Galaxy: 57-43 to Labor

A second Galaxy poll in consecutive weekends confirms last week’s disaster for Tony Abbott, although hypothetical voting intention questions under a Turnbull or Bishop scenario are slightly less bad for him than those served up by ReachTEL.

The News Corporation tabloids take a second bite of the Galaxy cherry in successive weekends, to mark the occasion of the looming Liberal leadership spill. It confirms last week’s shattering result for Tony Abbott in putting the Labor lead at 57-43. The inevitable questions on voting intention under Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop aren’t quite as dramatic as ReachTEL’s, with Labor maintaining leads of 51-49 under a Turnbull scenario and 53-47 under Bishop. On a straight question of whether Tony Abbott should resign, 55% say yes and 35% say no, in case anyone’s wondering what might distinguish this leadership change from what happened in 2010. Primary votes and such to follow. HT: GhostWhoVotes.

UPDATE: All primary votes were perfectly unchanged on last week, with the Coalition on 36%, Labor on 43%, the Greens on 11% and Palmer United on 3%. A further question found only 24% anticipating that Tony Abbott would lead the Liberals to the next election, compared with 63% who believe he will not.

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.

1,083 comments on “Galaxy: 57-43 to Labor”

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  1. Matt@929

    The ABC has been neither better nor worse than the commercial broadcast media on that point…

    The ABC are required to be better because of their public funding. Not a big ask mostly either.

    Commercial so called *news* is very poor mostly, yet ABC have had a strong record which they have failed in recent years to defend.

    Thats a great pity.

  2. I love this idea that Abbott is to get a second chance. To do what?

    say he wins, will he announce to the parliament tomorrow that he has sacked Hockey and appointed Turnbull treasurer because he thinks he, at least, can add up.

    Will he announce that the 2014 budget is in the bin. There will be no changes to to health education and welfare and the ABC and SBS will get their money back.

    He can’t really bring back the carbon tax or mining tax but he will go ahead with then previous governments proposed taxes on rich superannuants. Funding is restored to the clean energy industry and all the NGOs who have had their funding cut will be reviewed

    The F35 fighter program is cut in half, and our forces are on the way home from the ME as he speaks.

    Offshore detention centres will be wound down and if asylum seekers come they will be treated decently and allowed to live in the community until their fate is decided.
    which will happen quickly.

    He will admit this will come at some cost to the budget but he is reinventing himself as something other than a debt and deficit fearmonger and after all our debt to GDP ratio is lower than anywhere else that matters.

    Oh and he will apologise for all the things said about Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan was a very good Treasurer.

    I could go on but …

    They guy can’t reinvent himself. He is what we used to call in the old days a boofhead, and there is no cure for that.

  3. Well there is this from PVO

    [Did I mention if tomorrow’s Newspoll doesn’t get the attention of the Liberal party room I will be absolutely shocked? Yikes!]

  4. The latest on the Australian’s newspoll page is this:

    [
    LNP set to return despite losses
    MICHAEL MCKENNA
    THE LNP is set to return to government at today’s Queensland state election, albeit with a much-reduced majority, according to Newspoll.

    ]

  5. Fascinating really the way he has used mantras “we are not Labor” etc in much the same way as he did in Opposition. He’s dogged if nothing else.

    He’s managed to now increase the mantra to four words….a 25% increase….

  6. rossmcg@956

    I love this idea that Abbott is to get a second chance. To do what?

    Same as the Fairfax Editorial just before the Qld massacre –

    [ Fairfax Editorial

    The Qld LNP deserves another chance…]

  7. From memory, Newspoll details usually emerge around 10pm or 11pm? Though the Oz might hold them closer this time given the circumstances, to boost paper sales.

  8. [It shows how badly the LNP is travelling that a fake tweet like that is believable to any extent.]

    Actually what it shows is how badly some people are taken in by whatever they see on twitter.

    Is anyone still watching Chris Kenny? He promised early glimpses of Newspoll, and according to comments here has failed to deliver.

  9. alias

    Maybe an earlier release tonight ?

    make the late night news. However scant the coverage is.

    Outlets chasing viewer numbers, newpaper sales as well as web page clicks.

  10. How about a back-of-the-envelope?

    If it was good enough for Howard to spend $10 billion on the MDB, it just hs to be good enough for tomorrow’s pill vote.

    We have 52 as the target.

    Abbott has 35 ministers and parl secs.

    Add 17 backbenchers and this gets Abbott to a one vote majority against the spill motion.

    There are 67 backbenchers.

    Last week both ’30’ and ’40’ were given as possible tallies of revolting backbenchers.

    Mr Hockey today talked about ‘a third’ of the Party Room being annoyed at any one time, implicitly stating some sort of expectation that around 34 people would vote for the spill as a normal expectation.

