A whole bunch of privately conducted polls from Queensland and Victoria, some more convincing than others.
No media polling has emerged in the past week, but there have been a welter of reports at state level on private polling – rather too many, one might think, given the political agendas frequently attached to them.
In Victoria, where Liberals provided the Herald Sun with polling showing Labor copping a hiding in four marginal seats last week, Labor-linked firm Redbridge Group has pushed back showing a far happier set of results for the Andrews government. This includes a state voting intention finding with Labor on 39.1%, the Coalition on 34.5% and the Greens on 7.0%, converting into an estimated 53.5-46.5% lead to Labor on two-party preferred. Pollster Kos Samaras offers a few qualifications: that phone polls tend to under-report both Labor and the Nationals, and that the Greens’ inner-city constituency is “difficult to survey”.
On the state government’s road map for emerging from lockdown, 58.1% agree it was motivated by “the best interests of Victorians” with 31.3% disagreeing. Conversely, only 34.1% thought Scott Morrison and the federal government were playing a constructive role, with 50.6% disagreeing, and just 18.2% thought so in relation to the state Liberals, with 57.0% disagreeing. The poll was conducted last Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 2172.
There has also been a flurry of polling ahead of next month’s state election in Queensland, all of it portending bad things for Labor:
• The Australian reported on polling conducted for coal miner New Hope by Omnipoll, which was co-founded by former Newspoll head Martin O’Shannessy, has the following findings in Queensland, targeting four Labor-held seats outside Brisbane. The overall pattern was of an exodus from right-wing minor parties to the Liberal National Party, and of Labor losing a bigger share of the primary vote than they would probably be able to wear:
Ipswich: Labor 44 (-4), LNP 29 (+16), One Nation 5 (-22), Greens 12 (+3).
Keppel: Labor 34 (-9), LNP 40 (+15), One Nation 10 (-16), Greens 7 (+1).
Mackay: Labor 36 (-7), LNP 37 (+12), One Nation 7 (-16), Greens 6 (+1).
Thuringowa: Labor 33 (+1), LNP 40 (+19), One Nation 4 (-16), Greens 7 (+1), Katter’s Australian Party 7 (-9).
This tends to suggest Labor losing more support than they can wear, while the LNP soaks up a huge share of One Nation and KAP support that it had probably been getting back as preferences anyway. Labor won Ipswich by 10.9% over One Nation in 2017, and wouldn’t be troubled there on these numbers; won Keppel by 3.1% over One Nation, and would likely lose to the LNP; won Mackay by 8.3% over the LNP, and would likely hang on; and won Thuringowa over One Nation by 4.1%, and would likely lose.
• The Greens have been circulating results of three inner urban seats conducted by Lonergan Research, where the LNP’s move to preference them ahead of Labor makes them likely winners wherever they can finish second. In the party’s one existing seat of Maiwar, a strong flow of Labor preferences would likely secure victory for incumbent Michael Berkman, on 36% to LNP candidate Lauren Day’s 37%, with Labor on 17%. The party is reportedly well placed to defeat former Deputy Premier Jackie Trad in South Brisbane, where their candidate Amy McMahon has 36% to Trad’s 30%, with Clem Grehan of the LNP on 21%. They also look in the hung on in McConnel, which was once more appositely known as Brisbane Central, Greens candidate Kirsten Lovejoy is on 30%, Labor incumbent Grace Grace is on 29%, and LNP candidate Pinky Singh is on 31%, with 8% undecided. Notes of caution: The Australian cites Labor analysis that has the party expecting to win a very close race; Kevin Bonham discerns a tendency for the Greens to under-perform their own published seat polling; and even the pollster itself cautions that the Greens are “typically over-represented in polls”, as reported by the Courier-Mail. Each of the polls was conducted “over the past month” by phone and SMS from samples of 600.
• A statewide poll conducted by LNP-aligned think tank the Australian Institute for Progress was trumpeted in the Courier-Mail on Monday as a YouGov poll showing Labor on 32%, the LNP 38% and the Greens on 12%. However, it turns out these were the results of the paper’s own YouGov poll from early June that the pollster used as a weighting base for responses to a series of other questions. The Courier-Mail report no longer claims the poll was conducted by YouGov, but continues to present its numbers as fresh results. The new poll would actually appear to have covered barely more than 300 respondents drawn from the organisation’s own online panel, which is quite a lot smaller than those used by YouGov and Essential Research. For what it’s worth, it finds a 56-44 split in favour of the LNP to form government, plus other findings you can read in the pollster’s own report.