Newspoll: 54-46 to Coalition

GhostWhoVotes tweets that the latest Newspoll has the Coalition two-party lead at 54-46, down from an aberrant 57-43 a fortnight ago. The Coalition is down four points on the primary vote to 44 per cent, which in fact returns them to where they were in the poll before last. Labor is up a point to 31 per cent, which is still a point shy of the previous poll, and the Greens are on 13 per cent, which compares with 10 per cent last time and 12 per cent the time before. Julia Gillard has consolidated the lead she opened up as preferred prime minister a fortnight ago, which ended five months of ascendancy for Tony Abbott: she is now up three to 43 per cent, with Abbott up one to 36 per cent. Gillard also has a less bad net approval rating than Abbott for the first time in eight months, with her approval up two points to 36 per cent (its highest in eight months) and disapproval up one to 56 per cent. Abbott is down one on approval to 33 per cent and up two on disapproval to 57 per cent, in both cases equalling his previous worst results and collectively producing his lowest ever net rating of minus 24.

UPDATE: Essential Research likewise has it at 54-46, unchanged from last week, with primary votes of 47 per cent for the Coalition (down one), 34 per cent for Labor (steady) and 10 per cent for the Greens (down one). Encouragingly for Labor, there has been a shift in sentiment in favour of the government seeing out its full term: support is up seven points since early September to 47 per cent, with “hold election now” down seven to 41 per cent. Less happily for them, a question on best party to handle 15 issues has Labor leading only on industrial relations, and then only slightly – the Liberals hold leads approaching 20 per cent for all economic questions, as well as “political leadership”. On the question of which issues will most influence vote choice, there has been little change since June.

UPDATE 2: Possum charts polling showing a shift in sentiment away from an early election:

However, the apparently radical nature of the shift from the first two polls to the last three is largely a function of the poorly framed question posed by Galaxy in the earlier cases, when respondents were offered the false dichotomy of “Gillard has a mandate for the carbon tax” and “an early election should be called”. Australia’s worst and least trusted major newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, used these obviously flawed results to run a front page lead claiming Australians were “demanding Julia Gillard call a fresh election” and an editorial headlined “voters demand a carbon tax ballot”. It will be interesting to see how the paper reports today’s contrary finding from Essential Research.

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.

4,584 comments on “Newspoll: 54-46 to Coalition”

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  1. Cat and Bemused

    Not sure that the recent conference give much encouragement to the idea of membership renewal and unions changing colours. Has not the discussion of reform gone to a committee and that is full of factional hacks.

    If O’Farrell is successful it will SHAKE things up. But will it be too late for the ALP.

    Honestly if you are a 20 something (the peak recruiting age) what reason would you have for joining ALP rather than Greens or indeed Libs. Look at the issues of importance

    Green issues of all kinds – Naturally Greens will win on this one
    Economic issues – pretty much the defining issues for those who might go to the Libs, less clear for the ALP versus Green. Free marketeers, small business types and anti union types will go LNP, lefy and social justice types will go Green but some may go Labor?
    International affairs – passionate Foreign Policy Wonks will all go Green except for the very pro US types who will go LNP.
    Civil liberties and human right issues. the Greens will scoop all the lefties on this. The centre will be split between LNP and ALP.

    All parties need their passionate advocates. I just cannot see who these will be for Labor

  2. C@tmomma @ 242

    bemused @ 232,
    My own idea was to eliminate Union block contributions entirely, and thus block Union representation of 50% of the ALP at Conference, such that if any Union can gather individual numbers of members in support of the ALP together, then they get an equivalent vote in the party. This way they might actually have to get their members to approve of their positions and their alignment to the party.

    That has merit and should at least be discussed.

  3. [Sell the bloody abc properties. Disconnect the electricity, sack the staff so that they can get jobs with murdoch.

    The abc is a WOFTAM – a waste of time and money.]

    It’s a battle between the media in general and the public.

    The media, proud to call themselves cynical and bored, full of sourness and vicious ennui, are trying their hardest to get the public to lose confidence in everything: the government, governance itself, the economy, hope and the future.

    There is no good news. There is only what looks like good news, but it’s actually bad. Every silver lining has a cloud to them.

    Interest rates stay put for 12 months… but next month they’ll rise, so don’t get your hopes up, homeowners.

    Finally they go down. This is just a sign that our economy is on the brink of failure.

    The government wants a surplus. We don’t need one, shouldn’t have one, because it’s all going to shit soon and we’re going to need a stimulus to keep things limping along.

    But if we run another stimulus, none of it’s any good because there’ll always be someone who didn’t get what they thought they should, or who thinks someone else got more than they should have.

