Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition

A slight lead for the Coalition in the first results to emerge from a new-look Newspoll, which has dropped automated phone calls in favour of an exclusively online polling method.

Big news on the polling front as Newspoll unveils its first set of results based on what The Australian describes as “an improved methodology following an investigation into the failure of the major published polls”. The old series had been limping on post-election with results appearing every three weeks, but this latest result emerges only a fortnight after the last, presumably portending a return to the traditional fortnightly schedule.

The poll credits the Coalition with a two-party lead of 51-49, compared with 50-50 in the result a fortnight ago, from primary votes of Coalition 41% (up one), Labor 33% (down two), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 5% (down two). Interestingly, both leaders’ personal ratings are a lot worse than they were in the old series: Scott Morrison’s approval rating is at 43% (down three) with disapproval at 52% (up nine), while Anthony Albanese is at 38% approval (down four, though he was up five last time) and 42% disapproval (up five, though he was down seven last time). No news yet on preferred prime minister, which is presumably still a thing (UPDATE: Morrison’s lead narrows from 46-32 to 46-35).

On the methodological front, the poll has dropped robopolling and is now conducted entirely online. The sample size of 1519 is similar to before (slightly lower in fact), but the field work dates are now Thursday to Saturday rather than Thursday to Sunday. In a column for the newspaper, Campbell White of YouGov Asia-Pacific, which conducts the poll, offers the following on why robopolling has been abandoned:

A decade or so ago, most ­people had landlines and they tended to answer them. There was very little call screening. This meant getting a representative sample was easier and pollsters did not need to be so skilled in modelling and scaling their data. The truth is, the old days are never coming back. In order to do better, we need to consider what we can do differently. We’ve seen a consistent pattern overseas where telephone polling has become less accurate and online polling more so as fewer people answer phone calls and more and more people are online.

White further notes that “annoying and invasive” robopolling is “answered largely by older people or those who are very interested in politics”, while “busy people who are less interested in politics either don’t answer or hang up”. He also reveals that the new series will “weight the data by age interlocked with education and have precise quotas for different types of electorate throughout Australia”, consistent with YouGov’s methodology internationally.

Hopefully the restated commitment to “greater transparency” means we will shortly see comprehensive details of demographic breakdowns and weightings, a commonplace feature of British and American polling that Australian poll watchers could only envy. Stay tuned.

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.

968 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  1. Today’s Rowe. From what’s been reported over the last day or so Hartzer hasn’t come across as the sharpest tool in the shed.
    :large

  2. Things that Liberals can say that Labor cannot:

    ○ We have seen the light and will forthwith introduce serious measures to combat Climate Change.

    ○ Of course this has always been our policy, so it’s not an admission we were wrong.

    ○ The environment will always be safer under a Coalition government.

  3. FFS Nath, are you paying attention!!

    NSW had to try something with the trouble they had with developers. I’m not too concerned with the unrealised dreams of developers wishing to donate to political parties if it has a beneficial effect on planning.

    After the Coalition took charge of NSW in 2011, they changed the planning laws so that there are effectively NO PLANNING CONTROLS.

    So, as the NSW Coalition opined, regarding the NSW state ALPs accepting of money in an ALDI bag from a developer – why did not said developer just give the the Federal party, like we Coalition people do? Which would have been perfectly legal.

    I was very happy to see the end of the NSW Labor Government in 2011. They were tired, stale, and ideologically I disagreed with a lot of what that stood for.

    But be careful what you wish for. We now have a state Coalition government in NSW in perpetuity, and their planning decisions, particularly around where I live, would make Matthew Guy of Fishermans Bend fame, blush with shame, if he had done such shameful stuff.

  4. Douglas and Milko
    says:
    Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 10:47 pm
    FFS Nath, are you paying attention!!
    After the Coalition took charge of NSW in 2011, they changed the planning laws so that there are effectively NO PLANNING CONTROLS.
    _________________________
    Perhaps that is so, I’m not up on NSW planning, but that is still a separate issue.

