Polls: Newspoll breakdowns, seat polls and trust in government

Newspoll finds South Australia joining Western Australia as the state where the Coalition stands to be hardest hit, corroborated to some extent by a variable batch of seat polls.

The Australian today brings us Newspoll’s quarterly breakdowns, which most notably provide state-level federal voting intention results from three months’ combined polling with credible sample sizes. These find Labor with a lead of 54-46 in New South Wales (out from 53-47 in the last quarter of 2021, a swing of around 6%); 58-42 in Victoria (out from 56-44, a swing of around 3%), 53-47 in Western Australia (in from 55-45, a swing of around 8.5%) and 59-41 in South Australia (out from 55-45, a swing of around 8%), but with the Coalition leading 54-46 in Queensland (unchanged, a swing of around 4.5%).

There are also some interesting movements from last quarter to this by age and income. Labor now leads 60-40 among the 35-49s, out from 54-46; is at 50-50 among the 50-64s, after trailing 53-47 last time; and has narrowed the gap among the 65-plus cohort from 60-40 to 58-42. Conversely, the Coalition’s deficit among the 18-34s narrows from 69-31 to 66-34. Labor also now leads among all four income cohorts, including a 55-45 lead among those on $150,000 and above, after trailing 53-47 last time. The poll records no gender gap on two-party preferred, with Labor’s lead among men widening from 52-48 to 55-45 among men and 54-46 to 55-45 among women.

Also out yesterday from the News Corp tabloids were nine federal seat polls from KJC Research, who are something of a mystery outfit except to the extent that they achieved a broadly correct result in a seat poll before the 2020 election in Queensland. The polls were conducted last Thursday and Saturday from samples of 800 apiece – the reporting doesn’t specify, but this could only have been accomplished affordably by means of automated phone polling. A paywalled display of the full results is available here.

The results were a fair bit better overall for the Coalition than the general tenor of polling nationally, with an average swing to Labor of around 2% by my reckoning. By my calculation, the results suggest Labor will gain Reid in New South Wales by 54-46 (a swing of 7%), Swan in Western Australia by 57-43 (a 10% swing) and Boothby in South Australia by 55-45 (a 6% swing), and retain Dunkley in Victoria by 60-40 (a 7% swing) and Gilmore in New South Wales by 53-47 (a 0.5% swing). Conversely, the poll suggests the Liberals will retain Bass in Tasmania by 54-46 (a Liberal swing of 3.5%), the Liberal National Party in Queensland will retain Flynn by 61-39 (a swing of 2.5%) and Longman by 56-44 (a swing of 3%), and – reportedly contrary to both parties’ expectations – the Liberals will retain Chisholm in Victoria by 55-45 (a swing of 4.5%).

Presumably we’ll be hearing quite a bit from KJC Research over the coming months, because it has also conducted a poll of Wentworth for the University of Canberra’s Centre for Change Governance and The Conversation’s Wentworth Project. As reported in The Conversation – which does make clear that this is an automated phone poll, conducted Sunday to Monday from a sample of 1036 – the poll suggests Liberal member Dave Sharma is under serious pressure from independent candidate Allegra Spender, holding a statistically insignificant lead of 51-49 on two-candidate preferred. The primary votes are 42% for Sharma and 27% for Spender, with Labor on 14%, the Greens on 9% and the Liberal Democrats and United Australia Party on 3% apiece.

Also out this week were Roy Morgan results on trust in government, which finds the political right dominating a list of the least trusted Australian political figures (Clive Palmer, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson making up the top five) and Gladys Berejiklian the only conservative with a net positive rating, where she stands alongside Penny Wong, Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek, Mark McGowan, Jacqui Lambie and Adam Bandt. A spike in support for the proposition that the government is doing a good job through 2020 and early 2021 continues to evaporate, although it’s not quite back to the levels it was at pre-pandemic. This is based on an SMS survey conducted nearly a month ago from a sample of 1409.

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.

1,803 comments on “Polls: Newspoll breakdowns, seat polls and trust in government”

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  1. Fulvio:

    Monday, March 28, 2022 at 8:48 pm

    [‘It was a joke, Mavis.’]

    For one who posts so economically, I’m not so sure. You just don’t wish to offend, in my view.

  2. The liberals, nationals I suppose, Hanson, Palmer & now Xenophon. So many to consider putting in last place. I don’t know what to do.

  3. That’s unusually current for the Young Liberals.

    Whoever put that together probably had to explain it so many times.

  5. That young Liberal ad apparently refers to some unpleasantness that happened recently while I wasn’t paying attention.

  7. There has always been bias media outlets and media outlets play to their audience biases but Murdoch has long ceased being a news leader and is now a bandwagon hopper chasing his reactionary audience.