    Anyway, we’ll never get to the stage where we have to worry about a surplus. The economy will be swept away by Europe by then. China is tanking. America is a basket case. The Libs are better economic managers.

    We must make sure the Queensland Levy money isn’t just shovelled off the back of a truck – no more Pink Batts fiascos please – but when it’s doled out carefully the “stingy” government and its “red tape” is hurting farmers, residents, truckies, battlers and various other associated hangers on.

    Pink Batts themselves provided employment for 10,000 otherwise job-hunting workers. 4 of them got killed because their bosses – all “reputable” companies by the way, not the “fly by nighters” we were told they were sure to be – so it was a failure. Report? What report? Who reads reports? The CSIRO Report said that the HIP reduced expected deaths. A million homes are saving on their electricity bills right now. Bah! It was a catastrophe anyway.

    Qantas said it would lock out all its worker in two days. The FWA tribunal – set up by Gillard – sorted it all out over the weekend. Most of the passengers who were stranded got seats. The ones who didn’t (and a large swag of the general public) now hate Qantas. Hockey brags he knew what what going to happen, but forgot to tell the PM. There was a crisis alright, a crisis brought on by the Irish ring-in who came here to tell us how to wreck the world’s most successful – and safe – airline with corner cutting. Yet it was Gillard who failed.

    Wayne Swan is a “bozo”. He got his MYEFO figures all wrong. We told him six months ago he was an idiot. But when it’s pointed out that the journo got his figures wrong, the story is buried.

    The Coalition faked its costings. Claimed they were “legally audited” when they weren’t. The media gave them a free pass on this, then acted all excited when the Independents pinged Abbott for it and a government was formed as a result.

    A few months later, the Black Hole came up again. Once again the media wrote “Who Knew?” stories, as if the idea of the Coalition faking its costings was a surprise to them.

    The accountancy firm involved in the costings was fined and reprimanded for professional misconduct thereto. So the Insiders spend a couple of minutes talking about it wondering why other journalists didn’t write it up. Wasn’t the Insiders’ job apparently. They were too busy practising their “I’m soooo bored” poses, giggling at their own jokes, patting themselves on the back, making idiotic predictions that if a quarter of them come true I’ll eat my hat… that and wafting rose water under their noses to keep the stench from the grubby tabloid streets out of their noses. The phoney costings went from scant attantion to no attention. Costings are so “2010” after all. Much better to talk about first-time Mum’s losing $400. What’s a $70 billion Black Hole compared to $400?

    Hockey wants to sack 12,000 public servants. The government wants them to work a little harder. Guess who got condemned for what?

    The Coalition reckons $70 billion out of government spending will just save money, with no other effects. Yet a mere $7 billion in savings is the ruination of the nation for shabby political ends.

    The Opposition wreck parliament. So the government is to blame. Well they are the government, aren’t they?

    Gillard is gone because Rudd will take over in February, March, April, June, July, October, November, next May, before the election this month, next month, this year, in 2012, when Craig Thomson gets convicted, after the film of Peter Slipper naked, swimming in a pool full of cheap champagne with Tiffanie, drunk and disorderly, feeling up the skirt of a Virgin hostie, doing something doing anything is leaked revealed.

    It’s a war game they’re playing. The public needs to just accept that journalists know better than they do. The public needs to know that optimism, confidence in our institutions and our government, in our system of government is so pathetically stupid and shallow.

    They need to know there are no mere mistakes or errors. There are only catastrophes, debacles, meltdowns, shambolic circuses and yes, Laura Tingle, disasters.

    Governments, especially Labor ones, don’t get things right, or half right or even a quarter right. They get nothing right.

    One rort of a government program cam be ignored. Two rorts mean “the {BER|HIP|Medicare|Centrelink|Solr Cells|$900 cheque stimulus} was full of rorts. 250,000 jobs saved is apparently not a rort, nor an achievement. It’s not even mentioned. They don’t pay senior journos $200,000 plus to stay above the grubby fray for nothing, you know. They have to take it up to the government, ask the tough questions, and render the population miserable and depressed in their wake.

    The readers and viewers are on the back foot. They can’t get any good news anywhere. they search around for someone less fortunate than they are so they can make themselves fell better by kicking them in the head. It’s a national wowserism, so important a phenomenon to our sense of being that Australia had to invent a special word for it.

    The journalists feed this wowserism with bucketfulls of anguish. They invite their consumers to join in the national moaning and wailing. No matter that other countries are really doing it tough. We shouldn’t have to suffer from a global meltdown at all.

    Put the two together – a tired, overpaid, bored, cynical and malignant media with a gullible population ready to indulge in plenary whingeing – and you have a perfect recipe for a real national disaster. It’s happening right now, in front of our eyes.

