Galaxy: 50-50

Contrary to talk of stalled momentum for Kevin Rudd after a relatively weak Newspoll, a new Galaxy poll has Labor’s primary vote with a four in front and a dead heat on two-party preferred.

GhostWhoVotes reports that a Galaxy poll in tomorrow’s News Limited tabloids has two-party preferred at 50-50, from primary votes of 40% for Labor and 44% for the Coalition. This compares with a 51-49 lead for the Coalition at the last such poll four weeks ago, with Labor up two on the primary vote and the Coalition steady. More to follow.

UPDATE: James J fills the blanks: “Greens Primary for this poll is 9. Who do you think will be better, Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party or Tony Abbott and the Coalition, in handling the issue of asylum seekers? Rudd Labor 40, Abbott Coalition 38. Who do you think will be better, Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party or Tony Abbott and the Coalition, in tackling climate change? Rudd Labor 45, Abbott Coalition 31 Which of the two party leaders do you believe has the best vision for the future? Rudd 46, Abbott 36. July 23-25. 1015 sample.

We also have the Launceston Examiner reporting ReachTEL polls of 600 respondents in each of Bass, Braddon and Lyons show the Liberals continuing to lead in all three, although details provided in the article are sketchy.

UPDATE 2: Kevin Bonham has kindly passed on results of the ReachTEL poll of Bass, Braddon and Lyons. The polls were conducted on Thursday from respective sample sizes are 626, 659 and 617, for margins of error of around 4%. The results unusually feature personal ratings for both the Labor incumbents and Liberal candidates, which show a) implausibly high recognition ratings for all concerned (only 1.5% of Braddon respondents had never heard of their Liberal candidate, former state MP Brett Whiteley), b) surprisingly weak results for the incumbents, and c) remarkable uniformity from electorate to the next.

Bass (Labor 6.7%): Geoff Lyons (Labor) 34.7%, Andrew Nikolic (Liberal) 48.9%, Greens 9.4%. Two party preferred: 54.0%-46.0% to Liberal. Preferred PM: Rudd 50.6%, Abbott 49.4%. Geoff Lyons: 25.6%-39.8%-30.3% (favourable-neutral-unfavourable). Andrew Nikolic: 43.3%-24.0%-24.6%.

Braddon (Labor 7.5%): Sid Sidebottom (Labor) 34.6%, Brett Whiteley (Liberal) 51.3%, Greens 7.4%. Two party preferred: 56.8%-43.2% to Liberal. Preferred PM: Rudd 51.2%, Abbott 48.8%. Sid Sidebottom: 27.4%-37.8%-33.1%. Brett Whiteley: 42.7%-30.5%-25.3%.

Lyons (Labor 12.3%): Dick Adams (Labor) 32.3%, Eric Hutchison (Liberal) 46.8%, Greens 10.2%. Two party preferred: 54.4%-45.6% to Liberal. Rudd 50.7%, Abbott 49.3%. Dick Adams: 26.8%-34.3%-35.7%. Eric Hutchison: 36.8%-29.3%-18.2%.

UPDATE 3: More numbers from last night’s Galaxy poll. Kevin Rudd’s lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister is unchanged at 51-34, but Malcolm Turnbull holds a 46-38 lead over Rudd.

UPDATE 4: Essential Research has the Coalition down a point for the second week in a row to 44%, Labor steady on 39% and the Greens up two to 9%. After shifting a point in Labor’s favour on the basis of little change in the published primary votes last week, two-party preferred remains at 51-49 despite more substantial change this week, suggesting the result has moved from the cusp of 52-48 to the cusp of 50-50. The poll finds 61% approval for the government’s new asylum seekers policy against 28% disapproval and concurs with Galaxy in having the two parties almost equal as best party to handle the issue, with Labor on 25% (up eight on mid-June), the Coalition on 26% (down 12) and the Greens on 6% (down one). The issue is rated the most important election issue by 7%, one of the most by 28%, quite important by 35%, not very important by 16% and not at all important by 8%. Malcolm Turnbull is rated best person to lead the Liberal Party by 37% against 17% for Tony Abbott and 10% for Joe Hockey, and there are further questions on workplace productivity.

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.

2,216 comments on “Galaxy: 50-50”

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  1. the gamechanger tweets referred to by the News Ltd hacks has to be MT figures. OR else as usual trying to drum up interest!

  2. [ Sean Tisme
    Posted Saturday, July 27, 2013 at 8:45 pm | Permalink

    Dave,

    50% is Peak Labor. They haven’t got over 50% for about 3 years now except for the occasional rogue morgan.

    Labor can’t win on 50%, Rudd should end the madness and just announce the bloody election! ]

    Just keep telling yourself that sunshine.

    Maybe it will help.