  8. Sohar @ #1751 Monday, March 28th, 2022 – 8:57 pm

    Hollywood and the USA, generally, are a vile mess. Summed up well by Golding.

    Tell me about it. I’m just trying to talk my son down off the ledge because his client tonight was saying that the poor girl in Mayfield, Newcastle, who was stabbed to death last Friday by the man she had an AVO against and who couldn’t escape him because of the housing crisis…deserved it because she pushed him away!

    The reason my son is so cut up about it is because that girl was the best friend of his best friend’s younger sister. He really wanted to clock his client for being such an ignorant pig but he had to restrain himself mightily.

  9. citizen @ #1726 Monday, March 28th, 2022 – 8:02 pm

    With petrol prices so volatile (pun intended), how would motorists know if any temporary cut in fuel excise was being passed on by the oil companies?

    Prices can vary enormously across the country, within cities and even from hour to hour.

    Doubtless Frydenberg will announce that he has told the ACCC to investigate any price gouging by oil companies but even if the ACCC were to act, it would be long after the horse had bolted.

    This is the exact argument that was around at the time when Howard did it. And it’s 100% correct. The fuel companies will just put the price back up again and fudge the reason why.

  12. Looking at the WA Government’s Fuelwatch website I see that the price of diesel (my preferred fuel) within about 10 kms of my home varies by as much as 12c a litre. 

    How will anybody know they are not being ripped off by oil companies? Because Frydenberg tells them?

    I guess Liberal voters will believe anything this corrupt government tells them.

    An excise cut, they say, will be temporary.

    And then the price will most likely go higher still.

    And what difference will 10 cents a litre really make? I bought fuel on Christmas Eve for $1.709 cents a litre. Last week it cost me $2.209. That’s 50 cents difference.

    I’m fortunate that my weekly use is small. I don’t get out much. I’d hate to be a car commuter racking up 50 or more kms a day.

  13. Thanks for the advice as to who to put last on the Senate ticket. It’s usually the liberals last but Xenophon’s special. I usually just go above the line but Nick’s arrival on the scene’s altered that.

  15. @ Cronus:

    “If China is allowed to settle in the Solomons or PNG then any strategy is essentially a moot point as China will already have achieved its aims for a pittance of denial of movement for a pittance.”

    The leaders of both countries need to be told NOW – explicitly, if behind closed doors – that if either of them carry through with their ChiComm deals and that allows the PLA or PLAN to base either warships (inc. subs) or missiles within their territory that by default they will have made themselves a first strike target if there is any kinetic war in North Asia.

  17. “Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish”. Apt intro to an Australian Government ad repeated ever ad break. They should use it for all their ads.

  18. AE, Chronus

    I agree re PNG or the Solomon Islands and China.

    Idiots like Abbott being caught laughing about rising seas lapping at their feet, plus cuts to foreign aid budgets have led to this.

    We can fight back with kindness. We can point out the end result of what happens to other Chinese “friends” like Myanmar when the Chinese call in their debts. We can remind that the ADF provided RAMSI without installing a loyal puppet government. We can commit to restoring former aid levels. We can also make it clear that choosing China means no more RAMSI or Australian aid.

  19. Squizz
    @SquizzSTK
    Morrison worries that Labor has never done a budget but tells us that 3 + 4 = 8

    He needs to borrow Joe Hockey’s 11’s calculator

  20. Sceptic

    Morrison had never been Prime Minister until he knifed Turnbull.

    Will one of the Canberra stenographers ask him why that didn’t exclude him from the top job? 

  21. Andrew_Earlwood says:
    Monday, March 28, 2022 at 9:38 pm

    “MediaWatch makes some startling allegations about NewsCorp – they could be backing Albo..

    https://twitter.com/abcmediawatch/status/1508389700431605760?s=21&t=dHZhbWIfeJDkXzWFBE7v2A”

    Choking back the vomit over Joe Hildebrand’s ‘woke test’. How I despise that simp.
    _______________________
    When at Melbourne Uni he seemed pretty ‘woke’ for those times. But Melbourne Uni was pretty ‘woke’ even back then. Good luck scoring on campus if you are a right winger, especially if you aren’t blessed in the looks department.

    Working for Rupert he’s woken up to wokeness. #mortgage #henchman

  22. Has Morrison ever balanced a budget in his career? As I recall the Libs had doubled the Labor debt even before Covid, so I’m pretty sure he never did.

    He boasted of “stopping the boats” not “stopping the debt”. Because he didn’t.

    I say this because any attempt to deflect questions of economic management to Labor should be turned back to the Prime Rorter.

    He should have been called #ScottyFromBankruptcy after his go as treasurer.

  23. C@t,

    I hadn’t but can only see the “reader” version in safari so could be missing something 🙂

    Sadly Robbie Shakespeare died December 2021 after kidney surgery.

