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.

New South Wales election guide

Introducing the Poll Bludger’s New South Wales election guide – including, together with much else, a poll trend measure pointing to a tight race.

The Poll Bludger’s guide to the New South Wales state election is now open for business. It offers:

• Ninety-three finely tooled electorate profiles, including historical background, demographic analysis and many a tale of preselection bloodletting, to say nothing of the usual panoply of charts, tables and booth results maps;

• A Legislative Council guide that you are encouraged not to neglect, because sorting through all that lot was a nightmare;

• A comprehensive overview of the situation;

• A poll trend feature.

The latter shows Labor with a 51.1-48.9 lead on two-party preferred, but that’s probably a mite generous to them, as the “others” pool looks to have swollen with defectors from the Coalition to One Nation. No primary vote trend measure for One Nation is available, but it’s telling that the Coalition is down 8.3% on the primary vote and Labor up only 1.7%.

Needless to say, all this involved a fair bit of effort – if you think it worth rewarding, you are encouraged to give the PressPatron donation facility at the top of the page a workout, through which either one-off or monthly donations are always very greatly appreciated.

Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

More evidence of a narrowing trend federally from Essential Research, albeit based on small shifts in the primary vote.

The Guardian reports the first result from Essential Research in three weeks has Labor’s two-party lead at 52-48, down from 53-47 last time. The changes on the primary vote are slight, with the Coalition up a point to 38% and Labor steady on 36% (CORRECTION: the Coalition is steady, and Labor down two). The Guardian report notes that Essential has changed the provider of the online panel from which its respondents are drawn from YourSource to Qualtrics, without changing the underlying methodology. Perhaps relatedly, the sample size is identified as 1652, where in the past it has been a little over 1000. The Guardian provides no further findings from attitudinal questions – we’ll see if the release of the main report later today provides anything on that front, along with the minor party primary votes.

UPDATE: Full report here. No change for the minor parties, with the Greens on 10% and One Nation on 7%. The poll was conducted between January 23 and January 31 – I’m not sure if this was a contingency for the long weekend, but in the past Essential’s field work dates have been Thursday to Sunday. Other findings:

• When presented with a number of explanations for a lack of gender parity in politics, the most favoured responses relate to the failures of political parties, and the least favoured relates to “experience and skills”. Gender quotas for parties have 46% support and 40% opposition, with age interestingly more determinative of attitudes here than gender.

• There are a number of questions on Australia Day, the most useful of which is a finding that 52% support a separate national day to recognise indigenous Australians, including 15% who want that day to replace Australia Day, with 40% opposed.

• Respondents were presented with various groups and asked who they felt they would prefer to see win the election. The most interesting findings are that the media was perceived as favouring the Coalition by 32% and 25%; that despite all the recent talk, pensioners were perceived to favour Labor by a margin of 42% to 28%; and that families with young children were perceived as favouring Labor by 50% to 21%.

UPDATE 2: It turns out that both the longer field work period and the larger sample were a one-off, to it will be back to Thursday to Sunday and samples of a bit over 1000 in future polls.

BludgerTrack: 53.5-46.5 to Labor

The Coalition’s improved performance in the first Newspoll of the year makes little difference to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. Also featured: a closer look at a recent union-commissioned poll of Greg Hunt’s seat of Flinders.

This week’s two-point move in Newspoll excited a certain amount of talk about a Coalition recovery, but it hasn’t impressed the BludgerTrack poll aggregate – the result landed pretty much bang on where it was already, being well in line with the only othe result published so far this year, namely the Essential Research poll of a fortnight ago. As such, the aggregate records a 0.2% shift in the Coalition’s favour on two-party preferred, no movements on the primary vote greater than 0.4%, and a one seat gain for the Coalition on the seat projection in Queensland. The leadership trends have Bill Shorten up a bit on net approval, but little change for Scott Morrison either on either his net approval or preferred prime minister lead. Full results through the link below:

I can also provide further detail on the uComms/ReachTEL poll from the seat of Flinders that was conducted last week for the CFMMEU and reported over the weekend. Labor’s two-party lead of 51-49 compares with Hunt’s redistribution-adjusted winning margin of 57.1-42.9 from 2016, and derives from a respondent-allocated preference split that gives Labor 62.7% of minor party and independent preferences. Labor’s share of the preferences in 2016 was 71.1%, which if applied to the primary vote numbers from this poll boosts Labor’s lead to 53-47. Compared with my own post-redistribution estimates from 2016, the primary votes from the poll have Greg Hunt down from 50.7% to 39.4%, Labor up from 27.4% to 35.2%, the Greens down from 11.2% to 9.1%, and One Nation debuting on 5.7%. All of which has been superseded to some extent by this week’s announcement that Julia Banks, the Liberal-turned-independent member for Chisholm, will be running in the seat.