    This leaves from 27 to 37 backbenchers floating, assuming that some of the ones who were disaffected last week have not subsequently been suborned by offers of ambassadorships and underwater ships being built in their suburbs, and the like.

    Accepting the range of 30, 34 and 40 pro-spillers, that leaves from 22 to 37 backbenchers in play, of which Mr Abbott needs 17.

    But are the ministers and the parliamentary secretaries all honourable people?

    Given the endless rattling on about ministers being obliged to support the Prime Minister, or else to do the honourable thing and resign, and that they should vote against the spill motion accordingly, we can confidently expect that some ministers and parl secs will behave dishonourably vote for the spill motion.

    On the above figures, it would take between 5 and 14 Westminiser rats to carry the spill motion.

    Either way, if the above figures are somewhere near reality Abbott, if he survives, will have been badly wounded indeed.

  11. guytaur at 908 – to pile pedantry on pedantry – there were no oliphants in Mordor either – only oliphaunts 🙂 but if Mordor is behind this 59-41 Newspoll I might be tempted to swear allegiance to the Dark Lord myself..

  12. If there was EVER going to be a rogue poll, it will be tonight’s Newspoll.

    Given the “special” circumstances surely the polling is just not going to mean much for the next month or so??

    Not that its not fun, but i think thats all it is. 🙂

  13. Dave @953:

    Just how the media moguls like it.

    Ross @956:

    “Used to” call people like Abbott boofheads? That’s one of my more polite terms for him!

    Boerwar @981:

    What’s honourable about a Minister voting for Abbott?

    He didn’t give them their commission – the Governor-General did. His nod isn’t needed – Parliament’s is.

    And Abbott didn’t elect them to Parliament – their electorates did.

  14. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? But suppose the spill motion fails. What then does Mr Abbott do in the coming months. Three possibilities spring to mind. (1) He is much chastened, like Mr Toad, and changes his behaviour in the future. The public reacts positively, and he winds up leading the coalition into the 2016 election. (2) He is much chastened, changes his behaviour, and it makes no difference to his or the coalitions standing in the polls. What do they do then? (3) His behaviour is a mixture of the old and the new. (4) His near death experience convinces him that he is impregnable, and he continues on, making stupid captain’s picks as before.

    Any views on which of these is most likely?

  15. I read a Piers Ackerman piece (can’t really call it an article). All power to him and his few fellow Tony-boosters [hoping they mange to keep their worst ever PM] – they really are writing from a different planet.

    What surprised me was the degree of venom against Shorten, who really is seen as quite a mundane innocuous person by most people I meet. Clearly this “boring/bland/blingless” model which has worked so well for Andrews in Victoria and Palaszczuk in Queensland is really getting to Ackerman and co.

    So I hope Shorten keeps going with the “non-vaudeville” approach – it seems to be a winner currently in Australia. In fact Mike Baird probably also fits the mold.

    It reminds me a bit of 1989 when Federal Labor quietly circulated that they were terrified that Andrew Peacock was going to get the Liberal leadership back. The Libs fell for it and knifed Howard, just when Labor knew that their research showed that some people were warming to his “boringness”.

  16. c ch
    Such as it was whittled down to, it is in operation. To the extent that water has gone back into rivers, the rate of loss of freshwater biodiversity has been reduced.

    Not that the irrigators have gone to sleep. There has recently been a spate of public lies by irrigators about the ecological water releases not working.

    As we had ample opportunity to observe during the formation of the MDB Plan, the truth was irrelevant.

  17. pedant:

    (3) most likely for me. Days after he solemnly promised to be more consultative we’ve seen two captain’s pick decisions made without consultation: bring the partyroom meeting forward, and the subs tender thing.

    Leopards don’t change their spots. Therefore this leopard will just continue on as per his past.

  18. pedant@988. I predict scenario 4. Look at the submarine decision. I rest my case m’lud.

    A change in behaviour can only happen if Abbott is prepared to completely cede his decision-making power to somebody else. There would need to be a new, all-powerful senior adviser installed in his office: not to replace Credlin, who has always done fine in her role as principal spin doctor, but to provide a buffer between Abbott and the levers of executive government. That is, his/her role would involve 24/7 vigilance to prevent captain’s picks.

    Who is this person? No name has been announced. Without such a person in control, nothing can change. All we will hear, like we have for months, will be promises, promises, promises. What store should we place in them

  19. We are a few strokes away from midnight, and the man for whom political conflict is an almost tantric ritual, has just about reached the point of climax.

    Australia will wake up tomorrow hung over and full of self reproach.

  20. [Inner Westie
    Posted Sunday, February 8, 2015 at 9:22 pm | Permalink

    We are a few strokes away from midnight,…]

    Puhlease!

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