Morgan: 54.5-45.5 to Labor

Labor maintains its strong lead in the latest Roy Morgan federal poll, while EMRS finds the state Liberals still well on top in Tasmania.

Roy Morgan published its regular fortnightly (for so it now seems) federal voting intention poll on Wednesday, which recorded an incremental improvement for Labor on their already strong previous result. Labor was credited with a lead of 54.5-45.5 on two-party preferred, out from 54-46 last time, from primary votes of Coalition 37.5% (steady), Labor 38.5% (up one), Greens 11.5% (down one) and One Nation 3% (down half).

Two-party state breakdowns are included as usual, showing Labor leading in New South Wales with 53% (a swing of about 5% compared with the 2019 election, and a gain of one point since the previous poll), in Victoria with 59.5% (a swing of about 6.5%, and a loss of half a point), in Western Australia with 51% (a swing of about 6.5%, and a loss of three-and-a-half points), in South Australia with 57.5% (a swing of about 9%, and a gain of three points) and in Tasmania with 63.5% (a swing of about 7.5%, and a gain of six-and-a-half points. The Coalition’s only lead is in Queensland with 53.5%, a gain of 1.5% since the previous poll but a swing to Labor of around 5% compared with 2019.

The poll was conducted over the past two weekends from a sample of 2735. Assuming this was divided between the states in proportion to population, sub-samples would have ranged from nearly 900 in New South Wales to less than 100 in Tasmania.

Speaking of Tasmania, the first EMRS poll of voting intention in that state since the May election was published yesterday, although it does not capture the impact of the latest developments in the David O’Byrne saga, having been conducted from August 7 to 9. The result is almost identical to that of the election, with the Liberals on 49% (48.7% at the election), Labor on 28% (28.2%) and the Greens on 13% (12.4%). Newly restored Labor leader Rebecca White trails Peter Gutwein 59-29 as preferred premier, compared with 61-26 in the pre-election poll in February. The poll was conducted by phone from a sample of 1000.

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.

1,848 comments on “Morgan: 54.5-45.5 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 37
1 2 3 4 … 37

  2. I think there’s a genuine misunderstanding here about how large migrant families work. Family is often everything to these people, and so they are regularly at each other’s houses, and caring for Nana means visiting every day. Obviously cultural issues like these are not helpful during an outbreak of a highly contagious disease, but it’s not as simple as just telling them to stop doing it.

  3. The ABC over night invited callers in to discuss the Qld premiers comments about the children.
    It was apparent after the first couple of calls that any opinions of support for Palaszczuk were unwelcome.

  4. Hugoaugogosays:
    Friday, September 3, 2021 at 9:30 am

    You are living in Australia you follow our rules.

    Just like we have to follow their rules.

  5. Manchin’s “moderate” faction is losing.

    @BernieSanders tweets

    Rebuilding our crumbling physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, water systems – is important. Rebuilding our crumbling human infrastructure – health care, education, climate change – is more important. No infrastructure bill without the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

  6. Mundo:

    While it would certainly be a relief if this press conference had only called so the premier could talk shit about some journalists, I think it rather more likely we are about to go back into lockdown.

  8. I think there is genuine misunderstanding with two re-emergent bludgers of the black swan situation we find ourselves in.

    “Nothing to see here! Everything is fine” 🙂

  9. And Labor should be breathtakingly audacious too, if that’s what it takes to win the election. Highlight people in their electorates who have died from COVID-19, family permission granted, and get photos of them and testimonials from their family members describing what lovely people they were, and then just simply say that they would probably be alive today if Scott Morrison hadn’t screwed up the response to the pandemic. Brutal, but effective.

    Morgue porn?? Nah. Some things are not fit for public amusement/political exploitation. Horrible deaths are one of them.

  10. Guytaur:

    Why, because Bernie Sanders tweeted something?

    Based on my intermittent observations of the mess that is the current US political situation, Manchin and his allies sadly seem to have the Democrats by the balls right now.

