The Australian reports the latest fortnightly Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing from 55-45 to 54-46, from primary votes of Coalition 36% (up one), Labor 38% (down three) and Greens 10% (up two), with One Nation and the United Australia Party both steady on 3%. Scott Morrison is up two on approval to 42% and down one on disapproval to 54%, while Anthony Albanese is down one to 43% and up two to 44%. Morrison had nudged into the lead on preferred prime minister at 43-42, after a 42-42 tie last time. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1531. It will have assuredly have included the usual battery of questions on response to the budget, which will be along either later tonight or tomorrow.
We also have the first Ipsos poll for the Financial Review, as foreshadowed in the previous post, which has Labor’s two-party lead at 55-45. The published primary votes include an undecided component of 7%, with the remainder going Labor 35%, Coalition 31%, Greens 10%, One Nation 4%, United Australia Party 2% and others 8%. If the undecided are removed, this pans out to Labor 38.9%, Coalition 34.4%, Greens 11.1%, One Nation 4.4%, United Australia Party 2.2% and others 8.9%.
The poll features multiple measures of two-party preferred, the headline being “based on the 2019 flow, including those of the 7% of undecided voters” – I must confess to being a bit confused by this, but I believe what is offered is a conventional previous election flows measure. There is a similar measure that does not exclude the 7% undecided, which has Labor on 51% and the Coalition on 42%. A further measure is based on respondent-allocated preferences, but does not exclude either the 7% who were altogether undecided and those non-major party voters who declined to indicate a preferred major parties. This one has Labor on 48%, the Coalition on 37% and undecided on 15%, suggesting a third of non-major party voters did not indicate a preference.
Personal ratings are weaker for Scott Morrison than from Newspoll, and both leaders have higher undecided results. Morrison is on 33% approval and 48% disapproval, compared with 30% and 32% for Anthony Albanese. Preferred prime minister is similar, with Albanese holding a negligible lead of 38-37. The report notes that Morrison has 51% disapproval among women and 45% among men, while Albanese is at 26% approval and 31% disapproval among women.
The poll suggests a lukewarm response to the budget, with 29% rating they would be better off and 23% worse off, with 39% opting for no difference. Presumably there is a fair bit more to come from this poll, both in terms of budget response and voting intention breakdowns given the poll’s distinctly large sample size of 2563. It was conducted from Wednesday to Sunday.
UPDATE: The methodology disclosure statement from the Ipsos poll, including details on weighting and the full questionnaire, can be found here.
Wow
Greens surge!
Dead cat bounce.
It’s noise. The government is terminal.
Big boring question, when was the fieldwork for this Newspoll?? Is it picking up the 5 mins of sunshine budget and missing the more recent SfM disasters.
Does anyone, other than Firefox and Quoll, seriously think that The Greens have done anything in the past fortnight to get a 2 point bounce in the polls. Or that Albo has done anything – or failed to do anything – that would see Labor go backwards by 3 points? Seems to be a lot of margin of error – or just plain error – in the polling.
Morrison, may, or may not (given the MOE or plain error) have received a 1% bounce from the budget. Does that seem credible?
The closest comparable Newspoll to this one in 2019 was the April 4-7 poll, which had Labor on 52-48 of the TPP, from primaries of LNP 38, Labor 37, Greens 11, and One Nation 6.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_Australian_federal_election
Happy with that. Outside the 53-47 that Bonham says is recoverable territory. I think things will only get worse for Morrison on the character front.
Labor is very well placed if this is the week Morrison calls the election.
So if people have marked Labor down then I’m sure they will live with it at 54/46.
A reason for Labor to start sweating will do everyone a power of good. Roll on the election.
Lynchpin:
Agreed.
“The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1531” so probably many of those polled had not yet heard of the Morrison stuff we have been focussing on in the last few days, but they may have heard of the KK death and bullying claims (possibly a reason for any Lab to Greens move), plus a few budget sweetners. Just guesswork though.
Morrison is a political Dead man walking and he knows it.
Deadlier than any poll is the rising sense that Mr Morrison simply isn’t worthy of respect. His being called a “dickhead” in focus groups is just more evidence that the contempt for him runs wide and deep.
I think it’s plausible there’d be a 1% uplift to the Libs from the budget. People will want their handouts.
Albanese will do well from the exposure in the campaign.
