Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

A fortnight of sound and fury ends with exactly the same set of voting intention numbers from Newspoll as last time.

After a week of post-Ipsos hype, The Australian reports the latest Newspoll finds absolutely no change whatsoever on voting intention since a fortnight ago: Labor’s two-party lead is at 53-47, and the primary votes are Coalition 37%, Labor 39%, Greens 9% and One Nation 5%. Scott Morrison is down one on approval to 42% and up three on disapproval to 48%, while Bill Shorten is down one to 35% and up two to 53%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is unchanged at 44-35. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1582.

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.

1,194 comments on “Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 5 of 24
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  1. GG…the LNP will try to throw $ at the electorate. It will backfire like everything they try backfires. Their incompetence, arrogance, division and instability means they are not trusted. This is fatal for them, especially when household finances have been taking hit after hit. No-one will believe them.

    They really needed to perform as a good, effective, straight-forward and responsible government for a few years. They have failed abysmally to do even the bare minimum. Voters will throw them out, more in disdain than in anger.

  2. I had thought that Ipsos was just crap, but then Kevin Bonham said in two of seven cases they led the aggregate (and presumably he has done the hypothesis testing or whatever it is that psephologists do)

    If instead of conventional statistics they are using machine learning (ML) and in particular something called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) then:

    1 – the Greens = 13 phenomenons can be explained by a well-known phenomenon in GANs called “mode collapse”
    2 – the “patchiness” in performance can perhaps be explained by the distribution found by the GAN having “holes” in it (and in the Ipsos case it might mostly be holes) such that inputs that map to the holes produce rubbish and those that map to the “distribution fragments” (as one might call them) produce very good results

    That said, if they are using ML then I can’t imagine what they are doing and more than likely it’s something quite clever (but perhaps also flawed)

  3. Douglas and Milko

    Thanks for that – you are not a heart-breaker like Kevin!

    I am interested in this developing ability to analyse (remotely through ?spectography) the atmospheres of exoplanets. This as you say may could point to the signatures of life elsewhere.

  4. “Possibly a better choice for this role would be JBishop. She could stand lookout for approaching asylum seeker boats. Ten seconds of the famous death stare and the boat would hightail it back to where it came from.”

    Are you using PB to advocate war crimes??

  5. Plus, the Morrison government refuse to acknowledge that the $ they are handing out are the result of other people’s hard work. Like Wilkie’s work to get the Hobart $ and Sharkie’s work to get the Bowling Club $. The Coalition make like it’s all their doing. They’re just plain deceitful.

  7. Nath, it was the way the Ipsos poll puffed up the government backers that annoyed people. More MSM BS than you could poke a stick at.

  8. LR

    Rocket Rocket, Douglas and Milko

    I suspect there is a subtlety in PB guessing, namely including an underlying bias adjustment for the pollster into the guess, and perhaps ‘caring’ more about Newspoll. As an aside PB does not always guess the Newspoll result. The January 28 Newspoll, for example, was 53/47 versus the PB guess at 54.5/45.5, which I put down to Christmas drift.

    Thanks for this clarification. I wish I had time to test this statistically. The most likely answer is that the PB Median gets it within MOE, and it is conformation bias on my part that sees it as more accurate than one poll. Otherwise William would have a whole new polling method to sell!

  10. briefly

    There must be people in the Liberal Party saying “Where did it all go wrong?”

    I think the turning point clearly seems to have been that 2014 budget – after that there is only the period of about ten months from Turnbull knifing Abbott in September 2015 to his near-loss in july 2016 where they were ahead in the polls.

    It truly has been a shocker – and with just about nothing to show for it (for Australians at large that is – clearly a lot of ‘mates’ have done very well from multi-million dollar goverment contracts)

  14. C@tmomma says…

    People want their wages to start going up again first. I believe they might remember how Labor was able to keep them going up, even in the teeth of the GFC, and so might be putting their store in them to do it again.

    The CEO of Muffin Break has certainly done her bit to remind people about the issue of wages, or in her case zero wages.

  15. C@tmomma
    says:
    Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 10:36 pm
    Davidwh @ #206 Sunday, February 24th, 2019 – 10:34 pm
    What are liblings?
    Little Libs, ie, Greens.
    ______________________
    In the deluded minds of some, Greens supporters are Liberals in disguise. The Liberals themselves fail to see the resemblance and uniformly preference the ALP ahead of the Greens.

  20. For the record, I reckon Annabel Crabb is capable of writing perceptive pieces about the zeitgeist of politics. In a gonzo kind of way. Some of it is fluff. But not all of it is fluff.

  22. the polls immediately before the election do not show the final result it is possible to gain 1.5% via a good campaign. This also favours labour.

  24. I am reluctant to enter the Annabel Crabb situation, but I do remember her being more serious in the early 200s then she spent some years overseas and it seemed she did return a bit less serious. All I’m gonna say.

  26. Davidwh says:
    Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 10:34 pm
    What are liblings?

    Lib-siblings…Liblings….can be identified by their incessant counter-Labor campaigns, their taste for decoy policies and their frequent use of the terms ‘neo-liberal’, ‘blairite’, ‘centrist’, ‘grouper’ and ‘RW Labor’ as preferred insults. They have a diet rich in sanctimony, condescension and trolling. I like them a lot these days. Though they do not wish it, they campaign against themselves without really trying.