    I’ve been a big fan of the bassist/producer behind Material since the mid-80’s. Laswell produced Sly & Robbie’s Language Barrier and Rhythm Killers during the 80’s. One of Material’s albums – “The Third Power” – was originally intended to be released as a Sly and Robbie album but apparently didn’t work out.

    The most recent thing Laswell did with Sly Dunbar was this….
    Jah Wobble & Bill Laswell: Radioaxiom A Dub Transmission – Bass: The Final Frontier
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th6TcIXuqvA

  25. Re Newscorp ‘backing’ Albo…

    Bludgers may recall 3 1/2 years ago, about the time Turnbull was getting knifed, K Stokes and a Murdoch (don’t recall which one) had a chat.

    Stokes was concerned that Newscorp’s campaign against Turnbull might result in a Shorten govt, if the Coalition were sufficiently damaged by the election.

    The Murdoch reply (WTTE): ‘We can probably live with one term of Labor.’

    IF Albo gets something approaching balance out of Newscorp, and IF Labor wins the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if Newscorp suddenly goes mega-critical of Labor, aiming for a Coalition return at the next election (note – a single term govt hasn’t happened since WW2).

  28. bakunin,
    When you say the name, Bill Laswell, I actually know who you mean!

    Here’s a free version of the Questlove story, with pictures:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/questlove-inspiration-collection.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DODmwfiOMNAo6B_EGKfLdufMc32CqWAd5HK6cuXvVuz-hZekdqTw2lqYeFn5JDIzkwrcj7eFIK6K_3fOJy9y72PC7-If1jxba7slXcbWa9UPbZgml3cwYxvZdlcg610XBZxrOVEbR3iNUuiKt2AJ9qVHxXMnnxyvrtCh90MdSHZwiNqVVlHrEEBkyA2IKU-LkCcw5NCFjZT3IZ4W406NNUO9t_L7-oZld7O5K42eNNfzQueIS5BJQxRJzWkqFqt9POqR-PwMm2x5YmBd0qwLtSNHin0GfpE55w9Qc&smid=url-share

    It’s a visual extravaganza!

  29. Maybe Albo has done the deal with Rupert ? What’s the price for Rupert’s support? Who or what has been sold out ?

  30. Ven says:
    Monday, March 28, 2022 at 10:17 pm
    American liberals are calling on people to stop eating meat and have dal instead
    ——————-
    Works for me! I hardly ever eat meat and lerrvvv dhal….

  32. [‘A former Special Air Service soldier has objected to giving evidence in the Federal Court about his potential involvement in missions in Afghanistan with war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith, on the basis his testimony might incriminate him in an alleged murder.

    Giving evidence in Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation case on Monday, the former soldier known as Person 66 objected to answering a question about how many missions he went on in Afghanistan when the decorated former soldier was his patrol commander.’
    …
    ‘Nicholas Owens, SC, acting for the newspapers, confirmed he was seeking to have the court to compel Person 66 to give the evidence, in spite of his objection. Justice Besanko will hear legal argument on this point on Tuesday morning.’]

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/former-sas-soldier-objects-to-giving-evidence-about-alleged-murder-court-told-20220328-p5a8ij.html

    Oh, dear. It seems things are not going well for Roberts-Smith. Maybe Shellbell could elucidate – the common law privilege against self-incrimination? Reference thereof is made to Section 128(1) of the uniform Evidence Acts. Is Person 66 attempting to hide something? It’s au revoir from him.

  34. “Throughout my relatively long life, I’ve never really ‘despised’ anyone – not even the Growler.”

    Blessed day, Saint Ambrose of Bludger.

  36. Speaking of meat, it appears that the Dog Telegraph is alive and well in these parts.

    Word seems to have gotten out among local mutts that Uncle Bushfire had a whole bunch of rump steak marinated and ready to barbeque last Saturday when an unfortunately timed, last minute RAT test intervened and ruined the evening.

    Not wanting to re-freeze already marinated rump, we ate a piece each on the night, and put the rest in the fridge until this morning, when I barbequed the lot – 6 more steaks (not full pieces, they were cut to size).

    Had Thai beef salad tonight (delicious, with my special sauce), but, before we could get to that, Onnie the Staffie Cross from across the road, Lucy the Jack Russell from the next street, Diesel the Truck Dog, Woofter and Mickey from the new people two doors down, and Rocky the Doodle-Something from around the corner had appeared, requiring steak for lunch.

    My word, good news travels fast in Snoozeville!

  37. LNP greenwashing propaganda ads are at saturation tonight, guess they have to get them in right up to when the election is called.

    I guess we will be spared the budget sell Govt ads this time though

  38. @nath

    When I was on campus, right-wingers only scored if they hung out at the Young Liberals functions.

    You could get quite a bit of money from Clubs & Societies for booze if it was a “club meeting”, the Young Libs were famous for abusing this worse than almost any other club on campus.

