Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor

The latest Newspoll suggests the immediate effects of the bushfire crisis are unwinding, though more obviously so in the case of Albanese’s approval than Morrison’s disapproval.

Courtesy of The Australian, the latest Newspoll, the first in three weeks, has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing from 52-48 to 51-49 (though there is a view abroad that Newspoll’s preference model is short-changing Labor), with the Coalition steady on 38% of the primary vote, Labor down one to 34%. There is no evidence of change in Greens support with the change of leadership, which is steady at 13%, and One Nation are steady at 4%. A recent spike in Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings has worn off, with his approval down four to 39% and disapproval up four to 44%, while Scott Morrison is up one on approval to 38% and down one on disapproval to 58%. We are told that Morrison has “closed the gap” on preferred prime minister, but must await more detail on that one.

UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes relates that Anthony Albanese maintains a bare 41-40 lead as preferred prime minister, down from 43-38 last time. The BludgerTrack trends on the sidebar have been updated with the personal and preferred prime minister ratings. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1513.

UPDATE 2: Newspoll also has a question that asks whether respondents thought the bushfires were more the result of “global warming and climate change” or “a failure by state and territory governments to conduct adequate hazard reduction in winter to lower the risk”, plus a curious third option of “nothing stands out”. Despite the spikes in concern about climate change and the environment recorded by recent Ipsos Issues Monitor and Australia Institute surveys, this poll records 56% favouring the second of the options, compared with only 35% for global warming. However, 43% now favour lowering emissions as a priority over keeping energy prices down (42%) and preventing blackouts (11%), which compares with 24%, 63% and 9% in July 2018, and 41% now say they would pay more to meet emissions targets compared with 50% who would not, comparing with 30% and 58% in October 2017.

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.

1,168 comments on “Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor”

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  4. Report calls for preselection targets to elect more culturally diverse MPs

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/report-calls-for-preselection-targets-to-elect-more-culturally-diverse-mps-20200225-p54448.html

    A researcher has suggested political parties set targets for preselecting “culturally diverse” candidates after finding Australia’s parliament is more homogenous than those of comparable English-speaking democracies.

    In a new paper for the think tank China Matters – which aims to stimulate “nuanced” discussion of China and promote “sound policy” for Australia’s relationship with the country – progressive researcher Osmond Chiu found just 4 per cent of Australian federal MPs have non-European heritage.
    :::
    Mr Chiu, who is Labor-aligned and works for Per Capita, a think tank dedicated to fighting inequality, argues Australian political parties should set a target of running “culturally diverse” candidates in 20 per cent of winnable seats, with preselections halted if parties do not make a “genuine attempt” to find suitable candidates.

  6. Re the baboons- Ch 7 news had a reporter in the street outside RPA with many police, rescue etc vans and personnel. Claims RPA won’t let reporters near the action. Sounds like an experiment gone wrong!

  7. Senate debating whether Bettina Arndt should be stripped of her Order of Australia. Of course, Pauline Hanson supports Bettina Arndt.

  8. NSW Police Force
    @nswpolice
    ·
    3m
    This is not a Mandrill! Earlier this afternoon, a troop of baboons escaped from a facility and were going bananas in Camperdown. Police and wildlife handlers now have the situation under control, so please let them do their job and don’t be tempted to pry, mates.

  11. Pegasus says:
    Tuesday, February 25, 2020 at 6:31 pm

    nath

    Joel Fitzgibbon ‘inherited’ his father’s seat. Political dynasties, aren’t they grand.
    __________________________
    there’s nothing we can do about it but lament.

  12. Oh, this makes me so angry …

    The Australian government said the impact of coronavirus will be worse than the recent bushfires.

    No, you dipshits. That’s the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is that the Coronavirus will make the effects of the bushfires much, much worse for some people 🙁

    I went along to a Tourism Australia pep-talk recently. They listed the 5 plagues that have hit the South Coast recently:

    1. Drought.
    2. Bushfires.
    3. Floods.
    4. Tourism collapse.
    5. Coronavirus.

    All unprecedented. We can’t take much more. Not that anyone in government actually seems to give a shit, except for spending buckets of money on marketing. I guess that shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that our PM is “Scotty from Marketing”.

    They also mentioned in passing only two businesses have yet managed to access any government funding.