Morrison is on the nose. You can towke that to the bank.
Pi says:
Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 9:39 pm
“Dead cat bounce.”
I’m not sure about that. The polls normally start narrowing before an election, though I still think Labor will probably win with a least a couple more independents in the lower house.
They should have cut fuel excise to zero and they could have got a 47-53 result
Pedant
“His being called a “dickhead” in focus groups is just more evidence that the contempt for him runs wide and deep.”
How do you know this?
Greens support is an inch deep and a mile wide. When push comes to shove, especially in the teal opposition seats, it’ll go back to where it usually is. They’ll win TAS & QLD in the Senate seats, everywhere else they’ll be fighting Labor for the fifth or sixth seats.
Don’t forget this is the budget bounce. Towkegate will put it back to where it should be next time, 57 – 43.
The lady and immigrant voters will make sure of that.
It’s basically a status quo result. With the spotlight of an election campaign highlighting Morrison’s shortcomings, it’s probably not going to get much better than this for the LNP.
Probably not a lot to see here. Obviously not great to see a three point dip in Labor’s primary vote, hopefully no trend emerges there. Some here probably expected too much. In the three weeks since the last Newspoll we had the two week “mean girls” hysteria, plus the lead up to and the budget. Not so bad for the government really. Since Thursday things haven’t gone so well for the government but that won’t have reflected in this poll.
Margin of error for a sample size of 1531 ~ 2.5%, so the change is not significant.
The 8% for the Greens last time was probably too low. Labor and Green swap 2% – no big deal.
A lot of people have made up their minds. A bit of “I don’t give a RATS” what you do to the LNP and the budget we won’t vote for you. .
Dad is 92, still lives in his house as he has done since 1960. Absolutely fearful of going to a nursing home.
He is lucky in that he has a family that cares. Still has 7 of eight surviving children and everyone plus grand kids and great grand kids pitches in to help to make sure he doesn’t have to move.
Great move by the ALP on Aged Care.
It’s StatDecs at 10 paces!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-prepared-to-sign-statutory-declaration-denying-he-used-race-in-bid-for-seat-20220403-p5aafs.html
And the Internet is full of “why does Albanese have to justify $2.5 Billion to feed old people properly while Morrison can waste $5.5 Billion on thin air as a part of the French submarine debacle”.
People like free money. I get that. And Labor weren’t promising any. I get that too.
How deeply discouraging…under-reactionary vote evidently improves; LRP support improves; Labor PV sags; alt-reactionary vote (ON and UAP) lifts…I wonder what the Prodigal Lib is…The Reactionary plurality is immense.
Dog’s brunch @ #23 Sunday, April 3rd, 2022 – 9:56 pm
I don’t think, I know that he will word that Stat Dec to within an inch of its life.
Do love the election date speculations, if we take the last couple newpolls showing a ‘narrowing’, does one SfM hang on to May 21, wear the knees out on PJs on the carpet and go eagle spotting in the hope that it will continue narrow – or – does one go now and hope any momentum will last for the campaign. Is quite a quandary.
So Labor gained 3% in primary vote through January to March 2022. Its basically lost this 3% according to this poll.
That still takes it back to roughly 53-47 or 54-46 depending upon preference flow. So this was a soft vote which was always going to get lost when the election became reality.
ScoMo needs to basically overtake Labor on primary votes or move another 2% PV from Labor to Liberal. That 2%PV seems to have been baked in for most of 2021.
The Liberals will be hoping a scare campaign shifts it – but it seems too little too late. Guess we’ll know in about 5 weeks.
Matt31 @ #20 Sunday, April 3rd, 2022 – 9:54 pm
Exactly. Mean Scott has only just started to surface. Not to mention Scotty from Opportunistic Bigotry.
Dog’s brunch @ Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 9:56 pm
This issue is biting hard. No deflections a la Canberra bubble or even denials will suffice.
Lynchpin at 9.49 pm
The “dickhead” description is quoted here: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/morrison-puts-all-his-chips-on-the-budget-roulette-wheel-20220331-p5a9m5
I didn’t realize the whole ‘Levelling Up’ that shows up so prominently in UK cartoons was not just something Boris says all the time:
I … I have no words.
Evening all. A 1% shift in 2pp is not much return on a budget that increases debt by over $70 billion. Sadly this poll only confirms to me that a lot of Australian voters, especially generation blue, are idiots.