    The punters aren’t shopping, they’re not eating out, they’re scrimping, they’re angry all the time, they snigger and smirk, they (at least claim to) refuse government benefits because of the political color of the government that issues them, they mock, they deride, they riot in parliament’s galleries, they whinge and wail.

    You could say the media and their readers and viewers deserve each other. Perhaps they do, except that their communal circle jerk, their group depression, is affecting our lives and our livliehoods too.

    And if I may be excused a tiny whinge of my own, that’s what really gives me the shits.

  5. daretotread @ 250

    Honestly if you are a 20 something (the peak recruiting age) what reason would you have for joining ALP rather than Greens or indeed Libs. Look at the issues of importance

    You are way too pessimistic toward the ALP and see the Greens too favourably.

  6. BOERWAR – You can be guaranteed that the moment that the pressure is off Julia Gillard and she doesn’t need the independents and she doesn’t have an agenda handed to her she will revert to John Howard in drag. Forming a minority government and plunging in the polls was probably the best thing that could have happened to her; rising in the polls and forming a majority government might be the worst.

  7. GG

    [You join the party and then your demands/bleatings might have some force.]

    Actually you can criticise something without being a member of it in a democracy.

  8. [poroti

    Posted Monday, December 5, 2011 at 11:12 am | Permalink

    mari

    Have a trot over to JTI’s again some time .There is even a recent one on the polls for you inner pseph. The current one on gay marriage will give you an idea why the right leaning peeps look at him as a bit of a lefty]

    You are right, I will start reading him again(not behind the paywall is he?) what was even better the same “names” are posting as they used to before.
    As I said I do miss Alan Ramsay, he cartainly wrote without “fear or favour” dissed it out to everyone

  9. [latikambourke Latika Bourke
    Australia will begin negotiations in the ‘first part of next year’ regarding the sale of uranium to India.]

  10. “All I can ask is: Has Tingle been got at too?

    On the basis of one less than adulatory column? I doubt it. She is calling it as she saw it. I saw about five seconds on the news over the past few days because I have better things to do rather than watch network news, let alone coverage of political conferences, and Gillard didn’t look dominant to me.

    As with polls, if you think LT has been “got at” (usually a euphemism for being made pregnant, btw), then let’s see the next series of columns for a trend. Then we can break out the pitchforks.

  11. The poll results: I am interested in the peeps’ growing dissatisfaction with Abbott, while still wanting to vote for Libs.
    IMO this is because Abbott has WON his battle (with the help of RW msm) to convince the voters that Julia is hopeless, the govt is inefficient, illegal, etc etc.
    The msm are like the QE2 – they take a hell of a long time to turn around. And from posters’ comments, too many people have bought it.
    Abbott has achieved his destruction of the PM’s reputation and can rest easy now.
    😡

  12. Doyley

    Sort of rot about the Carr Bracks report. It had some good ideas but was really quite bland. definitely not holy Grail stuff.

    Personally I think that the govt needs to be VERY careful before dissing Rudd completely. As ex PM I feel sure he will know stuff – lots of stuff about lots of people. He is a thorough sort of person. He is wiley and cautious and an information collector and analyser (Diplomatic training). A real dump on current ministers may not be recommended. I hope all their noses are clean and all their skeletons out of every closet.

    Rudd as an independent MP could be Labor’s worst nightmare

  14. BB(253) you are amazing, I have had a double fix this morning. The only quible while I was in Sydney, drove past the eating establishments along The Grand Parade, one at about 6.30pm and then again about 10pm both times they were overflowing with patrons, I remarked to my fellow passengers, they don”t seem to be doing it too hard? They agreed

  15. [Rudd as an independent MP could be Labor’s worst nightmare]

    Rudd could join Slipper and Katter and form the Grumpy Queenslanders Party.

  16. The only real eeason to join the Greens is if you believe in environmentalism and subscribe to the underlying philosophy i.e the environment is the most impotant political issue as without it life wouldn’t exist therefore all political action must be focused towards it’s survival

    I know people who are getting disillusioned with the Greens as they are beginnig to shift away from this political objective and move to a more marxist orientation. They also don’t like it when Bob Brown starts attacking the ALP in order to score political points as they believe he is meant to be above partisan politics. That’s part of what drew them to him in the first place

  17. Diogs,

    Yes, being in a democracy does give you the right to piss in to the wind. Just, don’t expect to be taken seriously when you talk about your warm inner glow.

  18. mari

    [You are right, I will start reading him again(not behind the paywall is he?) what was even better the same “names” are posting as they used to before.
    As I said I do miss Alan Ramsay, he cartainly wrote without “fear or favour” dissed it out to everyone]
    JTI is outside the wall asis George Megalogenis. Two of the best reads over there and both “free”.