    Did you get that?

    Two fucking businesses.

  13. According to ABC News the three baboons have been returned to their cages. Nath, Lars and Baby Horsey are all reported to be doing well.

  14. “However, I am reasonably confident Labor will win the 2022 election in a landslide, even if the Greens win some seats off Labor. Because of my prediction of an economic crisis occurring in this country in the meantime. Which will result in the ‘Quiet Australians’ feeling they were betrayed by Scott Morrison who promised his government would ‘keep the economy strong’.”

    How many times do I have to say that the ALP should take the right right up to the COALition on economic management.
    Scotty from Marketing and his merry band of pretenders, simply do not have the runs on the board that the ALP, demonstrably, do.

  15. RI
    2028, based on your averages sounds about right for the next Labor victory. You have to give people time to forget the chaos of the Gillard govt.

  16. Possibly the single weirdest Greens policy is the one that appears to be intended to stop the live export of animals intended to spread tuberculosis.*

    ‘An end to the export of live animals for consumptive purposes.’

    https://greens.org.au/policies/animals

    ‘consumptive’

    ‘affected with a wasting disease, especially pulmonary tuberculosis.
    “from birth he was sickly and consumptive”

    https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=consumptive+meaning

    *Possibly on a parallel track, of sorts, the Chinese Government today put a comprehensive ban on the sale and consumption of wild animals. IMO, if this is rigorously pursued, a massive drag on animal survival around the world will be lifted. It is not clear if live crays (a $500 million WA export trade to China) will also be banned. As a side note, pangolins have been mentioned for the first time as being possibly implicated in COVID-19.

  17. Player One
    Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 6:56 pm
    Comment #1062

    Oh, this makes me so angry …

    My reading of my fellows is such that
    just about
    —–NOW—-
    What bushfires are those – very bad in 1939 – those ones ❓
    Royal Commission – Aged Care – do tell – what’s that about ❓ Is there some problem ❓

    and so on —

    and besides the Gummint have no duty of care for the citizens.
    If you can’t manage by yourself then you’re not having a go.

    Goodnight all. 📺 💤

  20. I watched “The Drum” tonight. There was an academic from the University of Western Sydney on the panel called Professor Pru Goward who, after defending Peter Dutton’s concerns about left-wing terrorist groups, then went on to tell us that the public service is populated with “green” fifth columnists who are able to hinder efforts to undertake prescribed burning and thus prevent the bushfires we have just experienced. This is apparently backed up, without evidence, by the National Party backbencher, Barnaby Joyce.

  22. Newspoll adjusted the calculation of the 2PP from primary votes twice, one before and then after the last federal election. In both cases the change favoured the Coalition…. and yet, recalcitrantly, the Coalition 2PP has again slipped below that of the ALP.

  23. “the public service is populated with “green” fifth columnists”…

    7 years in Government and there are still non-Liberal/Nationals employees in the public service?…. Not credible!

    In fact, Albo must be prepared to undertake a very serious slash-and-burn program throughout the public service and then regrow the forest from seeds….

  24. Steve777 says:
    Tuesday, February 25, 2020 at 7:26 pm
    Are we sure they were baboons? Maybe they were Young Liberals.

    That’s unlikely. Baboons are reputed to be highly intelligent.

  25. “there’s nothing we can do about it but lament.”…

    Nobody “inherits” a seat (just ask Georgina Downer). At the most you may inherit the chance of competing for the seats of your dad if your dad’s party allows you. The rest is done by the voters. The more Moronic the voters are, the more likely it is that a family dynasty takes possession of the seat.

    …. Kudos to the voters of Mayo, they have demonstrated to be very intelligent!!

  26. Stuart – did The Drum disclose that Pru Goward is a former NSW Liberal MLA and Minister in NSW Liberal Governments? It looks like she’s just spouting the party line, in which case nothing that she says has any value other than to the extent that it sheds light on the lies that the Liberals are currently pushing.

  27. Lizzie,

    thanks for sharing the Simon Holmes-a-Court tweet about the new liberals yesterday. They look like they are aiming to take over the political space vacated by the Australian Democrats. It will be interesting to see how they fare in 2022.

    There is definitely a demographic that the Dems could reach that are put off by the constant “left extremist” tagging of the Greens.

