GhostWhoVotes reports Newspoll has strayed from the pack with its latest fornightly federal poll result, with the Coalition holding a relatively moderate lead of 55-45 on two-party preferred compared with 59-41 last time. The primary votes are 30% for Labor (up three), 45% for the Coalition (down six) and 12% for the Greens (up one). In contrast to voting intention, the leaders’ ratings are essentially unchanged: Julia Gillard is on 27% approval (down one) and 63% disapproval (steady), and Tony Abbott is on 34% (up one) and 56% (up one). Results for reaction to the budget presumably to follow shortly.
UPDATE: The regular annual Newspoll budget questions have 18% saying it will make them better off and 41% worse off (compared with 11% and 41% last year); 37% saying the Coalition would have done a better job and 42% saying they wouldn’t have (38% and 41% last year); and 37% rating it good for the economy and 37% bad (37% and 32% last year). Newspoll has been asking these questions after each budget since the 1980s, with mean results over that time of 17.2% better off and 34.9% worse off; 29.8% opposition-better and 47.4% opposition-not-better; 42.3% good for the economy and 27.6% bad. With respect to “will the budget leave you better or worse off”, the five most positive results ever recorded (with some distance between fifth from sixth) occurred consecutively from 2004 to 2008. Outside of this golden age, the mean results have been 13.5% better off and 37.9% worse off.
Today’s Essential Research had the two-party preferred at 57-43, down from 58-42 last week, from primary votes of 50% for the Coalition (steady), 30% for Labor (up one) and 11% for the Greens (steady). Also featured were Essential’s monthly personal ratings, which welittle changed on April (contra Nielsen, Tony Abbott’s net rating has actually deteriorated from minus 12 to minus 17), and responses to the budget. The most interesting of the latter questions is on the impact of the budget on you personally, working people, businesses and the economy overall, for which the respective net ratings are minus 11, plus 7, minus 33 and minus 6. All of the eight specific features of the budget canvassed produced net positive ratings, from plus 5 for reduced defence spending to plus 79 for increased spending on dental health. There was a statistical tie (34% to 33%) on the question of whether Wayne Swan or Joe Hockey was most trusted to handle the economy.
Seat of the week: Banks
A little over a week ago I promised that my Friday posts would henceforth profile a significant federal electorate, but I was diverted on Friday by the onslaught of budget polling. Today I make good the omission with an overview of the southern Sydney electorate of Banks.
Located on the outer edge of Labor’s inner Sydney heartland, Banks has been held by Labor at all times since its creation in 1949, but over the past few decades the margin has fallen below 2% on three occasions: with the defeat of the Keating government in 1996, when Mark Latham led Labor to defeat in 2004, and – most ominously for Labor – in 2010, when a sharp swing against Labor in Sydney left intact only 1.5% of a 10.4% margin (adjusted for redistribution) from the 2007 election.
Labor’s strength in the electorate is in the suburbs nearer the city in the electorate’s north, from Hurstville through Riverwood to Padstow, which is balanced by strong Liberal support in the waterside suburbs along the Georges River which forms the electorate’s southern boundary, from Blakehurst westwards through Oatley to Padstow Heights. As a knock-on effect from the abolition of Lowe, the redistribution before the 2010 election shifted the electorate substantially eastwards, exchanging areas around Bankstown for the Blakehurst and Hurstville Grove area (from Barton) and Hurstville (from Watson), which cut 1.4% from the Labor margin.
Labor’s member since 1990 has been Daryl Melham, a former barrister and member of the Left faction. Melham rose to the shadow ministry in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs portfolio after the 1996 election defeat, but quit in August 2000 in protest against his party’s decision not to oppose Queensland’s contentious native title laws. He returned after the 2001 election, but voluntarily went to the back bench after the 2004 election saying he preferred to focus on committee work. Since the current government came to power he has served as chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
The Liberal candidate at the next election will be David Coleman, director of strategy and digital for Nine Entertainment, whom The Australian’s Media Diary describes as a factional moderate and “one of David Gyngell’s closest lieutenants”. Coleman won a local preselection ballot in March with 60 votes against 33 for the candidate from 2010, Ron Delezio, a businessman who came to public attention after his daughter Sophie received horrific injuries in separate accidents in 2003 and 2006.