  12. C@t – yes, I have two children of primary school age, thanks for asking. Which is why I have read A LOT about about Covid and children, and the strong consensus is that Covid (even the Delta strain) remains on the whole a fairly mild disease in children (think a really bad cold rather than being intubated in ICU), and that schools remain relatively low risk settings. Not NO risk, of course, but those risks can be managed. Meanwhile keeping kids at hone for extended periods will have deleterious effects on their social development, on their educational progress and on their general well-being, and these issues are even more acute for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Meanwhile, we are expecting parents to basically work two jobs at once (assuming they are working parents), and the evidence is now pretty clear that this additional burden falls disproportionately on women.

  13. @amapresident tweets

    Stopping surgery and other care was necessary in 2020 in a crisis. But there is no excuse for lazy planning now. If we can’t open up without decimating ordinary health care maybe we need more than 80% of our population vaccinated?

  14. Zerlo – “our rules”? I think that comment says more about your views than you realise. Whose rules are “our rules”? White, middle class Aussies?

  15. I worry for the remaining 40% of Australians. Delta will come. The quantum of cases in NSW has made it inevitable. The combination of late vaccine procurement and lax restrictions in NSW has resulted and will result in excess morbidity and mortality. Gladys and Scott are responsible for more Australian deaths than all the military campaigns since WW2 combined.

  16. UK Cartoons:
    Steve Bell on the special relationship and superpowers #JoeBiden #BorisJohnson #Afghanistan #Taliban #AfghanCrisis

    Andy Davey on #GavinWilliamson #BackToSchool

    Dave Brown’s @Independent cartoon… #DominicRaab #Afghanistan #Taliban #AfghanCrisis

    Christian Adams on #BorisJohnson #borisisonholiday

    PAUL THOMAS on a bad day for #Meghan

    Peter Brookes on #USAabandonedAfghanistan #Afghanistan #AfghanistanCrisis #evacuation

  17. Asha

    Only if you think the “moderates” are Republicans and Sanders is bluffing.

    They won’t get their bipartisan ribbon cutting opportunity for campaigning as Democrats without it

  18. If this upcoming press conference is about what I think it is, I don’t think many Queenslanders are going to be joining the “open up” camp anytime soon.

  19. The Victorian spike in cases of 208 cases shows that the best strategy for the other states is boarder closures and they must have trailer swaps for interstate transport. Removal vans are not a priority.

  20. Hugoaugogosays:
    Friday, September 3, 2021 at 9:42 am

    We are living in pandemic world where everyone has to follow guidelines of the experts.

  21. Hugo

    You always seem to jump from people cautioning about risks to assuming that the same people are advocating a permanent lockdown, when in fact they’re largely advocating the same position that you are.

    Can’t wait to get back to school, but I know how difficult (from actual experience) it is to enforce the necessary measures and I’ve also (having a very vested interest) read a lot of the reports from overseas, which seem a lot less rosier than you’re portraying.

    There are kids in ICUs in the UK and US, and in larger numbers.

    This is because (to repeat myself, because you seem to be ignoring this point) they’re the biggest pool of unvaccinated. With everything opening up around them, this makes children very vulnerable to infection and thus more children are getting infected (at that picnic Gladys promises people, the only people sitting around the blanket who are unvaccinated will be children).

    The more life returns to normal for adults, the greater the risks for the unvaccinated, and the largest pool of unvaccinated will be children. The more children who get infected, the more likely it is that there were will be children in the ICU and that some of these will die.

    It’s not a fanciful scenario – it’s what’s happening now, in other parts of the world.

    Any ‘re opening’ MUST take this into account, particularly as the disadvantaged children you’re using to care about will be the most vulnerable of this vulnerable group. (And, guess what! the task of nursing even the minor cases will also fall disproportionately on women).

    I repeat, because you keep making assumptions long after they’ve been refuted – I’m wanting students back in my classrooms as soon as it’s humanly possible.

  22. @amapresident tweets

    If closing private and public hospitals for surgery and other care is our plan for living with #covid then I suggest to @GregHuntMP and national cabinet that they need to go back to the drawing board. A planned reopening needs a modeled funded and realistic plan for healthcare.

  24. Dan fell for the ‘it’s unfair for these areas with no cases to be closed down’ spiel and locked down Melbourne harder than the regions.

    So COVID spread to the regions.