  28. Hunter was once the safest Labor seat in the nation. You could put a baboon in a suit and if you called it Labor it would win (Something like this happened in the case of the Soviet spy Bert James (1960 – 1980) (son of Rowley (1928 – 1958))
    Erik (1984 – 1996) was a strong family man who spent his time in parliament ensuring his sons got good jobs. The smart one Mark became CEO of NIB. Erik manipulated the branches so that his “specially enabled” son Joel got the pre-selection, and automatically, the seat. One more election like the last one and Hunter will be the jewel in One Nation’s crown.
    Some NSW PBers cannot comprehend why the party is in opposition

  29. Joel Fitzgibbon has held the seat of Hunter since succeeding his father in 1996.

    He has been Labor’s candidate for 9 federal elections. Except for the 2013 and 2019 elections he won on primary votes ranging from 50.74% to 59.95% (2007 election).

    In 2019 he garnered only 37.57% of primary votes. Why? One Nation candidate polled 21.59%.

    Fitzgibbon’s self-entitlement to the seat, a seat Labor has held uninterrupted for over a century, received quite the scare.

  32. Might as well get in early with the excuses for not having a budget surplus that was never going to happen except in the Morrison PR Department.

    Virus outbreak puts ‘shutters up’ on global economy as surplus evaporates

    1 hour ago by Eryk Bagshaw, Shane Wright and Fergus Hunter (SMH headline)

  33. The New Liberals….they need a supporter/membership base if they’re going to survive. It would be a very wondrous thing if they were to become strong enough to take votes from both the Greens and the LNP. I can see how they would appeal to the small-l ranks of Liberal-positive voters. The LNP have split to the Right in the past. It would be very healthy indeed if they were to split to the centre instead.

  36. Taylormade says:
    Tuesday, February 25, 2020 at 7:18 pm
    RI
    2028, based on your averages sounds about right for the next Labor victory. You have to give people time to forget the chaos of the Gillard govt.

    If the Greens and the LNP campaign on the premise of a Green-dependent Minority Labor Government, we will be waiting much longer than 2028 before Labor can win. We’ve entered the second decade of LNP winning elections….we’re just getting started. Though if the LNP split to the centre they might find it a lot more difficult than would otherwise be the case.

  37. Some background on the big baboon escape today (but who taught the fellow to pick the lock?)

    The baboons reportedly broke free from a truck with a faulty door lock after being transported from a NSW colony to the hospital, Health Minister Brad Hazzard confirmed.

    Mr Hazzard said the incident involved a 15-year-old male baboon accompanied by two females who were “there to keep him calm because tomorrow he was due for a vasectomy”.

    The animals were not involved in research but had been brought in from the colony in western Sydney for treatment at the facility.

    “He cut loose before the big cut,” said Mr Hazzard.

    “The reason they are doing [the vasectomy] is to allow him to continue to live his life in peace and harmony with his own family and they couldn’t have him continuing constantly to breed within the troupe because it presents all sorts of genetic problems.

    “The operation will go ahead and then he will be returned to his colony with the two females.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-25/several-baboons-escape-from-royal-prince-alfred-hospital/12000294

  38. Confessions @ #1085 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 8:40 pm

    Disappointed to see Ben Wyatt announce his retirement from politics, but I understand it’s been in the wind for a while.

    I saw the press conference with Mark McGowan and it seemed as though there was a very real medical issue with his family that was the cause of his retirement. That was the impression I got. Though you can never 100% tell with politicians. 😀

  39. citizen @ #1759 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 9:12 pm

    Some background on the big baboon escape today (but who taught the fellow to pick the lock?)

    The baboons reportedly broke free from a truck with a faulty door lock after being transported from a NSW colony to the hospital, Health Minister Brad Hazzard confirmed.

    Mr Hazzard said the incident involved a 15-year-old male baboon accompanied by two females who were “there to keep him calm because tomorrow he was due for a vasectomy”.

    The animals were not involved in research but had been brought in from the colony in western Sydney for treatment at the facility.

    “He cut loose before the big cut,” said Mr Hazzard.

    “The reason they are doing [the vasectomy] is to allow him to continue to live his life in peace and harmony with his own family and they couldn’t have him continuing constantly to breed within the troupe because it presents all sorts of genetic problems.