Wiiliam
You mean 12% for the Greens
This should be fixed:
[The primary votes are 30% for Labor (up three), 45% for the Coalition (down six) and 12% for the Coalition (up one).]
swamprat
[L/NP -6, is that a large movement?]
Well, let’s just say if your dog did it in the park you would need a garbage bag to pick it up.
[With the movement of polls in recent years (months/weeks) how can you tell when a poll is an outlier?]
I feelz it in meh bones.
One can hope people on twitter have this right
Are you serious??? RT @zackster: Pyne is rumoured to be resigning over (ashby/ssm/lies
Peter Brent at Mumble’s prescience is demonstrated yet again. The 59-41 result was just above the bedrock so to speak, so a bounce from that was likely if only because it’s a return to normality.
Thanks Puff.. i got it on the other post thingy 🙂
Mumbles said the last newspoll was rogueish, so it was likely there would be some improvement. Although a -6 is a seriously unusual shift.
Tomorrow #GroupTalk on #MSMhacks – The Govt polling improves slightly after the splash from cash #auspol
okayyyyyyyy.
Odd one.
btw, NDIS was on the news, Abbott was spouting that Goverment should pledge more.
BS saving your ass more like it.
If my calculations are correct, Labor will have a lead of about 200/-100 by election day should the trend continue,
Schnappi
There are lots of rumours on Twitter. I don’t think Pyne would resign even if he was caught on camera in the HoR in the wee hours with a same-sex couple of goats and a barrel of olive oil.
Sky News bimbo telling viewers that Labor has bought votes.
As if that never happened before.
New scandal/shiny thing over there in 5, 4, 3, …
Coalition/Greens error corrected.
Now that was something I didn’t know: the latest CT ads have been approved by the Auditor-General.
So… squeaky-clean.
I’m going to enjoy this latest Newspoll for as long as it takes the Coalition and the Murdoch media to come up with a new scandal to distract the punters. 😀
Well, i’d call this an expression of volatility, but welcome for all that. If there is movement in the others in the same direction then perhaps we will have to re-evaluate the whole Budget Bounce concept / fallacy?? 🙂
Hopefully a few like this will steady some of the nervous ALP members and they will get with the plan they signed up with early 2011. Hold the line and follow through people. ALP is NOT the :monkey: rabble.
But this is different!
Hopefully this poll will quieten down some of the ALP PB doom merchants for a few days.
Most of the policy positives are still to be met by a fickle electorate that already has the negatives built in. Also Abbott will soon be arguing to change legislation… which is a bit harder than saying no.
As I said from early on, the Coalitions have fired their last two big missiles. Why so far out from an election? And now the polls have shifted back and it was all for nothing. Oh to be a spider on the wall at Fib HQ tonight!
If I was Abbott’s cat, I would move in next door.
Mr Campbell about to face Mr Jay QC.
Puff @ 12
I thought I was a man of the world but I’m not sure even I can get my head around that one!
PS Leveson back from lunch – sleazeball Alistair Campbell the witness, still under oath.
[But this is different!]
WHY? – “It just is” … snigger
I am back.
Tony Jones interrupted a lot as usual on QandA. At least this time he was interrupting right wing people most. 🙂
Excellent way to finish. Senator Wong making it very personal with class and aplomb and making Hockey look the sleazy political opportunist he is.
C@tmomma
[I’m going to enjoy this latest Newspoll for as long as it takes the Coalition and the Murdoch media to come up with a new scandal to distract the punters]
Be sure to tell bluegren and compact pothole.
