William Bowe – The Poll Bludger

Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition (open thread)

Marginal changes on the primary vote prove sufficient to give the Coalition a two-party lead in Newspoll for the first time this term.

The Australian reports the latest Newspoll records a two-party lead for the Coalition for the first time since this term, at 51-49 after a 50-50 result three weeks ago, though both major parties are unchanged on the primary vote, Labor at 31% and the Coalition at 38%. The movement is down to a one-point drop for the Greens to 12% and a one-point increase for One Nation to 7%. Anthony Albanese is down three on approval to 40% and up three on disapproval to 54%, edging out past results in August (41% and 54%) and last November (40% and 53%) as his worst net result for the term. Peter Dutton is respectively up one to 38% and steady at 52%, with preferred prime minister narrowing from 46-37 to 45-37. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1258.

Queensland election minus two weeks

With a fortnight to go, suggestions of an improvement in Labor’s position, though not to the extent of being seriously competitive.

Following a week in which abortion unexpectedly took centre stage of the Queensland election campaign, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports the issue “has helped Labor’s cause in Brisbane, where it faces losses to the LNP and the Greens”. The evidence for this would appear to be Labor internal polling suggesting Grace Grace is well placed to retain the Greens target of McConnel, outpolling them 27% to 24% with the LNP on 34%. This is quite a bit different from polling the column published from a different source last week, which had the Greens on 37.9%, the LNP on 27.4% and Labor on 27.2%. A “senior Labor insider” is further quoted saying a party that feared a near wipeout regionally, leaving it only with Gladstone outside of Brisbane, now sees “glimmers of hope in Cairns, Rockhampton and Maryborough”.

The other big event for the week was the closure of nominations and ballot paper draws, revealing a decline in the total number of candidates to 525 (5.6%) from 597 (6.4%) in 2020. A breakdown from Antony Green shows Labor, the LNP, the Greens and One Nation are contesting all seats, Family First is putting in its biggest effort in some time with 59 candidates, with lesser numbers from Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian Party, Animal Justice and the Libertarians.

Also of note: the website Australian Election Forecasts, operating off an admittedly shallow pool of data, calculates an 85.8% chance the LNP will have a “clear path to government” compared with 4.4% for Labor, the median predicted outcome being 55 seats for the LNP, 29 for Labor, three each for the Greens and Katter’s Australian Party and one independent.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 32, Coalition 37, Greens 11 in New South Wales

A slight improvement for NSW Labor in a poll series that still shows it in an unusually weak position for a first-term government.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Resolve Strategic’s latest bi-monthly read on state voting intention in New South Wales, combining results from its last two regular monthly national polls, has Labor up two points on July-August to 32%, the Coalition down one to 37% and the Greens down one to 11%. This suggests a very slight two-party advantage to Labor, which won on that measure by 54.3-45.7 at the March 2023 election. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 37-14 as preferred premier, barely changed from 38-13 last time. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1111, half from September 3 to 7 and the other half last Tuesday to Saturday.

RedBridge Group: 51-49 to Coalition in Victoria

The Coalition pokes its nose in front on two-party preferred, amid conflicting reports on the status of John Pesutto’s leadership.

The Herald Sun reports a RedBridge Group poll of state voting intention in Victoria has the Coalition leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, after the last such poll in late July had it at 50-50. The primary votes are Labor 30% (down one), Coalition 40% (steady), Greens 12% (steady). The poll was conducted from a sample of 1516 from September 26 to October 3, hence slightly before reports of a looming move against Liberal leader John Pesutto – which James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports has “stalled because disgruntled Liberal MPs can’t agree on who should be the potential challenger”.

Federal polls: Resolve Strategic, Roy Morgan, Essential Research (open thread)

Essentially steady results from Resolve Strategic and Roy Morgan, although the former has Labor with a three in front of it for the first time since April.

Three new federal poll results:

• The monthly Resolve Strategic poll from Nine Newspapers has Labor up two to 30%, the Coalition up one to 38%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation down one to 5%. This pollster does not provide two-party preferred, but if the 15% none-of-the-above vote is treated as a single (it includes an unlikely 12% independent vote), the result is almost exactly 50-50 based on preference flows in 2022. Both leaders are steady on approval and down a point on disapproval, Anthony Albanese to 35% and 52% and Peter Dutton to 41% and 41%, with Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister out from 35-34 to 38-35. The poll also finds a telling 55% professing no opinion as to which party has better handled the situation in the Middle East, with 22% favouring “Peter Dutton and the Liberals” and 18% “Anthony Albanese and Labor”. It was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1606.

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll had a tie on two-party preferred after a 51-49 result to the Coalition last time, from primary votes of Labor 31.5% (up one-and-a-half), Coalition 37.5% (down half), Greens 12.5% (down one) and One Nation 5.5% (up one). Using the two-party measure based on 2022 election flows, Labor leads 52-48, out from 51.5-48.5 The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1697.

• The Guardian’s routine early drop of the fortnightly Essential Research poll doesn’t include voting intention results. Stay tuned for later today on that one.