    Also easy access to cocaine and general party drugs – hence Alex Turnbull’s tweet that any LNP members aged under about 40 who thought they’d have a go at Grace Tame for the bong photo need to shut their hole before photos of them surface too.

    The other thing the Young Libs parties were famous for was sexual assault (usually swept under the carpet, don’t want to destroy a young man’s legal career etc), but my lawyer suggests that as I was never there myself this is just hearsay and I don’t comment further.

    Maybe it’s changed, this was over 20 years ago now.

  39. @expat

    Clubs and societies at uni was full of strange things. We formed the Video Appreciation Society in an irony move as those other societies had their noble intentions but just got union $$ for parties and booze – except for those voted to send union money to the IRA and the ANC.

    We were unapologetic, money to rent videos, snacks and beer

  40. “Murdoch supported Rudd in 2007 and Hawke in 1983. Why not Albo in 2022?”

    Yeah nah. The 2007 federal election Newscorp was cheering for the Liberals. The last Howard budget Newscorp was championing how great it was in the Australian. Newscorp was also banging on about the Beattie council amalgamations may cost Labor federally in Queensland. Apart from Noosa and a bit of resistance in Redcliffe no one really cared. Labor gained nine seats in Queensland. It was right at the end when it was a forgone conclusion that a couple of editorials did go for Labor.

  41. @Dr Fumbles

    Clubs & Societies for me was a master class in dodgy accounting. So much mild white collar crime required to balance the books when you got to audit time and realised none of the receipts added up.

    Most people didn’t set out to commit crimes like this, but it always ended up being necessary. Especially because if you were hosting a function with an entry fee and took cash on the door, you were theoretically supposed to give everyone a receipt, but that never happened, so you had all this cash and no record of who’d given it to you… and then… Anyone got good ideas for fake names to write on all these receipt stubs?

    I mean, I guess ethically that’s better than just pocketing the cash. Although that did also happen. Some clubs were worse than others.

    I also remember one club where the president used club money to hire himself as a yoga instructor, basically funnelling cash from the Uni C&S pot into his private bank account. He was quickly found out, and moved back to Hong Kong, where he figured they wouldn’t follow him. About month or so later he got a knock on the door from the AFP.

  42. Petrol prices, budget, who cares.
    It’s all about Will Smith people.

    Anyway, labor should talk about how it only costs $3 to run an EV for a charge. Then talk about Joe hockey killing the car industry and making it a certainty we didn’t get electric cars sooner and the constant lack of action by this government.

    I’d also put in the budget reply a provision to accept that CC is here and there needs to be a federal buyback of houses in Lismore to help repair the flood affected areas. Accepting that our own inaction has created this problem and we need to stop pretending.

    Though I did note, there’s a lot of Palmer on TV atm, but the greens omfg, it’s very very tiresome to see them paint each side as equally bad on Climate. I feel that this “each side is as bad as each other trope” is probably eating away at their credibility. It’ll be interesting to see what happens come the election.

    Anyway. Tomorrow will be a nothing budget followed by a nothing election and hopefully a new labor government and a royal commission into the murdoch media along with a federal ICAC and a slew of jail time for Nationals MP’s who fucked over the Murry.

    Anyway, back to twitter and Will Smith.

  43. “Lars Von Triersays:
    Monday, March 28, 2022 at 10:21 pm
    Maybe Albo has done the deal with Rupert ? What’s the price for Rupert’s support? Who or what has been sold out ?”…

    Ha, ha, ha…. Nah, there is no deal with Rupert, not even a pre-election visit, as it was the case until Gillard and Rudd were PM. The practice died with Shorten… and nobody is going to resurrect it.

    So no deal with Rupert, instead what you will probably see is Rupert desperate tactic to “back the winner”, so that he can keep feeding the fantasy that only those who receive the blessing of Rup and his media can win elections in Australia…. Nice trick, eh?….

  44. An insult or joke about his partner not an excuse, anymore than it was when Zinedine Zidane headbutted Materazzi after whatever he said. And isn’t Will Smith a bit old for that teenage rapstar stuff?

  45. MexicanBeemer, it is always amusing to read someone advise upon something as an expert when they have no clue.

    How many other undigested “truths” do you swallow?

  46. I’m sure Morrison has threatened plenty of people beyond Jackie Lambie with jail.

    Ever since he discovered that making something secret (on water matters) on national security grounds gave him the opportunity to make such threats I’m sure he’s been contriving opportunities as an element of his MO.

  50. Despite Elliott’s explanations for not contesting Parramatta, you can’t help but think that Charlton nominating as the ALP candidate may be the underlying reason for him having second thoughts. The Libs have been talking up their chances in Parramatta for months. Suddenly, their star candidate vacates the field without a shot fired.

    Interesting!

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