  27. citizen,
    The Muffin Break CEO’s attitude, that she will give you a job if you beg and plead with her enough for one, but not pay you once you have that foot in the door until you have proven your worth to her, is emblematic of the Neofeudalist mindset that has infected the business community.

    I wonder how she got her start at the company?

  32. Peter Brentverified account@ mumbletwits
    44 minHá 44 minutos

    Our hearts go out in particular to Attorney General Porter, who put his heart and soul into the campaign late last week. He gave his all; chin up.

    Morrison seems somewhat adept at pushing colleagues into the fire rather than face it himself. Pyne, Porter, Cormann.

  34. davidwh, It’s worth segregating those who simply vote G from those who dress up in Green and, in disguise, run counter-Labor/ Labor-hate themes day in and day out.

  36. Nath

    Re: Ipsos and Newspoll. How can 51-49 be called bullshit. If it’s 52-48 at the election, isn’t IPSOS and Newspoll equally as wrong?

    You are predicating your whole argument on the idea that the TPP will be 52/48 at the election. And yes, I did notice your “IF”.

    Why talk about a hypothetical vote at an election still to be called, rather than doing the statically valid argument of showing that Ipsos is within the margin of error of Bludgertrack?

    I am certainly not calling bullshit on Ipsos. It was close the Margin of Error in William’s Bludger Track.

    What I am calling bullshit on is the amazing amount of commentary on how Ipsos showed the move back to the Coalition, which would *obviously* win them the election, including from Peter van Onselen, who I generally have a lot if time for.

    And, if we take her at her word, Julie Bishop said that she felt able to retire, because it was obvious the Coalition was going to win the next Federal election. I would respectfully say that Bishop was wrong, unless she was convinced that the Ipsos poll was showing a genuine movement on the polls to the coalition.

  38. Late Riser

    Bingo! One of my children has just been reading these and told me I must read it, after we were having a discussion about this very thing.

    We joked about a proposed probe that goes past the Proxima Centauri planets – passing by at very high speed after 100 year journey, and just sends back three images (which take four years to get back to us) – the pictures are, in order :

    1. Clear evidence of civilization – structures, “cities”, orbiting mega-space-stations
    2. Evidence of ‘alarms’ going off everywhere due to our probe’s arrival
    3. Massive launch of mega-missiles in Earth’s direction!

  40. Confessions @ #231 Sunday, February 24th, 2019 – 10:48 pm

    Peter Brentverified account@ mumbletwits
    44 minHá 44 minutos

    Our hearts go out in particular to Attorney General Porter, who put his heart and soul into the campaign late last week. He gave his all; chin up.

    Morrison seems somewhat adept at pushing colleagues into the fire rather than face it himself. Pyne, Porter, Cormann.

    No wonder Pyne is thinking of chucking it in. Morrison is a bum to work for.

    And Christian Porter’s Frank Spencer impression doesn’t seem to have impressed either. 😉

  43. In other words, Liblings is a term used by ALP ‘fuddy duddy’s’ who never got laid until they were in their 20s, have never done drugs, or probably even had much of a good time. They like to think they support a ‘party of government’ and take themselves far too seriously. They are more likely to be artisans rather than members of an industrial union and are actually scared that the Greens will take a nice big bite out of the ALP. In conclusion, they are the old and young fogeys you generally find in ALP branches.

  45. I also think, if people were noticing that kind of thing, that Christian Porter touting legal advice that he wouldn’t release as the basis for an attack on Labor, wouldn’t have impressed them.

  48. 1. All this poll does is to increase strongly the likelihood that the IPSOS was an outlier.

    2. I predict Labor will have a solid victory at the election, regardless of the polls. The election will be decided by the swinging voters who are currently both disinterested and uninterested in politics. At the moment those who are polled are responding with what comes into their heads. When the time comes to cast a ballot, they will decide whether they want to keep the current lot or throw them out. This will be an election entirely judged on the Government’s performance.

    3. This government is patently a very bad government. By that I don’t mean morally bad (though they are terrible on that front) but bad at governing. Terrible at governing, indeed. They inspire a total lack of confidence in people (even those who will eventually vote for them). For this reason enough swinging voters will vote for or preference Labor.

    4. There is no great confidence Labor will be any better – it’s just that uncommitted voters would not want to reward the incompetence of this government. This is not a bad thing, as Shorten will have a relatively low bar to get over to gain public confidence. Abbott did too, but he arrogantly failed to recognise how little political capital he had and spent it all in the 2014 budget and then some.

    5. I expect Labor will win about 80 to 85 seats. However, it could be a lot higher if the level of contempt from swinging voters for this government is widespread. 90 would be an excellent number – enough for a lot of stability but not too much to create an internal management and discipline problem.

    6. It will be a complex and messy Senate, but Labor should be able to manage it.

  49. C@tmomma
    says:
    Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 10:54 pm
    You do not speak for me or my life, nath. Just sayin’.
    ______________________
    I can honestly say I never had you in mind C@t. I’m sure you partied seriously in your time. 🙂

  50. Davidwh says:
    Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 10:44 pm
    Probably because there were no boats to battle over.

    Quite right. There are no boats. But there are sick prisoners under Australia’s watch. Voters support the provision of medical care by a comfortable majority. The Liberals have been campaigning against the wishes of the electorate…and therefore against themselves. They might as well use the slogan “Liberals – completely out of touch”.

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