Newspoll: 50-50 in New South Wales

Two months out from a state election, a New South Wales poll finds nothing to separate the two major parties.

With less than two months to go before the election, The Australian brings us a Newspoll result of state voting intention in New South Wales, which records a tie on two-party preferred (unchanged from the last result nearly a year ago), and primary votes of Coalition 39% (compared with 38% in the last poll and 45.6% at the 2015 election), Labor 36% (34% last poll, 34.1% last election) and Greens 10% (11% last poll, 10.3% last election). On preferred premier, Gladys Berejiklian records a 44-31 lead over the new Labor leader, Michael Daley. We should hopefully have the leaders’ approval ratings a little later. The poll was conducted from Friday through to earlier today, from an as yet unknown sample size.

UPDATE: Gladys Berejiklian is down four on approval since last year to 41%, and up eight on disapproval to 43%. Michael Daley’s debut ratings are an uninspiring 33% approval and 41% disapproval. The sample size was 1011.

Relatedly, I am a few days away from unleashing my state election guide, which among many other features will include a BludgerTrack-style poll trend measure.

Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

The first Newspoll of the year records an improvement in the Coalition’s position after a particularly bad result in the final poll last year.

The Australian reports the first Newspoll of the year has Labor leading 53-47, compared with 55-45 in the final poll of last year. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up two to 37%, Labor is down three to 38%, the Greens are steady on 9% and One Nation are down one to 6%. Scott Morrison leads 43-36 on preferred prime minister, down from 44-36, and is down two on approval to 40% and up two on disapproval to 47%. Bill Shorten’s net rating is reported at minus 13%, compared with minus 15% in the last poll – we will have to wait for later to see his exact approval and disapproval ratings. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1634.

UPDATE: Shorten is up a point on approval to 37% and down one on disapproval to 50%.

Newspoll and ReachTEL: 51-49 to Labor in Herbert and Flinders

Seat polls show Labor with their nose in front in one seat where they won by a whisker in 2016, and another where they haven’t won in since 1983.

Two new seat polls today, with due caution for the fact that seat polls tend not to perform very well:

• The Australian has a small-sample Newspoll from the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, which Labor won by the barest of margins in 2016 for the first time since the Hawke-Keating era. The reason this seat in particular has been targeted appears to relate to Clive Palmer’s expensive bid to re-establish his political career, to which Townsville is relevant given the failure of his nickel operation there. The poll has the 50-50 result from 2016 turning into a Labor lead of 51-49, which I’m guessing is based on respondent-allocated preferences, as the primary votes look a little more favourable for Labor than that. Labor’s Cathy O’Toole is on 32%, up from 30.5% in 2016; the Liberal National Party is on 32%, down from 35.5%; One Nation is on 9%, down from 13.5%; Katter’s Australian Party is on 9%, up from 6.9%; the Greens are on 7%, up from 6.3%; and Palmer’s United Australia Party is on 8%. The poll was conducted Thursday from a sample of 509.

• The other poll is a uComms/ReachTEL poll for the CFMMEU, which targets Greg Hunt’s Melbourne fringe seat of Flinders, which he holds on a post-redistribution margin of 7.1%. As related by the Herald Sun, the poll credits Labor with a lead of 51-49, with the Liberal primary vote at 36.8%, compared with 51.6% in 2016 – although this is probably complicated by an undecided element. Hunt’s primary vote is only 32.7% among women, compared with 41.2% among men. I hope to be able to obtain full results over the next few days. The poll finds 47.8% less likely to vote for Hunt due to his role in the move against Malcolm Turnbull, compared with 34.4% for no difference and just 17.8% for more likely. The poll was conducted Thursday from a sample of 627. The Herald Sun report also reveals that Julia Banks, the Liberal-turned-independent member for Chisholm, is considering running against Hunt.