  20. [The be nice to Kevin Policy seems to have expired.]

    The threat to bring the govt down has expired now ALP has a one seat buffer. He can quit if he wants and even if ALP loses his seat, still in govt.

  23. GG

    I’m just supporting democracy, as in people voting as their members wish.

    I know it’s a foreign concept to Labor but I believe it has some merit.

    There are even a few Labor members who agree with me, like Faulkner.

  25. [Rudd as an independent MP could be Labor’s worst nightmare]

    If Rudd wants to become UN Sec/Gen …. he’ll need to watch his ps and qs. Cannot afford to openly create scandals.

  27. CTar1

    [They could broaden it by calling it the “Spurned and Really BITTER About it” party.]

    Think of all the dumped pollies from all sides who could join!!

  28. rhiannon personifies the limitations of some greens – brash, oppositional, self righteous, no charm or goodwill to half of her own party or anyone from another quarter. the israel new policy was an unmititaged disaster. she is an extreme left operator, and she not have been promoted so late in career – she’s had a good wicket in nsw. its a bit of a shame, as there are many decent folk in greens, many good ideas (including mineral tax), and a definite for a third party. but the nagain, brandt giving same sex marriage his ‘maiden’ speech is just as loopy actually greens should be on 20% now – would have been except for 2009 ets, which was measure of them all.

  29. Paul Keating sums up Bob Brown the best in my opinion:

    “Bob Brown is Gordon-below-Franklin: important but it’s not Antarctica”

  30. Diogs,

    Members of any group have the right to decide their own membership arrangements. Your gratuitous advice as PB’s prurient fence sitting dilettante makes you a person of interest in the Labor Party’s never ending quest to avoid taking notice of tossers and cranks.

    Why would anyone change anything on the say so of a known ratbag as yourself.

  31. [You join the party and then your demands/bleatings might have some force.

    Actually you can criticise something without being a member of it in a democracy.]

    I don’t think anyone was implying it’s impossible to criticise the ALP from the outside. Just that it would be more effective to do so from the inside.

    Of course, in a democracy, some people will choose to never criticise the so-called Liberals, right, Diog?

  33. jenauthor

    [If Rudd wants to become UN Sec/Gen …. he’ll need to watch his ps and qs. Cannot afford to openly create scandals.]
    He may need to fight his way past the current UN No.3 , Helen Clark 🙂

  35. [They could broaden it by calling it the “Spurned and Really BITTER About it” party.]

    Failed Leaders Opposition Party (aka FLOP).

  37. daretoread @261,

    fair enough re your opinion on the review. I made no mention of any particular poster just my observation of comments and posts over the last few months.

    Re Mr Rudd. I would think Mr Rudd leaving the party would be the last thing to happen. He loves the spotlight, the ability to trip around the world and be among the diplomatic and political elite on the world stage and some influence on international policy. That is where he belongs. He would lose that if he left.

    Not having a go just my reading of him.

    Also in his own way Mr Rudd is a labor man.

  39. Personally, if I were the ALP, I’d be making fun and teasing the Greens rather than all out slamming them

    I think Keating has the correct approach: don’t slam their ideology, make fun of Bob Brown (he parades around like an environmental Jesuit with a bad halo on etc) and explain that the real show on the environment is being run by the ALP e.g. it’s the ALP who are out on the world stage (as climate change is a GLOBAL problem that requires a GLOBAL third way solution) advocating for climate change action, not the Greens etc.

  42. [#jenauthor – Kevin may well have realised that his bridges are burnt. No one will give him a UN nomination.]

    Possible, but his ego is big enough …. and he has a strong belief in his international persona.

  43. spur @265,

    Re your first paragraph. Agree 100%. I think that is the reason the greens do poorly at state and local level generally.

  45. BB

    Luv your stuff.

    Saw some interesting fugures in the AFR this weekend:

    fully 10% of Australians are millionaires.
    Australia has the highest median wealth in the world.

    So if nothing else, all the whingeing seems to be paying off!

  46. Jen

    Rudd has NO chance of being UN Sec General. The Palestine vote killed that off completely. No Aussie will get near a UN senior role for many years. China also will veto any Aussie just now.

    Rudd will stick to Griffith – but whether still in Labor is less clear. If he loses the FA portfolio he has little reason to stay.

  47. daretotread @ 285

    Bemused

    You are too hard on Greens (especially Horsey)

    Actually I quite like Horsey on a personal basis.

    But, like a typical Green, he/she is just a bit too earnest with their opinions. Too much evangelical zeal.

  50. What would have been the outcome of last week-end’s conference if the Greens did not exist, and all their members where in the Labor Left?

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