BB
The gov’t is going to do it all by the book. I saw the advert. Very simple, informative, no politics but oh so your goverment is thinking about you and looking after you. Nice Australian coat of arms thingy at the end, looked very good on the 42inch flatscreen. 😆
6% swing from a few sweeteners in a budget thst was trashed by the media.
Just wait to see what happens when the money starts arriving, the government ads start appearing and the carbon pricing is imposed without hardship.
[I feelz it in meh bones.]
My bones had a strange feeling when I did the “big shop” at the weekend and the place was twice as busy as usual…
[But this is different!]
Yeah… they just are!
I keep hitting refresh on my bank account but alas the compensation never arrives… Oops I forgot I’m not a toothless, one legged, unemployed single father of four who lives anywhere but the north shore…
PTMD
[If I was Abbott’s cat, I would move in next door]
Next door could be credlin,some cats are choosy
Has peak Abbott finally happened?
[LNP -6
Thats a shift that will strengthen the spines of the strategists.]
Given the whole last bunch of polls in very recent days if people believe this is a real last second big swing then you really are sad creature, well have fun with it till the next poll.
Ironically it will be something that will hold Labor back just a little longer from doing what it has to do to survive. But don’t worry recovery is just around the next corner, just a little bit longer, around the next corner…. you know you can keep thinking like that to the last day.
What a poor QandA. 30 mins of Craig Thomson and 15 mins of Budget discussion.
http://the-abc-has-gone-to-hell.tumblr.com/post/23036305110/abc-qanda-14-05-12
http://the-abc-has-gone-to-hell.tumblr.com/ has an update about tonignt’s Q&A.
So, Murdoch decides to test the waters with a Newspoll bounce of Labor support.
what a joke.
don’t get sucked in.
Tobe
[Hopefully this poll will quieten down some of the ALP PB doom merchants for a few days.]
And hopefully shut them up about rudd.
Beaten to the punch again!
JohD
Cripes I love the way the PM dropped her voice a level and added a bit of gravel for “They just aarrrrre.” Watch it again, it is bloody funny.
Oooohh shock and horror, a swing to Labor by 4% from to 59/41 to 55/45.
BIG WHOOP! 😛
Wait till people get the money in the bank, not only from the carbon scheme but the big one – money from big fat Palmer straight to you 🙂 and then when the
wants to give it back to the fat ugly one 😀
Given all the crap that’s gone on, I’m happy with this poll
[Hopefully this poll will quieten down some of the ALP PB doom merchants]
Spoke to soon…
What a bunch of idiots. Don’t they know that if it works, the ALP will keep doing it? Nobody cares how you swing the polls. Two years of basement level Coalition tactics has taught us that. If blatant bribery does the trick, then why not? The electorate has already been debased and encouraged to behave like a bunch of selfish prats (don’t make us pay carbon tax, don’t spend money on anything useful, don’t tax anyone, don’t touch our money, etc etc…) Throwing money at them might be the only thing that works.
SKY should have just called it an outlier.
Watch the last 5mins of #qanda where Sen Penny Wong humiliates Joe Hockey #auspol
[Given the whole last bunch of polls in very recent days if people believe this is a real last second big swing then you really are sad creature]
i was actually thinking that given JGs drag on the votes then this is a useful platform for PM Rudd MkII. he would win.
JohD
[WHY? – “It just is” … snigger]
Thought is was “It just are”
It’s the trend TP, you know that. Mod Lib keeps telling us that repeatedly.
And what is it?
Negative 6% Coalition
Positive 3 for Labor
Positive 1 for Greens.
Deposited somewhere, probably in another universe: 2%
Yeah, sure!
Adds up, doesn’t it.
This is just Rupey working you over.
Just like he has piccies of Rudd that Rudd would never want published.
@This little black duck
I shouldn’t have bothered! 😛
So now no-one wants to believe Newspoll. You have to laugh.