractionally ahead. This is reflected in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, now updated with the above results on both the voting intention and leadership rating trends, which has Labor edging ahead to a 50.2-49.8 lead.
LOD
I don’t know what others do, but I copy their text and then paste it within blockquote tags like so:
<blockquote>
How do you reply to someones comment so their comment is also visible in the reply? haha
</blockquote>
Which appears as
You should include their name above/below the quote of course.
I believe some people use a plugin that provides such a function.
Bludgertrack on fire, William.
It’s very gratifying to see that the vote shares of the misfit ON and No Windmills Parties are stagnating and the “other” vote is decaying. This is related to the pandemic and heralds a very poor showing by the micro/misfit/outlaw groups in the WA election.
Not too bad of a result generally speaking.
“Better PM” as the Australia calls it is pretty irrelevant, even though they run it with their headlines focus. When the question is basically who do you prefer as prime minister or something like that, of course more times than not the guy who has never been Prime Minister and hasn’t had a whole lot of media coverage the last year is going to be well behind.
Labor’s primary vote at 37 which is 4ish+ points up from the last election. That’s impressive in on itself. People are going back to Labor steadily. Possibly a rebound from Queensland / WA as one of the other polls showed a rise in QLD / WA Labor polling, if so thats important for the Labor Party.
As for 2PP. Stable at 50/50. Next couple of months will be interesting.
DisplayName
Ooo. That does the job. Thanks.
And, then there were three!
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/brittany-higgins-to-make-formal-statement-to-police-over-alleged-rape/news-story/11ecbae5b81b87cf33244553e7167527
Still 50-50. And it doesn’t look like the coalition will pull ahead any time soon with scandals aplenty on the horizon.
You can use i instead of “block quote” and b for bold
thus
Bears?
Blind mice?
Wise monkeys?
Kings of Orient?
Sides to a triangle?
Slips?
People still stupid enough to vote for LNP? my god this country is dumb.
Remember in 2019 Bill Shorten was 60 newspolls infront.
Ipso facto, 50:50 is a winning position for Scomo.
It’ll be interesting to see how the scandals play out.
Labor has 2 weeks to do something in parliament until the vaccine rollout starts and then the sugar hit budget prep.
It feels like this year is already disapearing.
That is a rock solid primary trend for Labor, and apparently with no correlation to any events. Must be a few in the government starting to get the heebie-jeebies. Nothing they do seems to stop its relentless rise.
🙂
Yep. That’s the attitude that’s gonna win voters back.
If there’s one positive thing I can take away from current polling is it is obvious that the spike in Coalition support was merely a COVID bounce and such a bounce is subsiding. Despite having a good year for the most part and receiving little opposition during the worst of the pandemic, the scoreboard is somewhat tied.
I also note that there’s some new energy in Albanese’s step. I don’t know if he just had a well-rested Summer, or if he was given a talking-to by backbenchers or power-brokers but he’s been a lot more visible and on-message. Which is important because his personal numbers are way too low and while Opposition Leaders are often disadvantaged on satisfaction and PPM ratings, if there’s too much of a deficit, it can make their support soft and it easier for the other side to paint them with a negative brush at the election. So, keep it up and we’ll see if some change happens over the next few months.
Of course, while the tone of this post is more positive, I should make it clear that these numbers aren’t great either. If this is the position of the Morrison Government going into the election, they will most likely win. So there’s a lot of hard work ahead of us and frankly I am still not confident but I am a bit more optimistic than I was just a couple of months ago.
More on the report from the Australian about an alleged third victim:

One of the things that struck me about Ms Higgins report was how she felt a heavy weight on her leg and couldn’t move (I’m going by memory here). That made me think that the attacker knew what he was doing and had likely done it before.
Rape is usually not about sex. There’s normally a pattern of behaviour, there’s normally more than one victim. We saw it with the sexual assault of children. We also saw it with the various celebrities now in gaol.
When an accusation of sexual assault is made it can be extremely difficult for either party to prove they’re telling the truth, and so people may take sides for various emotional reasons (there being no better example than the allegations of sexual assault levelled at Julian Assange). But, when you see other victims come forward with similar stories, then you know the alleged rapist is very likely guilty.
Another victim of the alleged perpetrator has come forward?
I wasn’t aware of this when I looked at GG’s post. I couldn’t see from the link what the relevance of three was, hence my flippancy.
In fact, I couldn’t open the link as I don’t subscribe to the Australian.
Sorry if I’ve caused any offence to anyone.
Rational Leftist says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 12:09 am
They are what they are, society killers and corruption, capitalism.
Rational Leftist….
The Labor PV has improved notably. If this improvement is taking place in QLD and WA, as Morgan suggest, then Labor are getting closer to a win. The current pronounced distaste for the Liberals in WA might subdue their federal vote, which would be a remarkable development the State’s political history.
