Newspoll marginals poll: NSW, Queensland, Victoria

Newspoll has targeted 17 marginal seats in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, with results that are heartening for Labor: a manageable 1.3 per cent swing in NSW, a surviveable 3.4 per cent in Queensland and, remarkably, a 6.2 per cent swing in their favour in Victoria. We are told of a 4.6 per cent drop in the Labor primary vote in the six NSW seats, an 8.1 per cent drop in the eight Queensland seats and a 1 per cent increase in three Victorian seats. The Coalition are respectively up two to 47 per cent and 1.7 per cent in Queensland, but down 5.3 per cent in Victoria.

UPDATE: PDF here. The seats covered were Bennelong, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, Macarthur, Macquarie and Robertson in New South Wales, Brisbane, Dawson, Dickson, Flynn, Forde, Herbert, Leichhardt and Longman in Queensland, and Dunkley, La Trobe and McEwen in Victoria.

Note also this evening’s Galaxy marginals poll and Nielsen national poll covered in the previous post.

Other matters of note:

• Stephen Lunn of The Australian reports that Antony Green, Newspoll’s Martin O’Shannessy and Bob Brown’s chief-of-staff Ben Oquist all agree that Greens preferences will run 80-20 to Labor as usual. This is contrary to much talk around the place from such as Dennis Shanahan, who spoke of Labor two-party results bloated by “heroic assumptions“ about Greens preferences. The Nielsen poll released earlier this evening gave Labor 86 per cent of respondent-allocated Greens preferences.

• An article on the Liberal campaign by Simon Canning and Patricia Karvelas of The Australian is interesting both for its content, and in providing the first hint of pre-emptive recriminations in the Liberal camp. “Senior Coalition frontbenchers” have complained the Liberal camapign director, Brian Loughnane, had “left Tony Abbott vulnerable with an overly safe advertising campaign”. John Singleton is quoted in the article saying it had been “the worst campaign the Liberal Party has ever run”. Many of the specific criticisms proffered ring false to these ears, but it has indeed been notable that Liberal advertising has failed to target “Kevin Rudd’s execution and re-emergence, and the constant distraction provided by former leader Mark Latham”.

• Michael Kroger in The Australian optimistically rates the week a “draw”, and appears to believe the decisive seats so far as a Labor majority is concerned will be Bass, Corangamite, Forde and Solomon. He also offers that “a Labor loss in the seat of Melbourne now seems likely”.

• Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail notes the Australian Electoral Commission’s statistics on postal vote applications show Labor has lodged three times as many as the Liberal National Party in a “a clutch of key Queensland marginal seats”. Labor is said to have learned its lesson after being slow off the mark with its postal vote campaign at last year’s state election.

• The Age reports the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party is likely to disendorse its candidate for Lingiari, Leo Abbott, for failing to inform the party he had breached a domestic violence order.

• GetUp! have had another win, this time in their challenge against the Australian Electoral Commission’s refusal to admit enrolment applications signed with a digital pen and submitted through their website. One observer who declined to join in the congratulations was Possum, who argued it would strengthen the “potential fraud” argument the Howard government used to justify its franchise-curtailment measures in 2006.

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.

1,072 comments on “Newspoll marginals poll: NSW, Queensland, Victoria”

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  3. I don’t agree that a “more negative” campaign would have helped Abbott. Their campaign has been almost entirely negative as it is, and if they’d gone much further it would have backfired – even the Australian electorate has a gag reflex somewhere. As a great Labor figure once said “Nothing kills a bad product like good advertising.”

  5. I just read Honest Johns portrayal of Abbott on the Oz online.
    This part made me laugh the loudest;

    “His critics are marshalling their arguments. One of these is the absurd claim that Abbott is inexperienced.”

    John Howard: King of the Straw Man. He’s always known how to get people talking about what he wants them to talk about. What’s Abbott got going for him? Well, er, he’s been around for a long time. Ok, good, let’s turn that into a positive. “What’s this about people saying Abbott’s inexperienced? Balderdash!”

    Of course it’s an absurd claim, John. It’s so absurd that nobody’s actually making it. But don’t let that stop you.

  10. [what is wrong with dawson. Even with the outing that the LNP candidate is batpoop-crazy, the LNP is going to have the seat?]