    Dan’s problem appears to be that he tries to be TOO reasonable at times. It’s why he opened up Victoria originally more quickly than he should have, and we had the second wave.

  25. Out of curiousity, I’ve been asking a few of my relatively politically disengaged friends their thoughts on opening QLD’s borders. The general response was utter bewilderment that anyone would even consider the idea. “What, so we can become like NSW!?”

    Interestingly, I saw a Courier Mail article on Facebook a few days ago, reporting on a very tragic story about a woman who suffered a miscarriage after being denied entry into Queensland from NSW and being left homeless as a result. I went into the comments, expecting that – being the Courier Mail – they would mostly be filled with stuff about how heartless the QLD government is. Instead, while there was genuine sympathy for what happened to the poor woman, the vast majority of comments were absolutely in support of the governments decision and in keeping the borders closed.

  28. Hugoaugogo says:
    Friday, September 3, 2021 at 9:13 am

    This Morgan poll is another data point ……

    Morrison could go this year, as soon as the vax targets are reached. But reaching the targets will not in themselves reduce the cases straight away. The unvaccinated cohorts will still be very numerous. So if he goes while contagion is taking off, he will certainly lose heavily in both WA and QLD. So my hunch is he won’t be doing that.

    If he waits until 2022, then he will have to sweat through January before calling an election. (No-one would campaign in January!! No voters would pay any attention.) If the election is called at the end of January, just after Australia Day, then the earliest practical date is in March.

    By 2022, the electorate will be keen to get through the election and get it done. Delay will not likely help Morrison. Delay would be just one more frustration to add to all the others. So March. 5th March is the first Saturday. Sounds like Plan A. If things are still going off the rails in the new year, Morrison will be tempted to procrastinate. But that will likely only make things worse for his prospects.

    Anecdotally, I think the Liberals are rooted in WA in any case. Voters do not trust them at all on covid. The hostility is barely concealed at all.

  29. I am pleased for you Asha. It will come, but I hope it is as late as when the entire population of Queensland have access to vaccination, including children.

  30. “From today, the number of communities in the Victoria – New South Wales border bubble will be reduced, and there will be fewer permitted reasons to cross the border.

    Victorian health authorities said with more than 1,000 new cases per day and a trajectory of exponential growth, the risk NSW posed was too great.”

    This from the ABC “the risk from NSW is to great” You got to be joking. Then they write this a paragraph down.

    “Victoria’s daily case count has risen sharply this week, going from 73 cases from tests taken on Monday, to 119 on Tuesday, 176 on Wednesday, and 208 from tests on Thursday.”

    They have lost the plot. Victoria is as bad at lockdowns and trace and tracking as it has always been. I hope Dan starts talking about a ring of steel around Melbourne again… we are going to need it.

  32. Senator Murray Watt
    @MurrayWatt
    ·
    2m
    15 mins into Health #Estimates and Minister Richard Colbeck reveals the Govt’s “new plan” to ensure hospitals cope with COVID has actually been around for 18 mths. Then why did they wait till this week to ask States about ICU capacity? Why are they always so slow to act?

  34. Zoomster – sorry, I don’t mean to have a go at you – I don’t doubt your professionalism and care, and I’d further add that teachers and school staff across the world have been nothing short of amazing throughout the pandemic, including at the schools of my own children. I’m merely pointing out that keeping schools closed brings its own problems, and it’s not entirely cut and dried that it’s even doing much or anything to slow the spread of Covid. There are many on here (not necessarily you) who regularly argue the “think of the children” angle, when the evidence is pretty strong that Covid remains a disease that children are less badly affected by, and yet we are asking sacrifices of them out of proportion to that risk.

  37. The spat between the AMA and Fed Health (Brendan Murphy) is getting a little willing.

    blockquote>AMA President
    @amapresident
    ·
    1h
    If closing private and public hospitals for surgery and other care is our plan for living with #covid then I suggest to @GregHuntMP and national cabinet that they need to go back to the drawing board. A planned reopening needs a modeled funded and realistic plan for healthcare.

  38. As a Brisbanite I’m appaled by the treatment AP is getting in this presser. Gladys get softballed every media conference, but AP is getting hammered by journalists after making a principled stand RE child vaccination coverage. What the actual f***.