AE
“ Does anyone, other than Firefox and Quoll, seriously think that The Greens have done anything in the past fortnight to get a 2 point bounce in the polls.”
Simple answer: no. I am often sympathetic to the Greens in terms of climate change policy, but some of their recent economic and defence policy makes no sense.
Note that Morrison says he is PREPARED to sign a stat dec, not that he will.
If I was a gambler I would bet that he will be too busy to get around to it, in other words a lawyer told him not to sign a stat dec unless it contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For Morrison, that’s an impossability.
Surely he goes this week.
Not sure he can risk waiting.
Thanks Pedant
The swearing of statutory declarations in circumstances where no one is actually under an obligation to tell the truth is pretentious.
Morrison saying he’s “willing” to sign a stat dec re: the Towke affair does not mean I expect at all that he’ll actually provide one.
I think this small bounce back to the Coalition is just from both the budget, and the Mean Girls saga (which happened just after the previous Newspoll), so I think in the next Newspoll, we will see the TPP back to 55-45 to Labor (with Labor’s primary vote shifting to 39-40%), from the senator thing last week.
Well I guess we will know in 2 weeks anyway. When he cancelled that 7:30 report interview and rescheduled to the following Tuesday I had the feeling he was going to call an election the day before for May 14 so a 5 week campaign and use the interview for a big marketing exercise. This way all the internal troubles would have been finished and the budget was the news along with the ALP mean girls.
How quickly things change in a week, could still do it but have to answer a load of different questions.
I just think this is a more realistic result. It would be a rare result if the election came in much above 53/47 to Labor. We just don’t get high 50’s results federally.
Mind you we don’t often get a PM as bad as Morrison however many factors, other than the PM, go into a federal election result.
I don’t think Labor need to worry we are just moving into more realistic voting intentions.
I think it will tighten a little more but not sufficient to cause a PB meltdown.
Uh oh
”
Andrew_Earlwoodsays:
Sunday, April 3, 2022 at 9:42 pm
Does anyone, other than Firefox and Quoll, seriously think that The Greens have done anything in the past fortnight to get a 2 point bounce in the polls. Or that Albo has done anything – or failed to do anything – that would see Labor go backwards by 3 points? Seems to be a lot of margin of error – or just plain error – in the polling.
Morrison, may, or may not (given the MOE or plain error) have received a 1% bounce from the budget. Does that seem credible?
”
Is it MOE because 2 of the 3 PV drop in ALP PV went to Greens and one to LNP?
Gareth
“ Greens support is an inch deep and a mile wide. When push comes to shove, especially in the teal opposition seats, it’ll go back to where it usually is. They’ll win TAS & QLD in the Senate seats, everywhere else they’ll be fighting Labor for the fifth or sixth seats.”
On recent SA state election results the Greens are a good chance of getting a Senate spot in SA. The Liberal vote is well down here. There was no love for SA in the Federal budget either. Only small grants, or re announcements of old money, or promises with no allocation within the next three years.
It’s looking less likely that Barnaby Joyce will be LOTO after the election.
I notice #ScottyTheRacist is trending on Twitter and I am desperately asking for this not to be a thing. Not because I care about Morrison’s feelings but because he’s just dying for those on the left to call him a racist or a bigot because he can make the political debate be about wokeness instead of cost of living, aged care etc.
Morrison is rounding up Lebanese people who will swear black and blue he likes them, he really does:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-prepared-to-sign-statutory-declaration-denying-he-used-race-in-bid-for-seat-20220403-p5aafs.html
Butter wouldn’t melt in his smug mouth.
Now, I bet those Lebanese people are Maronite Christians, so, yeah, of course he was nice to them and they think he’s not a bad bloke,
HOWEVER, none of them beat him in a pre-selection contest and needed to be taken down, by hook or by crook moves. Which involved slurring this other Lebanese guy and alluding that he was a dirty, rotten Muslim. (Not my opinion of Muslims, for the record).
Anyway, it just proves to me EXACTLY what Michael Towke is suggesting. And that is that Scott Morrison, when his political survival is threatened, will do and say whatever it takes to defuse the bomb that will see him out of the race and on the canvas.
As for polling. There’s obviously a lot that can happen in the next 6-7 weeks but I know which side I’d want to be on if the polls are showing a 54-46 divide.