YouGov Galaxy: 51-49 to Labor in Queensland

A post-election bounce for Labor washes out in the latest Queensland state poll, as Annastacia Palaszczuk takes a five point hit on her approval rating.

The Courier Mail has results of a YouGov Galaxy poll of state voting intention in Queensland, which has Labor leading 51-49, down from 53-47 at the last such poll in May. The primary votes are Labor 35% (down three), LNP 37% (up two), Greens 11% (up one) and One Nation 10% (down two). Annastacia Palaszczuk is down five on approval to 41% and steady on disapproval at 38%, while Deb Frecklington is steady on 31% and down two 26%. The poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 800, and will hopefully be followed tomorrow or the day after by a set of federal voting intention numbers.

BludgerTrack: 51.1-48.9 to Labor; YouGov Galaxy: 51-49 to federal Coalition in WA

An overdue review of the BludgerTrack situation, as a new poll from YouGov Galaxy supports its finding that the Labor swing in Western Australia is back to sub-stratospheric levels.

The diversion of Super Saturday meant I fell out of my habit of running weekly posts on the latest BludgerTrack numbers, although I have been updating them as new polls have come through. As no national polls appear likely this week, now is a good time to resume.

There have been three national polls since the last BludgerTrack post, each of which has registered some sort of improvement for the Coalition: the Ipsos poll three weeks ago had Labor’s two-party lead closing from 53-47 to 51-49, and its respondent-allocated preferences result was 50-50 (as it was in the Ipsos poll from early April); and, more modestly, last week’s Newspoll and Essential Research results both had Coalition up a point on the primary vote and Labor steady.

We also had yesterday a Western Australia only poll from YouGov Galaxy, which gratifyingly supported what BludgerTrack was saying already. On voting intention, it had the Coalition on 42%, down from 48.7% at the 2016 election; Labor on 36%, up 3.5%; the Greens on 10%, down 2.1%; and One Nation on 5%. The published two-party result is 51-49 in favour of the Coalition, which is presumably based on previous election flows, and compares with 54.7-45.3 in 2016.

Other findings of the poll: Malcolm Turnbull led Bill Shorten 47-32 as preferred prime minister; they were tied at 40% on who was most trusted to “change the distribution of GST revenue to ensure WA receives a fairer share” (which might be thought presumptuous wording, though few in WA would be likely to think so); and 36% supported and 50% opposed company tax cuts, in response to a question that specified beneficiaries would include “those with a turnover above $50 million a year”. The poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday for the Sunday Times from a sample of 831.

Together with the existing BludgerTrack reading, this poll tends to confirm that much of the air has gone out of the boom Labor was experiencing in WA polling through much of last year and this year. The BludgerTrack probability projections now have Labor likely to pick up Hasluck, but Swan and Christian Porter’s seat of Pearce are now rated as 50-50 propositions.

At the national level, recent polls have produced a movement back to the Coalition on two-party preferred, with Labor’s lead down to 51.1-48.9, its lowest level since late 2016. However, this has not availed them much on the seat projection, which actually credits Labor with a bigger majority than it achieved in 2007, when its two-party vote was 1.6% higher.

Partly this reflects continuing weakness in the Coalition’s ratings in all-important Queensland, consistent with the Longman by-election result. Labor has also made a gain in BludgerTrack against the national trend in Victoria, netting them two projected seats, which is balanced only by a one seat loss from a slightly larger movement against them in New South Wales. BludgerTrack is now registering a small swing in the Coalition’s favour in New South Wales, but thanks to adjustments for sophomore surge effects in all seats the Coalition could conceivably gain from Labor, it’s not availing them on the seat projection.

Ipsos and Newspoll both provided new results for leadership ratings, which have made a small further contribution to the existing improving trend for Malcolm Turnbull, both on net approval and preferred prime minister. Full results through the link below.

Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor

Essential finds Malcolm Turnbull increasing his lead as preferred Liberal leader, Anthony Albanese drawing level with Bill Shorten for Labor, and little change in voting intention.

The latest fortnightly result from Essential Research has Labor maintaining its 51-49 lead, with the Coalition up one on the primary vote to 41%, Labor steady on 36%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation steady on 6%. Also featured are questions on best Liberal and Labor leader: the former finds Malcolm Turnbull on 28%, up four since April, with Julie Bishop down one to 16% and Tony Abbott down one to 10%; the latter has Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese tied on 19%, which is one point down since August 2017 in Shorten’s case and six points up in Albanese’s, while Tanya Plibersek is down one to 12%.

The poll also has Essential’s occasional question on attributes of the main parties, which are chiefly interesting in having the Liberals up eight points since November 2017 for having “a good team of leaders”, to 45%, and down eight on the obverse question of being “divided”, to 56%. The biggest movements for Labor are a seven point decrease for being “extreme”, to 34%; a five point decrease for being too close to corporate interests, to 37%; and a five point increase for being divided, to 56%.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1022; full results can be found here.

The Monday after Super Saturday

An all-new forum for discussion of Super Saturday and its aftermath.

For those wanting a more psephologically focused forum for discussion of the by-elections than the main thread, which is the Newspoll post directly below this one, I offer the following.