  3. PM Rudd knows how to campaign, he’d have to gain at least 1% on the campaign itself.

    Abbott’s costings could be worth another 1%.

    Yep, we do have a contest.

    Still, I want to see some fair dinkum confidence in the betting before I will start to seriously think of a Rudd win 😎

  4. With the polls this close there is no way the Libs would move to MT. Yet Rudd Labor probably inching up bit by bit and will boil the Liberal frog at the end of the day.

  5. sean

    whinging lib. what do have have that’s new

    this is still the outer forays into the empire. wait till the mother ship implodes

  6. Joe Hockey does not want Treasury to look at the Coalition’s numbers. Their absurd PPL scheme, abolish carbon pricing and add more spending for Direct Inaction, keep all existing tax rorts and reinstate the few that the ALP ended, achieve several tens of billions of turnaround to achieve a surplus while not telling us what they are going to cut. No, they’ll get Dodgy Brothers Consulting to cast an eye over their numbers instead. And most of the media will let them get away with it.

  7. [Sean Tisme
    Posted Saturday, July 27, 2013 at 8:39 pm | Permalink

    Let the insanity stop… please call an election Rudd
    ]

    An election won’t get the Liberals off the drugs.

  8. The Liberals have categorically declared that they will return a surplus before Labor!

    They intend to abolish the carbon price, yet allow people to keep the carbon price compensation and pay for direct action.

    It’s a joke, a SICK joke!

  9. Yep the Rudd honeymoon been going pretty much since 2007. Fairly soon it will go south.

    Primary from worst 29% to 40% Galaxy now.

  10. Confessions – No, a significant proportion of the Coalition hates Turnbull as much or even more than many in the ALP hated Rudd. This result is nowhere near as bad for Abbott as Gillard was polling in her final days, so they will keep him. In fact it is the best possible result for the ALP, gives them a clear chance of victory without being bad enough for the Coalition to see them remove Abbott!

  11. [Sean Tisme
    Posted Saturday, July 27, 2013 at 9:00 pm | Permalink

    The Greens are going to have to lurch to the right if they want to keep their doctors wives voters]

    The Liberals of gone so far to the right they are now left of the greens.

    Keep
    Smoken that weed.
    Eatin those mushrooms.

  12. Nice to see the primary vote with a 4 in front of it, but if it mostly came from the Greens it’s not that much use.

  13. The standard response of the Abbott Morisson Hockey when under pressure is to become unhinged.

    These 50/50 polls with the feeling that Rudd is gaining ground will be driving Abbott nuts. You can just see him sweating, thinking up more generals, one for every arm of government.

  14. itsthevibe@31


    Nice to see the primary vote with a 4 in front of it, but if it mostly came from the Greens it’s not that much use.

    Point is, if boats were going to hurt Labor it should have been this week.

    If people wanted morrisons ‘solution’ it should have shown up in this poll.

    libs ‘brain trust’ saying WTF?

    Is that what PVO was alluding to?

  15. Peter van Onselen ‏@vanOnselenP 1m
    More interesting are some of the particulars yet to come RT @GhostWhoVotes: #Galaxy Poll 2 Party Preferred: ALP 50 (+1) L/NP 50 (-1) #auspol

  16. TP, given the noise in polls we’re going to have to see some 51 and 52 polls for Labor or else they’re genuinely not level.

  17. Mark Colvin ‏@Colvinius 20m

    @WorkTheCloudOz @GhostWhoVotes @vanOnselenP As always, follow the trend, not the individual poll.

  18. Mark Colvin ‏@Colvinius 19m

    @WorkTheCloudOz @GhostWhoVotes @vanOnselenP By which I mean the trend of all polls. Otherwise, it’s all margin-of-error.

  19. I’ll concede that the Libs have failed in their attacks on Rudd. But we’re still yet to see the public digest the stark difference in policies.

  20. [Point is, if boats were going to hurt Labor it should have been this week.

    If people wanted morrisons ‘solution’ it should have shown up in this poll.]

    Strange reading of the poll seeing as the Coalition vote is solid and Labor is stealing votes from the Greens.

    My interpretation is that the Greens voters that aren’t socialist alliance types with dredlocks in their hair and chaining themselves to logging trucks are turning off the Greens because their pig headed stupidity regarding the boats.

    People are dying on the seas and the Greens don’t give a shit.

  21. William

    If you have not already seen it you might want to look at an article by Fleur Anderson on swining voting in today’s AFR.
    It has some psepholigical stuff in it.

    It also had some colour with the swinging vote apparently having been described by Textor as the ‘Get f*cked vote.’

  22. It is possible that the “interesting” aspect is not just a MT preferred (we already know that, and it is already huge) but a blow-out in PPM between KR and TA. The poll has moved in that direction, and Abbott did come across pretty unhinged calling in the military.

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