    “The operation will go ahead and then he will be returned to his colony with the two females.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-25/several-baboons-escape-from-royal-prince-alfred-hospital/12000294

    I keep thinking that this is a metaphor for something…

  40. C@tmomma @ #825 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 9:14 pm

    Confessions @ #1085 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 8:40 pm

    Disappointed to see Ben Wyatt announce his retirement from politics, but I understand it’s been in the wind for a while.

    I saw the press conference with Mark McGowan and it seemed as though there was a very real medical issue with his family that was the cause of his retirement. That was the impression I got. Though you can never 100% tell with politicians. 😀

    His wife had/has breast cancer was mentioned in despatches in other reports.

  41. C@tmomma @ #1087 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 6:14 pm

    Confessions @ #1085 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 8:40 pm

    Disappointed to see Ben Wyatt announce his retirement from politics, but I understand it’s been in the wind for a while.

    I saw the press conference with Mark McGowan and it seemed as though there was a very real medical issue with his family that was the cause of his retirement. That was the impression I got. Though you can never 100% tell with politicians. 😀

    His press release mentioned ‘family illness’.

  42. citizen @ #1083 Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 8:19 pm

    Might as well get in early with the excuses for not having a budget surplus that was never going to happen except in the Morrison PR Department.

    Virus outbreak puts ‘shutters up’ on global economy as surplus evaporates

    1 hour ago by Eryk Bagshaw, Shane Wright and Fergus Hunter (SMH headline)

    Can’t wait to see the ‘Back in the Red’ posters for the Coalition! 😆

    ‘The Morrison Coalition Government. Haemorrhaging Your Money!’

    🙂

  45. I’ve just watched the Rick Wilson interview. Fascinating. Among the things that stuck out:

    – BIG mistake for the Democrats not to utilise the Obamas in 2016 and it’ll be a bigger mistake if that happens again this year. Apparently Trump is terrified of the Obamas because their celebrity is bigger than his.

    – Some insights into his previous campaigns, in particular the use and targeting of data on voters. He says that even though Trump is surrounded by mostly morons, there are still Republican strategists who are smart, who can use data who are working on his campaign.

    – Trump hardly ever talks about reforming entitlements which is standard fare for Republicans, because his base are those on medicaid, medicare, disability etc.

    – Kids in cages is a hot button issue for suburban women, to the point that it doesn’t matter where the focus groups are held, if kids in cages is raised, people crank their dials to 10 extremely unhappy.

  46. So, Scotty from Marketing, how is Labors target of net 0 by 2050 a bad thing, but the exact same target, by the NSW COALition government a good thing ?
    How stupid do you take the Australian people for you bloviated half-wit ?

  47. E. G. Theodore
    says:
    Tuesday, February 25, 2020 at 9:33 pm
    nath:
    there’s nothing we can do about it but lament.
    I’m sure you’ll find something more than that!
    ______________________________
    There should be a Royal Commission into nepotism in the public sector. From electorate offices, universities, unions, local councils and everywhere a fiefdom can be malformed.

  48. nath (re: Ms Beazley):

    Yes there’s been some activity around various seat campaigns. Got to stay busy waiting for that right spot.

    I know very little of WA, but see (which looks like a franchise to me…):

    • Established the company in Western Australia. Grew the company from zero to an annual turnover of over $1,000,000 in under two years
    • Generated sustained profits after just 18 months in business
    • Built, managed and effectively utilised customer and supplier management systems for promotional, profit-making and relationship-building ends
    • Liaised with over 100 suppliers on an almost weekly basis
    • Managed two locations – retail space and administration centre/warehouse
    • Formulated and implemented successful growth plans for the business – from new inventory management systems to store relocations
    • Negotiated exclusive retail contracts with high-end brands

    Interesting “activity around various seat campaigns”

  49. E. G. Theodore
    says:
    Tuesday, February 25, 2020 at 9:33 pm
    nath:
    there’s nothing we can do about it but lament.
    I’m sure you’ll find something more than that!
    ______________________________
    There should be a Royal Commission into nepotism in the public sector. From electorate offices, universities, unions, local councils and everywhere a fiefdom can be malformed.

    I knew you could do it!

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