Miscellany: Newspoll state leaders ratings, trust in goverment and more

A second tranche of Newspoll results finds Daniel Andrews taking a coronavirus-related popularity hit but still doing well in absolute terms, with Gladys Berejiklian also down from earlier peaks.

It is apparently the case that Essential Research will, at long last, be including voting intention when it publishes its next survey next week. I also gather that it’s back to a fortnightly publication schedule after going to weekly for the first few months of the coronavirus crisis.

Also:

• My Newspoll post on Sunday night noted that the sample was an unusually high 1850, compared with the more normal 1500 to 1600. It turns out that this was done to juice up the New South Wales and Victorian sub-samples to 601 and 605 respectively, allowing The Australian to run a follow-up yesterday on the respective state governments’ handling of coronavirus. This predictably found a decline in Daniel Andrews’ numbers, though they remain high in absolute terms, with his approval down ten since a June 24-28 poll to 57%, and disapproval up the same amount to 37%. However, Gladys Berejiklian was also down four on approval to 64% and up four on disapproval to 30%, suggesting part of Andrews’ fall was purely gravitational. Andrews is still rated as having handled the virus well by 61% and poorly by 36%, compared with 72% and 25% from June 24-28 and 85% and 11% from April 21-26. However, the decline has been concentrated in the “very well” response, which has progressed from 51% to 32% to 27%. Berejiklian is at 68% for well (down eleven) and 26% for poorly (up ten). Scott Morrison is now doing better than both, at 72% well (down seven) and 24% poorly (up six) in New South Wales and 77% well (down four) and 20% poorly (up three) in Victoria. Results at national level found 76% saying they were more concerned about moving too quickly to relax lockdowns and restrictions, up four from May 13-16, compared with 20% saying they were more concerned about moving too slowly, down four. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday.

• An academic survey conducted by the Democracy 2025 project, encompassing the United States, United Kingdom and Italy as well as Australia, records a dramatic increase in trust in the federal government (54%, compared with 29% in last year’s post-election Australian Election Study survey) and the public service (up from 38% to 54%), with smaller improvements recorded for the media (television up seven to 39%, newspapers up eight to 37% and radio up three to 41%). The survey was conducted from a sample of 1059 in May and June – small-sample state breakdowns provide another increment of evidence that Western Australia’s government is doing best of all out of the crisis.

• The Victorian Liberals have been spruiking internal robo-polling, apparently commissioned by Senator James Patterson, showing 65% to 70% disapproval of state government agreements with China as part of the latter’s “Belt and Road” initiative, based on a sample of 7000 respondents across seven marginal Labor-held seats.

• South Australian Attorney-General Vickie Chapman has confirmed the government will proceed with an attempt to introduce optional preferential voting in the state. Labor and the Greens are opposed, which will leave the fate of the proposal in the hands of upper house cross-benchers elected under the Nick Xenophon banner. A blog post by Antony Green tackles the issue with characteristic thoroughness. I gather they have thought better of clamping down on the dissemination of how-to-vote cards at polling booths, contrary to earlier reports.

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.

2,045 comments on “Miscellany: Newspoll state leaders ratings, trust in goverment and more”

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  2. Lars Von Trier @ #1995 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 8:53 pm

    Steve777 says:
    Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 8:51 pm
    Re Isle of Rocks ”But does PR break up the duopoly?“

    We would get Centre-right, Centre-left and maybe Centre Coalitions. The duopoly seems to have broken up in countries that use PR or similar, e.g France, Germany, Israel.

    Over time, there would be realignments. Maybe the left of Labor would join the Greens. The moderate Liberals join with the Labor right. The Liberals break up into a religious-socially conservative grouping and a socially liberal free market grouping. The Nationals die of irrelevance (especially if a 5% bar were introduced for winning seats).

    Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
    ___________________________
    Exactly!

    Well yes…. who knows?

    But I would say that for Australia, the New Zealand experience with MMP is the best yard stick.

    While Labor and National lost defectors, the major parties themselves did not break up.

    Also from a low point after the introduction of MMP the majors also increased their vote.

  3. Maybe IoR – the duopoly would reassert itself. Maybe the duopoly would collapse?

    Doing the same thing clearly isn’t working. We will keep building disaffection and alienation from the system by doing what we are doing.

  4. NonSequitur @ #1997 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 8:56 pm

    FPTP voting would restore Labor’s plurality. It should be adopted.

    So you want to improve Labor’s chances by;

    1. Abolishing the 4 to 1 flow of Green primary votes to the ALP over the L/NP

    and replace it with

    2. A system which incentives left frustration of the centre-left electoral victories, sometimes with a very small share of the vote (US President 2000 & 2016)

    If that’s aimed to help Labor, its the sort of help they could do without

  6. IoR….if Green votes did not detour thru the Gs to Labor they’d bypass them and go directly to Labor. Internecine war would erupt on the right. Excellent. Wins on the left and right for Labor.

  11. https://www.pollbludger.net/2020/07/22/miscellany-newspoll-state-leaders-ratings-trust-goverment/comment-page-41/#comment-3452380

    There are key differences between NZ and Australia that would effect how MMP worked in Australia:

    The party competition change would be different unless all states had some for of proportional system.

    Australia`s constitution allocates House of Reps seats to states so strictly that we could not, barring a successful referendum, have overhang mandates or national list allocation like they do in New Zealand (this would significantly reduce the proportionality).

    MMP in Australia would likely have preferences, at least for the single member seats but probably also the list seats as well, increasing minor party votes in single member seats and reducing the elimination effect of the 5% threshold on small parties.

  12. NonSequitur says:
    Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 9:28 pm
    The micro parties should be extinguished. They contribute nothing but dysfunction.
    ________________________
    Does your family know you are posting briefly?