As well as that, some scattered notes and observations:

• Hear Ben Raue and I trade thoughts on the results in a podcast at The Tally Room.

• For those of you still following the count, Braddon and Longman (and presumably others) yesterday saw counting of postals and special hospital booth votes, together with rechecking. In Braddon, 3967 postals and 1224 followed the overall pattern in not swinging at all, leaving the Labor lead at 52.5-47.5 from a favourable swing of 0.3%, which is unlikely to change much from here. In Longman, 7775 postals and 943 special hospital votes swung somewhat more heavily to Labor (4.9% and 7.1%) than the election day result (3.4%). Since the LNP nonetheless won the postals 52.3-47.7, the raw lead has come down from 5.4% to 4.5%, but I’m now projecting a final margin of 4.3% rather than 3.4%.

• It’s not news anymore, but I thought it worth noting that the Daily Telegraph had a report on insiders’ expectations for Braddon and Longman on July 21 that proved unusually prescient, but which escaped my notice at the time – other such commentary having generally been unduly bullish from the conservatives’ perspective. According to the report, “a senior Liberal strategist said the polling was much tighter in Braddon and that while the LNP was still competitive in Longman, Labor would have to be considered in the box seat”. Also quoted as a “senior Labor source” who said Labor had “made considerable ground in the past couple of weeks”, and that the party was now feeling “pretty confident”.

• If by-election booth results in a spreadsheet-style format are of any use to you, I am maintaining them online for my own purposes for Longman and Braddon.

Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

Newspoll caps a weekend of status quo by-election results with a status quo poll result.

I’d have thought Newspoll might have had the week off, but The Australian reports that the latest instalment has Labor maintaining its 51-49 lead, with the Coalition up a point on the primary vote to 39%, Labor steady on 36%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation steady on 7%. On personal ratings, Malcolm Turnbull is up one on approval to 42% and down one on disapproval to 48%, Bill Shoten is steady on 32% and up one to 57%, and Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is unchanged at 48-29. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1704.

The Sunday after Super Saturday

A good night for Bill Shorten as Labor lands a surprisingly emphatic win in Longman, and does enough to get home in Braddon.

While Labor’s by-election performances were nothing special in historical terms, it was undeniably a good night for the party, thanks largely to an unexpectedly clear win in Longman. Five campaign opinion polls had Labor slightly behind in the seat, before the election eve Newspoll found them edging to a 51-49 lead. Labor actually appears headed for a winning margin of around 4%, bolstering a fragile 0.8% margin with a swing of 3.4%. The big surprise was the near double-digit fall in the Liberal National Party primary vote, which leaves them struggling to crack 30%. This is well below the 34% attributed to them by Newspoll, to say nothing of a series of ReachTEL results that had them approaching 40%.

The LNP slump rendered redundant what everyone imagined would be the decisive factor, namely the flow of One Nation preferences. Despite this, One Nation were the other big winner in Longman, adding around 7% to their 9.4% vote from 2016. This indeed flowed a lot more strongly to the LNP than in 2016, reflecting the party’s how-to-vote card recommendation and the fact that they clearly picked up much of the LNP’s lost support. After receiving 56.5% of One Nation preferences in 2016, Labor looks to have scored only a third this time.

The Braddon result was less good for Labor, notwithstanding that they have clearly won, and that this looked in doubt throughout the campaign. The main change from the 2016 result is that independent Craig Garland scored a creditable 11.0% (although it may come down a little in late counting), chipping a few percent away from each of Labor, Liberal and the Greens. Rebekha Sharkie’s win in Mayo was of about the anticipated scale: her present lead over Georgina Downer after preferences is 8.6%, compared with her 5.0% margin in 2016. Sharkie’s primary vote performance was even more robust, up from 34.9% to around 45%. This bespeaks one poor aspect of the by-elections for Labor – after playing dead at two successive elections, its vote in Mayo has fallen all the way to 6.0%.

In the two WA seats, Josh Wilson did notably better in Fremantle than Patrick Gorman did in Perth, although neither was in the least bit troubled. Wilson gained 11.6% to gain a clear majority on the primary vote, with the Greens treading water at 17% and the Liberal Democrats garnering enough stray Liberals to land in the low teens. Despite the 42.3% Liberal vote from 2016 being up for grabs (compared with 36.9% in Fremantle), Labor only made a negligible gain on the primary vote in Perth, with the Greens also only up slightly. The rest spread among a large field of 15 candidates, with independent Paul Collins the strongest performer among claimants to the Liberal vote. Turnout was notably subdued in Perth and Fremantle, and looks likely to settle at around 70%.

If you click on the image below, you will find an accounting of the swings in Braddon and Longman and, in the former case, an projection of the final result. Since the swing on votes counted in Braddon thus far is exactly zero, it concludes Labor’s existing margin of 2.2% will be maintained. Also featured are regional breakdowns for Braddon and Longman, with the former broken into the larger towns (Burnie, Devonport and Ulverstone) and the remainder, and the latter into Bribie Island area and the remainder. This doesn’t turn up anything particularly interesting: especially in Longman, the swings were remarkably uniform. Craig Garland’s vote was a little lower in the larger towns, but there was otherwise little distinction to speak of in Braddon.