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.

Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Another poll records a drift back to the Coalition after the post-leadership spill blowout, along with strong support for quotas to boost female parliamentary representation in the Liberal Party.

The Guardian reports the latest Essential Research poll has Labor leading 53-47 on two-party preferred, down from 54-46 a fortnight ago. We are told the Coalition is up a point on the primary vote to 37%, and Labor down one to 36% – we will have to await the full report later today for the minor party primary votes.

The poll also finds 61% support for female representation quotas for the Liberal Party (68% among Coalition voters), with 21% opposed; 37% supporting proposed government legislation to safeguard religious freedoms, with 26% opposed; and 82% supporting a federal anti-corruption body, with only 5% opposed. Also featured are Essential’s recurring questions on trust in institutions, which as usual find high levels of trust in police forces, the High Court, the ABC and the Reserve Bank, but lower levels for trade unions, religious organisations, federal parliament, business groups and, especially, political parties.

Other polls of late that I have so far neglected to mention:

• A poll of the regional New South Wales seat of Hume finds Liberal member Angus Taylor leading 57-43, which represents a 3.2% swing to Labor. Both parties are well down on the primary vote compared with the 2016 election, with the Liberals on 41.8% (down 12.0%) and Labor on 26.9% (down 4.9%). This reflects both a 10.4% showing for One Nation and a 6.6% increase for “others” to 14.3%, with the Greens steady on 6.6%. The poll was conducted by ReachTEL for the Australia Institute from a sample of 690.

• Also from the Australia Institute comes a survey of 1449 respondents regarding recent royal commissions. This finds the one into the banking and finance industry to have the highest level of public awareness, followed in order by those into child sex abuse, trade unions and the Murray-Darling Basin. As the organisation no doubt hoped, the survey found the banking and finance industry inquiry was overwhelmingly perceived to have been more productive than the one into trade unions.

• A poll of Victorian state voting intention, conducted by ReachTEL a fortnight ago for the Bus Association of Victoria from a sample of 1008, found Labor leading 53-47 on two-party preferred, and 42% to 40% on the primary vote.

Newspoll: 54-46 to Labor

Better numbers for the Coalition in the third Newspoll of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership, but Labor is still well in the clear on voting intention.

This fortnight’s Newspoll result is 54-46 in favour of Labor, after the Scott Morrison era began with successive results of 56-44. The primary votes are Coalition 36% (up two), Labor 39% (down three), Greens 10% (steady) and One Nation 6% (steady). Movement also to the Coalition’s advantage on personal rating: Scott Morrison is up three on approval to 44% and steady on disapproval at 39%, while Bill Shorten is respectively down five to 32% and up three to 54%, and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 42-36 to 45-32.

UPDATE: Further findings from the poll record 24% of respondents saying Scott Morrison has made them more likely to vote Coalition, 31% less likely and 36% no influence; and 46% nominating Morrison as the more “authentic” of the two leaders, compared with 31% for Shorten. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1675.

ReachTEL: 50-50 in New South Wales

Six months out from a state election, the first New South Wales poll in a surprisingly long time produces a tied result.

Today’s Sun-Herald has a ReachTEL poll of state voting intention in New South Wales, showing the Coalition and Labor level on two-party preferred. After exclusion of the 5.9% undecided, the primary votes are Coalition 37.3%, Labor 33.5%, Greens 10.8%, Shooters Fishers and Farmers 6.5% and One Nation 4.5%. Gladys Berejiklian and Luke Foley were also level on the question of preferred premier, remembering that ReachTEL’s forced response approach to this question tends to produce unusual results. The poll was conducted on Thursday from a sample of 1627. Given a state election is six months away, this was the first published state poll from New South Wales in a surprisingly long time, the last having been another ReachTEL poll from March that had the Coalition leading 52-48. That poll had both major parties higher on the primary vote, with the Coalition on 44.7% and Labor on 34.6%.

BludgerTrack: 54.9-45.1 to Labor

Labor remains deep in landslide territory on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, despite the moderating impact of this week’s Ipsos poll.

Ipsos provided the one new poll for the week in its monthly outing for the Fairfax papers, and it raised a few eyebrows with its weak primary vote for Labor and extraordinarily strong result for the Greens, the latter exacerbating a long established peculiarity of this pollster. The poll’s addition to the BludgerTrack aggregate takes a certain amount of edge off the recent blowout to Labor, while still finding them on course for a victory of historic dimensions. The BludgerTrack seat projection has Labor down three on last week’s result, with Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia each moving one seat in the Coalition’s favour. The methodological caveats about BludgerTrack from last week’s post continue to apply, as does the fact that I won’t be updating the leadership ratings until the model has a solid enough base of Morrison-era data to work from. Other than that, full results from the link below.

Ipsos: 53-47 to Labor

The latest monthly Ipsos poll suggests a steadying for the Coalition after recent abysmal results, although it does so from an unusual set of primary vote numbers.

The latest Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers is the Coalition’s least bad result of the Scott Morrison prime ministership so far, recording the Labor two-party lead at 53-47, an improvement on the 55-45 blowout the pollster recorded as Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership entered its final week (which was the one poll suggesting a significant weakening in Coalition voting intention in the period up to the spill). Ipsos’ primary vote numbers are still idiosyncratic, with an already over-inflated Greens gaining two points to 15%, while Labor slumps four to 31% and the Coalition gains one to 34%. No conventional leadership ratings that I can see yet, but ratings of the two leaders across a range of eleven attributes finds Morrison scoring better than Bill Shorten on every question other than “has the confidence of his/her party” and “has a firm grasp of social policy”. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1200; more detail presumably to follow.

UPDATE: As related by the Financial Review, the poll has Scott Morrison debuting with 46% approval and 36% disapproval, while Bill Shorten is up three on approval to 44% and down four on disapproval to 48%. Morrison holds a 47-37 lead as preferred prime minister, little different from Turnbull’s 48-36 lead in the last poll.

US mid-term elections minus seven-and-a-half weeks

Two years after Donald Trump’s shocking upset in November 2016, the Democrats are likely to win the House at November 6 mid-term elections – but the Senate is tougher. Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian’s work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

Seats in the United States House of Representatives are assigned to states on the basis of population. All 435 House seats are up for election on November 6. Owing to natural clustering of Democratic voters and Republican gerrymandering, FiveThirtyEight’s House models say Democrats probably need to win the popular vote by six to seven points to take control. Polls show the Democrats currently lead in the race for Congress by 9.1 points.  In 2016, Republicans won the House by 241 seats to 194, on a vote margin of just 1.1% (49.1% to 48.0%).  FiveThirtyEight’s default “Classic” model gives Democrats an 83% chance of winning the House.

One-third of the 100 Senators are up for election every two years.  Each state has two Senators, elected for six-year terms. Thirty-five of the 100 Senate seats are up for election on November 6, including two Senate by-elections in Mississippi and Minnesota. Twenty-six of these seats are currently held by Democrats and just nine by Republicans. Democrats will be defending five states that voted for Trump by at least 18 points. Republicans currently hold the Senate by a 51-49 margin, including two independents who caucus with Democrats.

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