  6. What amazes me about politicians is how cheap they are. If you’re going to bribe me, bring a fckn duffel bag. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap:

    The developer at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry was “very confident” Victorian Labor MP Pauline Richards was “going to go all the way” to deliver a project after he donated $20,000 to her ahead of last year’s state election.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-26/developer-john-woodman-used-councillors-like-pawns-ibac-hears/11735110

  7. Last week, Venice. This week, the Florida Keys. Studiously ignored by those leaders who say that there’s no such thing as Climate Change or the effects of it:

    Life during the unusually high “king tides” in South Florida this fall has become a maddening logistical task for people along the Blackwater Sound, a scenic but low-lying stretch of the Upper Keys. For nearly three months, the residents of Stillwright Point’s 215 homes have been forced to carefully plan their outings and find temporary workarounds to deal with the smelly, stagnant water — a result not of rain, but a rising sea — that makes their mangrove-lined streets look more like canals.

    …“King tides” take place predictably each fall, when the alignment of the moon, sun and Earth creates a stronger gravitational pull on the warm oceans. Rising sea levels caused by climate change make the flooding worse.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/us/florida-keys-flooding-king-tide.html

    I guess we MIGHT see real action taken in Australia to ameliorate the effects of Climate Change when all the Queensland canal developments start going under.

  9. The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a House committee from immediately reviewing President Trump’s financial records, after the president’s lawyers agreed to an expedited review of a lower-court ruling granting access.

    The court’s action signals that, even as Congress considers impeaching Trump, the court will undertake a more complete consideration of the legal powers of Congress and state prosecutors to investigate the president while he is in office.

    The court instructed Trump’s lawyers to file a petition by Dec. 5 stating why the court should accept the case for full briefing and oral argument. If the petition is eventually denied, the lower-court ruling will go into effect. If accepted, the case probably will be heard this term, with a decision before the court adjourns at the end of June.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-blocks-house-committee-from-immediately-reviewing-trumps-financial-records/2019/11/25/b73a26ac-0d79-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html

  11. nath,

    NSW had to try something with the trouble they had with developers. I’m not too concerned with the unrealised dreams of developers wishing to donate to political parties if it has a beneficial effect on planning.

    I know you are from Victoria, but the effect on planning laws in NSW has led to devastation. All the Department of Housing buildings near me will be demolished. They will be replaced with private dwellings, with a small percentage set aside for “affordable housing” (people on Newstart or Austudy need not apply -know this because me son got knocked back because “Austudy was not enough of an income for him to rent affordable housing).

    Then a few appartments will go to “social housing”. This is what is replacing, in NSW, public housing.

    Social housing is run by charities, who have KPIs. No matter how well meaning the charities are, it is easiest of you do not home people with mental illness, which also has a large overlap with the self-medication of drug use (red red wine, as UB40 said :).

  14. guytaur says:
    Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 5:06 pm
    RI

    Welcome Back.

    Cheers, guytaur. I’m a recidivist. Can’t help bludging. I have also been very busy…trying hard to remain solvent.

    🙂

  15. C@t

    I guess we MIGHT see real action taken in Australia to ameliorate the effects of Climate Change when all the Queensland canal developments start going under.

    There are canal- sited properties in WA that are essentially unmarketable due to the rise in sea level.

  16. Mexicanbeemer says:
    Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 1:46 pm
    RI/Briefly
    I think that could be argued is political. Essentially the political debate is about the role of the state and economics was called political science because they are mainly concerned with the allocation of resources which then flows into the political debate. The role of the state as in should it be passive or active is the simplest way of looking at the two wings of politics.

    The distinction is not only whether the State is activist or not, but in whose interests State powers are invoked.

    We have heavy State intervention in Australia in order to accomplish the repression of labour, the repression of incomes, the imposition of taxes on working people and to serve environmental destruction.

    This is a recurring feature of rule for and by capitalists and their servants.

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