UPDATE: Essential Research’s voting intention results have Labor up three points to 32%, the Coalition down one to 34%, the Greens steady on 12%, One Nation steady on 8%, and undecided unchanged at 5%. The 2PP+ measure has Labor leading 49-47, with the balance undecided, after trailing 48-47 a fortnight ago. Further questions find fully 40% saying “our political system needs fundamental change”, compared with 48% who think it “needs some reform but is fundamentally sound” and only 12% who think it is “working well”. A semi-regular question on Israel’s military action in Gaza records, for some reason, an eight-point rise in “unsure” since August to 32%: 32% favour Israel’s permanent withdrawal, down seven, 18% a temporary ceasefire, down three, and 19% consider Israel’s actions justified, up two. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1139.

ACT and NSW state by-election guides

Beginners’ guides to next fortnight’s election in the Australian Capital Territory, where the Liberals hope to end a decades-long drought, and three by-elections for blue-ribbon state seats in New South Wales.

With thirteen days to go in both cases, this site now offers a guide to the Australian Capital Territory election, and individual guides to the by-elections for the Liberal-held state seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater in northern Sydney. The former finds Labor, which governs in coalition with the Greens, seeking a seventh successive victory and an extension on its 23 years in office, in circumstances that are seemingly more promising for the Liberals than those that prevailed when it suffered a dismal result in 2020. Labor has forfeited each of the New South Wales by-elections, but that in Pittwater is of considerable interest in offering a second chance for teal independent Jacqui Scruby, who came within 0.7% of winning the seat at the state election in March 2023.

Queensland election minus three weeks

Multiple indications of a double-digit swing against Labor, including from the seats of McConnel and Waterford.

Some accounts of private polling from Queensland to relate, all of it adding a picture of an election-losing swing headed the way of the Labor government:

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column relates that union-funded polling by DemosAU has the Greens on 37.9% in the Labor-held Brisbane CBD seat of McConnel, up from 28.1% in 2020, with the LNP on 27.4%, down from 31.0%, and Labor on 27.2%, down from 35.3%. The suggests Labor separately has an even chance of surviving to the final count and winning when it gets there with the help of LNP preferences. The polling also suggests a 10% swing statewide and a Labor seat tally of 31 out or 93.

• Last week’s Feeding the Chooks column had Labor sources saying their polling showed Health Minister Shannon Fentiman facing a 13% swing in Waterford, where her margin is 16.0%. The report noted “confusion about who commissioned the dire phone poll by Labor’s preferred pollsters Talbot Mills (business partners with banned lobbyists Evan Moorhead and Fentiman’s ex-husband David Nelson), but the smart money is on the MP’s own union, the AMWU”.

• Madura McCormack of the Courier-Mail reported on Thursday that a Greens-commissioned YouGov poll had Labor on 31% in Brisbane and the Greens on 16%. Assuming this is Brisbane broadly defined, it suggests a fifteen-point drop in Labor support from 2020 and a three-point increase for the Greens. The poll also found the Greens on 13% statewide, compared with 9.5% in 2020, and 54% support for its proposed cap on rental increases, with the report neglecting to say how many were opposed and how many undecided.

• Katter’s Australian Party has announced it will direct preferences to the LNP over Labor in the three Townsville seats of Townsville, Mundingburra and Thuringowa, which it has apparently never done in the city before, citing Labor failure on youth crime.

• The campaign leaders’ debate was conducted on Thursday, highlighted by David Crisafulli’s promise to stand down if crime victim numbers did not fall on his watch. There did not appear to be any effort to evaluate voter impressions of who had won.

Weekend miscellany: Fowler preselection, SECNewgate survey, SA by-election news (open thread)

Labor seeks amends from the voters of Fowler, a poll finds softening enthusiasm for the renewable energy transition, plus the fall and fall of former SA Liberal leader David Speirs.

There may be a Resolve Strategic federal poll through later today, but in case there’s not, a new open thread is order despite there not being much new to relate:

• Labor has chosen Tu Le, whose preselection bid in 2022 was scotched when the national executive imposed Kristina Keneally, as its candidate to recover the western Sydney seat of Fowler from independent Dai Le. Tu Le is a lawyer and daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and the decision to cast her aside to accommodate Keneally’s move from the Senate, where she had failed to secure a competitive position on the party ticket, was evidently received poorly by voters in an electorate that encompasses the Vietnamese community hub of Cabramatta. Dai Le defeated Keneally at the election by 1.6% after preferences, after trailing by 36.1% to 29.5% on the primary vote.

• SECNewgate’s semi-regular Mood of the Nation survey finds positivity towards the transition to renewables at its lowest level since the Albanese government came to power, at 47% positive and 26% negative; Labor favoured by 30% on managing the cost of living, steady from July, with the Coalition up two to 29%; 58% favouring Kamala Harris over 22% for Donald Trump; and a downward trajectory for the perceived performance of the Western Australian state government.

• A South Australian state by-election looms in the highly marginal Liberal-held seat of Black after former party leader resigned from parliament yesterday after being charged on two counts of supplying a controlled substance. Police allege the offence took place “between August 2 and 3 and on August 9”, the latter date being a day after he stepped aside as party leader. On September 9, The Advertiser revealed a video, seemingly filmed in the small hours of June 30, appearing to show Speirs snorting a line of white powder in what appeared to be his home. Speirs claimed the video was a deepfake, but The Advertiser published advice from experts who believed otherwise. The police were seemingly likewise unconvinced, having raided Speirs’ house and arrested him on September 26. The last by-election in the state, on March 23, resulted in Labor gaining former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall of Dunstan, overturning a 0.5% margin with a 1.4% swing.

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