If the results an election were to resemble Morgan’s polling, then the House would be hung, but Labor would have the most seats, at 74. The LNP would muster 71. The independents would have a great deal of grunt, but 4 of them are basically sworn to support the LNP, which would mean the Tories could rely on 75 votes. There would be 2 further cross-bench votes – the Green and Andrew Wilkie. Would they favour Labor?Probably, but not certainly.
A lot of action lies ahead.The Greens will inevitably try to upset Labor. There will be a Labor-phobic campaign by the LNP and the media, and Covid will be a factor, no doubt.
I think David Walker at Club Troppo nails it in Cracking the code: How to tell what News Corp really thinks about the price of links.
I don’t really do twitter, but I follow a few and checked in just now. In the section “What’s happening” I saw #scottytherapistprotector. It’s clickable. Lots of people using it.
Oh, and I tried posting that Club Troppo link to Facebook, but it was blocked.
#libspill has trended on Twitter pretty much every week since 2010.
Zerlo
Name calling has never won an election and never will and there is some justification for the polls being 50-50 since for most people the economy is looking pretty good and the virus is being managed but the real test for the government will come after they try to close down jobkeeper and jobseeker.
Thank you Mexicanbeemer.
If voters aren’t supporting you, that’s your failure not theirs.
Late Riser says Monday, February 22, 2021 at 12:47 am
I haven’t seen it, but #prick has been up there for hours
Mexicanbeemer says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 12:53 am
Being nice and kind isn’t going to win an election either. People need to wake up and smell the roses.
Rational Leftist @ #23 Sunday, February 21st, 2021 – 11:51 pm
Yeah. You’re no doubt right. But #scomo is trending too. (Is that the right term for a # that appears under “What’s happening”?) In any case ALL the tweets under #scomo are negative. I haven’t spotted anything supportive of the PM. This isn’t going away soon.
Zerlo, do us all a solid: When the election is called, please don’t do any campaigning for Labor. Just stay home and post on here.
This would appear to have been our Prime Minister’s theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR17vCdOpO3eebyxUFBngANtGqZ90J-ez7S9tZ-cAHcff-suaGv_nhxaV0I&v=0Vyj1C8ogtE&feature=youtu.be
Zerlo
The target for any name calling should be the government, not the voters.
Rational Leftist says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 1:05 am
How about, bugger off, this is public blog.
Mexicanbeemer says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 1:19 am
The government is going to ignore you.
The priority for the government is to bully social media and search giants.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/frydenberg-facebook-negotiating-through-the-weekend-on-new-media-laws-20210219-p573zp.html
Zerlo
Election campaigning is about attacking the government’s record.
Mexicanbeemer says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 1:53 am
That not going to work, since Murdoch getting paid by Google and free advertising on social media.
Labor is and has lost the election.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/02/21/newspoll-50-50-20/#comment-3560598
Calling every voter who votes the Coalition stupid, as you did, won`t win any votes. It just puts voters off. Try “The Coalition is not on the side of the ordinary Australian like you, because …”.
Tom the first and best says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 1:56 am
Facts never won an election in Australia, you either in bed with Murdoch or you lose.
Zerlo
Really, how do you explain Andrews success or Bracks success in 1999?
Elections are about the government’s record and whether the opposition is creditable.
bc says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 12:46 am
I think David Walker at Club Troppo nails it in Cracking the code: How to tell what News Corp really thinks about the price of links.
News Corp have enlisted the Liberals and extorted a few million from google. It’s as corrupt as can be.
Mexicanbeemer says:
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 2:01 am
State issues are often times different from Federal elections.
Incumbents traditionally have been supported by public.
Zerlo
My point was on how those elections were won.
I can’t believe there was actually a debate happening earlier over whether or not it’s a good idea to insult voters.
Morning all. Who would have guessed an embattled PM brought forward the start of the Covid vaccinations by a day to crowd out the media air from any “other stories”. What were those rape allegations again? Whatever they were, its good to see the PM was not distracted by answering questions about them.
Also touching to see the affection with which our PM held the arthritic hand of the first vaccine recipient in his vice like grip until she grimaced in pain. She was so much more than a mere prop for a photo shoot. She said she was surprised so many people turned up for it. I wonder if she ever consented to the whole stunt before the cameras turned up to St Menzies Nursing Home.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-21/australia-covid-vaccinations-begin-first-shots-administered/13176288
Scott Morrison’s commanding intellect and presence has given us without a choice a dud choice:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/covid-vaccines-choice-pfizer-astrazeneca/2021/02/20/0beaceb0-5f2f-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html
If Labor primary vote is near 37% that is government territory ,what type of government minority or majority election night will tell
So once again we get a newspoll that doesn’t show the statistical randomness one expects in a poll based on a random sample.
Scott,
Labor have to learn how not to lose vote share during an election campaign. And maybe even improve on it a bit. THEN they will form government.
C@t all three stop you dying, any will be good enough for me.
Socrates,
Scotty latched onto Jane(?) when she accidentally reversed the “V-sign”; she seemed uncertain which way it should go (as did Churchill, at first.) Hopefully the photographers present got the shot and release it.