    Here I thought a politician’s job was to look after the people who elect them, not business interests after ‘re-opening’. These journalists are clearly drinking whatever coolaid the LNP is serving up.

    Keep your glorious LNP and living with covid, I’m happy in my cave up here.

  39. The health system is already affected by staff shortages. This will be made far more difficult as the caseload rises. The original covid response was ‘flatten the curve’ to protect the health service. Protection of the health system – all those who work in it and otherwise rely on it – remains an absolute priority. It’s a priority that’s not compatible with a partially immunised population and proliferating cases.

    Basically, the LNP hope we’ve all forgotten about the health system. We haven’t. I have an ageing parent with a serious respiratory illness right now. (Not covid!) If she needed to go to hospital, and covid was widespread, she would likely not be admitted. The health system meets basic needs in the community. It should be placed first. We know the LNP will not do that.

    Last year I had a medical episode that required treatment in hospital. I was admitted and treated and released after about a week. If covid had been in full flight, I would not have been admitted. The condition I had cannot be treated in the community. I would very likely have died in around August or September last year if matters had been left to the Liberals.

  40. @IhlanMN tweets

    Those saying we weren’t prepared for the climate crisis were right.

    Those saying Trump’s far-right appointees would overturn Roe v. Wade were right.

    Those saying Afghanistan would take decades and cost trillions of dollars were right.

    Trust organizers.

  41. Remember when we were being told the Greens in Germany were a shoe-in, and were being asked to admire their leader because she could do hand stands?

    Apparently her lack of political experience turned out not to be a plus after all….

  42. Hugoaugogo @ #112 Friday, September 3rd, 2021 – 9:39 am

    the strong consensus is that Covid (even the Delta strain) remains on the whole a fairly mild disease in children (think a really bad cold rather than being intubated in ICU), and that schools remain relatively low risk settings.

    Try thinking more than one step down the road. Even if everything you have there is true, the problem is that infected children are going to spread the disease to everybody else they come into contact with.

    Especially while children are 100% unvaccinated. More spread means more variants. More spread with children being the only unprotected cohort means more probability of variants that better attack children.

    Meanwhile keeping kids at hone for extended periods will have deleterious effects on their social development, on their educational progress and on their general well-being, and these issues are even more acute for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Heavily overstated. Or I guess cancel summer break because most kids spend it mostly at home. 😆

  43. @Vic_Rollison
    Proud Aunty. My seven year old niece in Victoria, who has been the most stoic little lockdown home learner through her first two years of school, had to dress up as a superhero today. She went as
    @DanielAndrewsMP wearing glasses and a North Face jacket

  44. No new cases in Queensland! How could the Qld government have the sheer fucking socialist & yes I’ll use the word…LABOR…gall to do such a thing!!!??? It must be some sort of Labor chicanery because Stee Marshall & Pete Gutwein’s mob never get mentioned do they? It’ll be interesting to see that nice Mr Uhlmann’s explanation to us tonight.

  45. Guytaur – that is a terrible argument. Are you seriously suggesting we should keep schools closed (which we are only doing ostensibly to stop the Covid spread) so that the, say, 5% of kids who are victims of bullying (probably a high estimate) can feel safe? What about the ones who don’t like getting up in the morning? Should we keep schools closed for them too? What about the ones with learning difficulties who don’t like school? Why don’t we just abolish schools altogether? I generally quite like your posts, but I don’t think you’ve really thought this one through.

    Think about it another way. What about those kids from abusive or otherwise difficult homes for whom school is a much-needed sanctuary?

  49. The main pandemic management point about masses of children behaving like masses of children in schools is that they are vectors. Some proportion of the infections they catch, carry and distribute will kill people, put them into isolation or give people Long Covid. What proportion? Under what scenarios?

    We routinely get infections that our grandkids picked up in childcare or at school.

    So, several scenarios need to be considered here:
    1. All the adults who convey children to and from school in buses and trains.
    2. All the adults to mind, teach, feed and clean up children in the institutions.
    3. All the adults the children go home to.

Comments Page 3 of 37
1 2 3 4 … 37

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *