Month: April 2022

Budget polling: day two

No real change on voting intention from Essential Research; mediocre budget reaction results from Newspoll; state breakdowns from Ipsos.

The post-budget polling bonanza continues to unfold, our first item of business being the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll courtesy of The Guardian. On voting intention, the poll finds the Coalition primary vote steady on 37%, Labor down one to 36%, the Greens up one to 10%, One Nation up one to 4% and the United Australia Party up one to 3%. A lower undecided rate and a stronger flow of preferences to Labor causes the gap to widen on the pollster’s 2PP+ measure, which has Labor up two to 50% and the Coalition up one to 45%, with 5% undecided.

The poll suggested the budget had received a lukewarm response, with 25% saying it had made them more likely to vote Coalition and 19% less so. Twenty-five per cent said it would be good for them personally, 33% rated that its inducements would make a significant difference to them, and 56% believed the budget’s main purpose was to help the Coalition win the election. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1086 – more comprehensive results will be along with the publication of the full report later today.

UPDATE: Full results here. Also out today is the monthly Resolve Strategic poll from the Age/Herald, showing Labor up three to 38%, the Coalition up one to 34%, the Greens up one to 11%, One Nation down one to 2% and the United Australia Party steady on 3%, and a Roy Morgan poll with Labor leading 57-43, which I’ll cover in a new post overnight.

Also out today from The Australian is the regular annual Newspoll results on response to the budget. Here too the results are not as strong as the government might have hoped, the clearest indication of which is the finding that 40% thought the opposition would do a better job with 42% thinking otherwise. As shown in the chart below, this is the weakest result on this question since the Coalition came to power, and the third weakest for any government since the inception of the series all the way back in 1988. While quite a few other results are within its margin of error, all were notably recorded by governments in their last terms before losing office.

The poll nonetheless found that 26% of respondents felt the budget would be good for them personally compared with 25% who thought the opposite and 49% who opted for neither, the net positive rating of 1% being the ninth best result out of the 35. However, the respective results of 33%, 23% and 44% for impact on the economy were relatively poor, with the net positive 10% rating being the worst since the Abbott government’s politically disastrous debut budget in 2014 and the eighth worst overall.

The following chart shows the relationship between the net results on personal and economic impact going back to 1988, with the current budget shown in red. Its position below the trendline is consistent with a budget that was perceived as prioritising votes over the economy – a budget received favourably enough to score a near net zero result on personal impact would typically land at around plus 25% for economic impact, rather than plus 10%.

Also out today courtesy of the Financial Review are state breakdowns from yesterday’s Ipsos poll. Given the poll’s large sample size of 2510, these results are quite robust for New South Wales (sample size 818), Victoria (644) and to some extent Queensland (514). Not much should be read into the results for the smaller states, although I’m actually quite pleased that the paper has gone so far as to provide the results for Tasmania and even the Australian Capital Territory (the Northern Territory is rolled together with South Australia), while making it clear that the error margins in these cases are in the order of 15%.

At the business end, the poll finds Labor leading 53-47 in New South Wales (a swing of around 5% with an error margin of 3.5%), 56-44 in Victoria (swing of 3%, error margin of 4.1%) and 54-46 in Queensland (swing of 12.5%, error margin of 4.4%). From here on, proceed with caution: 54-46 in Western Australia (sample of 251, error margin of 6.5%), 62-38 in South Australia/Northern Territory (sample of 186, error margin of 7.3%), 64-36 in Tasmania (sample of 54, error margin of 14.0%) and 57-43 in the ACT (sample of 43, error margin of 15.3%).

Peter Gutwein resigns

Tasmania’s Liberals prepare to anoint their third Premier since coming to power in 2014 as Peter Gutwein retires after two years in the job.

Peter Gutwein has announced his retirement from parliament and as Premier of Tasmania, effective immediately. Without knowing an awful lot about the day-to-day of the Tasmanian political scene, my assumption would be that the favourite to succeed him is Deputy Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff, who has held the deputy position in both opposition and government all the way back to 2006. Rockliff declined to seek the leadership after Will Hodgman retired in January 2020, instead joining a moderate leadership ticket headed by Gutwein.

If the conservatives are willing or able to flex their muscles, other contenders might include Michael Ferguson, who holds the infrastructure and transport, finance, state development and local government and planning portfolios (and was one of the many one-term members for the federal seat of Bass from 2004 to 2007), and Attorney-General Elise Archer. Ferguson and Archer were initially poised to run as a conservative ticket for leader and deputy when Hodgman resigned, but both withdrew when it became apparent they didn’t have the numbers.

Gutwein’s resignation will also result in a vacancy in the division of Bass, which will be filled by a recount of votes from last year’s election. There has already been a vacancy for one of the three Liberal seats, with Sarah Courtney succeeded by Lara Alexander in February. The results of that recount suggest Gutwein’s seat is certain to be filled by Simon Wood, who finished narrowly behind Alexander in the recount and well ahead of the remaining Liberal on the ticket, Greg Kieser.

Newspoll: 54-46 to Labor; Ipsos: 55-45

Newspoll records a dip in the Labor primary vote, but only the slightest of movements on two-party preferred, while the debut of a new series from Ipsos offers the government even less joy.

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.

Morgan: 55.5-44.5 to Labor

A softening in Labor’s lead from the most favourable poll series for the party, plus the latest on election timing.

Two other new posts to note before we proceed: a summary of the South Australian election result, and an Adrian Beaumont guest post covering Ukraine, France, Hungary and the United Kingdom.

In what’s otherwise likely to be a barren week for polling, with most of the players having held their fire ahead of the budget, Roy Morgan published a result on Tuesday showing a narrowing in Labor’s two-party lead to 55.5-44.5 from 58-42 a week previously. The primary votes were Coalition 33% (up two), Labor 35.5% (down two), Greens 12.5% (up half), One Nation 3.5% (up half) and United Australia Party 1% (steady).

The state two-party breakdowns had Labor leading 53-47 in New South Wales (in from 57.5-42.5, a swing of around 5%), 60-40 in Victoria (in from 64-36, a swing of around 7%), 57-43 in Western Australia (in from 59-41, a swing of around 12.5%), 63.5-36.5 in South Australia (out from 60.5-39.5, a swing of around 13%) and 53-47 from the small sample in Tasmania (a swing to the Liberals of 3%). The Coalition leads 51-49 in Queensland, in from 54.5-45.5 for a swing of around 7.5%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1404.

UPDATE: Now Morgan has an SMS poll of 1067 respondents conducted Wednesday and Thursday showing Josh Frydenberg leading Scott Morrison 46% to 28.5% as preferred Liberal leader, out from 38.5% to 31% in mid-February.

In further polling news, Ipsos has announced it will be conducting polling for the Financial Review during the federal election campaign using a mix of phone and online polling. Ipsos conducted polling for the full gamut of the Fairfax/Nine newspaper stable in the previous term, which includes the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which now bring us monthly polling from Resolve Strategic. Unlike Resolve Strategic, it is a member of the Australian Polling Council and observes the body’s transparency standards. Ipsos was the one pollster that had an accurate read on the Labor primary vote before the last election, but this did not flow into superior performance on two-party preferred since it was balanced by exaggerated results for the Greens.

On the election timing front, the Financial Review has a headline that reads “Why the federal election will likely be May 21”, whereas news.com.au has one that says “May 14 most likely date”. The reasoning behind the former is that the Coalition’s standing in the polls means Scott Morrison will take every week he can get; the latter invokes the opinion of Labor strategists along with the fact that the Electoral Commission has booked out halls for that date, though I personally wouldn’t read much into the latter.

Scott Morrison said on Wednesday he will not be visiting the Governor-General this weekend as he has “a lot to do”, which just about rules out May 7 unless he calls it on Monday. Laura Tingle suggested this wouldn’t happen on the ABC’s 7:30 last night, as the government wants to get “some advertising out in the ether” and the Liberal Party still lacks candidates in key seats due to its legal tangles in New South Wales. Tingle concluded that “most people think that it will now be May 14”, with the announcement to be made late next week.

South Australian election endgame

Some almost-concluding observations on the South Australian election, where only the upper house result remains to be determined.

Counting of votes for the South Australian state election was completed on Monday, which leaves two milestones outstanding: the full preference distributions, which Antony Green relates will be published “at some time in the next week”, and the resolution of the Legislative Council count, which ditto for “around the Anzac Day weekend”. Some summary observations:

• Labor went from 19 seats in 2018 to 27 after recovering Florey from an independent and gaining Newland, King, Adelaide, Elder, Waite, Davenport and Gibson from the Liberals. The Liberals went from 25 at the 2018 election to 16, losing the aforementioned seven seats to Labor, recovering Frome from independent Geoff Brock but losing Stuart to him, and failing to win any of the three seats whose members moved to the cross-bench mid-term, with the incumbents re-elected in Kavel and Narungga and Waite going to Labor. This leaves a cross-bench of four, up from three after the 2018 election but down from six immediately before the election.

• The last in-doubt seat late in the count was Steven Marshall’s seat of Dunstan, where he held out against a 6.9% swing by 0.5%. Contrary to the usual expectation that leaders will abandon parliament in the wake of an election defeat, InDaily reports that Marshall is publicly resolved to serve out a full term on the back bench. For what it’s worth, former Labor Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has related a suggestion that David Pisoni might not stick around in Unley.

• Antony Green relates that Labor won the two-party preferred by 54.6-45.4, entailing a swing to Labor of 6.5%. However, this is presumably an estimate, since to my knowledge there have been no Labor-versus-Liberal results published for six seats where the Electoral Commission’s notional count was between Liberals and independents.

• The Legislative Council result will clearly see the election of the top four candidates on the Labor and Liberal tickets and the lead Greens candidate, leaving the last two seats as a race between One Nation on 0.51 quotas, Labor’s fifth candidate on a surplus of 0.42 quotas, the Liberal Democrats on 0.39 quotas and Family First on 0.37 quotas. It is hard to see the One Nation candidate losing from here, which raises the question of who she is exactly – I included no biographical details of Sarah Game in my election guide since there were none to be found. What’s known is that Game is the daughter of the much higher profile figure of Jennifer Game, who will be the party’s Senate candidate for the federal election, ran in Mawson at the state election, and is active on social media. Antony Green’s assessment is that it’s within the realms of possibility that mutual preference flows between the Liberal Democrats and Family First could push whichever one survives longest ahead of Labor and into the last seat, but a fifth seat for Labor seems the more likely outcome. This would produce a chamber with nine Labor members, eight Liberals, two Greens, two from SA-Best and one from One Nation.

• The result provided the new YouGov-administered Newspoll with a third solid showing at a state election, with the election eve poll recording Labor at 41%, Liberal at 38%, the Greens at 9% and others at 13%, with two-party preferred at 54-46. This compares with final results of Labor 40.0%, Liberal 35.7%, Greens 9.1% and others 15.2%. Another YouGov poll conducted in the second last week of the campaign for The Advertiser had it at Labor 41%, Liberal 33%, Greens 11% and others 15%, with two-party preferred at 56-44. While this is obviously encouraging with respect to the pollster’s credibility ahead of the federal election, Armarium Interreta finds little evidence of a past relationship between Newspoll’s performance at federal and proximate state elections.