    In most seats the revelation that a candidate was an anti-Semitic misogynist racist loony might be seen as something of a problem for his campaign. But not in Dawson, it seems. Still, as I said earlier, Labor is not giving away anything in Qld.

  13. William it looks as if people being polled were simply asked questions about Labor and the leaders. Where the punters asked if they were supporting individual candidates in individual seats because that can make a lot of difference where we are running popular candidates.

  17. The only issue on which the Libs have really drawn blood from Labor has been boat arrivals, and this is not an issue Victorians care about. It is a NSW-Qld-WA issue only, and in fact mainly a Sydney issue, to do with the toxic mix of class and ethnic politics in Sydney. In Victoria voters have been willing to judge Labor on other issues, such as the economy. Plus is a very Sydney Liberal, and Vics don’t like that. Especially when the PM is a western suburbs girl in a Bulldogs scarf. What’s not to like?

  22. psephos – Folks around these parts like their anti-Semitic misogynist racist loony’s. Bob Katter is as safe and some folk probably think George Christensen might turn out nearly as good as him.

  23. Those figures of The Australian indicate Labor would lose Dickson!!!!!! Of course Dutton holds Dickson for the Libs….just how reliable are the figures?

  32. Qld has a very fluid class geography compared to the other states. When we win, we win a huge swag of seats, and when we lose, we lose them all. In 1975 we held one Qld seat, and in 1996 two. It would easy to lose every seat in the state except Oxley, Rankin, Griffith, Lilley and Capricornia. Realistically, we are in danger in Leichhardt, Herbert, Dawson, Flynn, Longman, Dickson, Petrie, Forde and Brisbane. I think we’ll hold the majority of those, but I’d be very surprised if we got away with no losses. I still think we have a chance of winning Ryan.

  38. try this way instead:
    Hang on to your hats, it’s down to the wire

    Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor
    From: The Australian
    August 14, 2010 12:00AM

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    LABOR’s in front and likely to win but Government is still there for the taking for Tony Abbott.

    As Labor prepares to throw everything into the final week before the poll on Saturday the result is still unpredictable.

    While the policy debate is virtually non-existent it is the closeness of the race and the reluctance of voters to commit to either leader overwhelmingly and uniformly that makes this election so exciting.

    In the battleground states of Queensland and NSW there are seats on wafer thin margins that may be held against an anti-Labor sentiment, while others with safe buffers appear certain to be lost.

    Neither side is prepared to say they are in front. Both say they the underdogs and both fear the volatility in the electorate may suddenly turn against them.

    Labor has the advantage of incumbency, a 13-seat buffer, a preferred prime minister, a lead in two-party preferred support and a massive negative advertising campaign directed against Tony Abbott, whom voters seem reluctant to turn to.

    Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

    End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

    But the Coalition has the advantage of a protest vote, complacency among Labor voters who assume Labor is going to win, strong primary vote support in areas where it counts and the damaging image of Labor leadership instability and divisions.

    The latest Newspoll survey of marginal seats confrims the volatility of the vote and the huge differences between states and regions.

    It’s not the debate that’s interesting this election, it’s the result

  41. Looking a the Newspoll marginal stuff, I was a bit surprised that Bennelong looks a lot more shaky than I would have expected. The betting is around $1.60 to $2.25 now – out a fair bit from earlier on for Labor. Hmmm…

  46. [He’ll be seconded to write the kids section in the Sunday Telegraph :smile:]

    Frank,

    ah yes, same role, different fish and chips wrapper.

  48. Psephos@95

    “Down to the wire” is a lazy journalist’s cliche which means “I don’t know what’s going on, or if I do know I don’t like it.”

    I’m pretty sure by the writing that Shamaham has been told the trend in any weekend polling.

  50. Putting these uniform state-wide swings into Antony Green’s calculator
    we get the following result. Note that we may assume no swings in
    SA,NT, WA, Tas and ACT as that would give an overall TPP of 53%
    matching Neilsen.

    ALP gains: McEwen, La Trobe, Greenway, Dunkley, McMillan, Aston, Swan, Gippsland, Casey, Menzies, Goldstein

    Lib Gains: Herbert, Longman, Flynn, Robertson, Macquarie, Dawson, Forde

    Final result: ALP 87, Libs 60, Ind 3

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