  14. The broad outlines of reform are pretty clear. Its only a matter of time till the change comes.

    We are already at 75% 2PV for the duopoly, I think about 15% of that is soft persuadable support. At about 60% 2PV for the duopoly the system becomes unsustainable because it is longer possible to command a majority in the HoR.

    We are very close to the tipping point.

  15. Isle of Rocks

    While Labor and National lost defectors, the major parties themselves did not break up.

    Also from a low point after the introduction of MMP the majors also increased their vote.
    ——
    The question really is having an electoral system that results in a Parliament that as far as possible reflects the primary intentions of voters.

    Anything less is an abomination.

  16. The recent anti-democratic poster calling itself NonSequitur needs to return to its Hitlerjugend camp for further Blut und Ehre training. 🙂

  17. NonSequitur @ #2007 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 9:26 pm

    The dysfunction on the left has to end. Dissolving G support would help enormously in that project.

    If we went to FPTP in Australia, the Green vote would fall, but it would still remain significant.

    Take the state-wide preference flow of the Greens (10.3%) in the 2015 NSW election*.

    ALP 48%, LNP 8%, Ex 44%

    Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-13/preference-flow-data-for-the-2015-nsw-election/9388642 *I can’t find 2019 data

    Almost half of Greens votes wanted to vote Green and not care about the final outcome. We should not assume that voters who did indicated a preference would not vote Green under FPTP.

    I would say the Green vote would be 6-7% under FPTP in such circumstances.

    Further out of the 8 lower house members elected in single member districts across Australia (state and federal), 5 won a primary vote plurality at their last election.

    Under FPTP;

    1. Sitting Green MPs would still be a competing voice on the left for Labor.

    2. Labor would lose some of its marginal seats to the L/NP in the absence of preferential voting

    3. Greens would cease targeting Liberal incumbents in the Lower House and return to solely targeting safe Labor held seats, arguing that a vote for the Greens would not let the Liberals win in such seats.

    If Labor-Greens co-existence is dysfunction, then such dysfunction would continue under FPTP.

  20. Jackol says:
    Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 9:41 pm

    Advocating for FPTP on a pseph blog is a good way to guarantee no one will take you seriously.
    ———
    I’m not calling for FPTP and without checking the last federal election but besides McNamara i don’t think many seats would see different results.

  21. proportional representation isn’t much of an improvement because you shift the seat warmers from the safe seats to fourth or fifth spots. The real problem is that the federal electorates are becoming too large this is making it harder for non major party candidates to get elected because at state level where the seats are smaller we are seeing more non major party MP’s.

  22. Beemer

    Sacrilege!!

    Calling for more politicians. Very courageous of you.
    I do agree however. Tasmania hasn’t seen the collapse of its civilisation.

  23. Mexicanbeemer

    “proportional representation isn’t much of an improvement“
    ————-
    Parliament should surely reflect the preferences of the voters. Whether it’s an “improvement” is secondary.

  25. guytaur

    Tasmania hasn’t seen the collapse of its civilisation.
    ————
    Wow, Tasmania and civilisation in the one sentence!!

    Sorry, just joking!

  27. Guytaur
    if you kept the states and depending on the state you could have a federal electorates for two or four state seats and if there wasn’t state governments you could use the state electoral boundaries for forming federal electorates.

  30. Mexicanbeemer @ #2019 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 10:07 pm

    Jackol says:
    Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 9:41 pm

    Advocating for FPTP on a pseph blog is a good way to guarantee no one will take you seriously.
    ———
    I’m not calling for FPTP and without checking the last federal election but besides McNamara i don’t think many seats would see different results.

    Primary vote leader in 12 seats was defeated after the distribution of preferences at last year’s federal election. All were Liberal primary vote leads which were chased down by 10 Labor, Sharkie and Haines.

    Source: https://antonygreen.com.au/preference-flows-at-the-2019-federal-election/

    If it was FPTP not all of these seats results would change but a fair few would.

  31. Beemer

    For me Tasmania has the world’s best electoral system for representing the voters views.

    It works with existing seats so could be used nationally without needing to have changes to the constitution or the size of electorates.

    The only real objection I have seen is to the speed of the count and the number of politicians.

  32. Isle of Rocks

    Thanks for that because there are always a few seats that flip but 12 seems to be a high number and some of those seats are a surprise.

  33. Mexicanbeemer

    Rakali
    But do they really represent the voters views when most of them are invisible.
    ———

    Not sure what you mean. If you mean candidates on a list are not known to voters, i agree it is an issue but i doubt that many voters in single electorates know their candidates nor the actual groups/companies that they represent.

  35. Wanting first past the post is like ordering at a restaurant and the waiter saying sorry we don’t have that tonight, then snatching the menu out of your hands and asking you to leave…

  37. Rakali
    Once they are elected many of them become invisible as in they to do nothing. In Victoria there are five upper house MPs per district but in my district they are not sighted or seen and in the senate both major parties allocate each senator with an area of opposition held seats to represent on behalf of the party yet whoever is representing this area is never seen or heard from.

  38. Clem Attlee
    Give me an example of a problem Daniel Andrews has solved that did not involve throwing a shitload of money at it.
    You will struggle.

  39. Taylormade @ #2038 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 11:44 pm

    Clem Attlee
    Give me an example of a problem Daniel Andrews has solved that did not involve throwing a shitload of money at it.
    You will struggle.

    Taylormade, you need to read more. The neoliberal economic orthodoxy is dead, buried and cremated. Dan Andrews knows that, and what’s more, Scott Morrison knows that:

    This is the vision in a federal budget update that puts the commonwealth’s gross debt on course to exceed $1 trillion, a startling measure of the way this year’s crisis will echo down the generations.

    Scott Morrison says there is no path through this crisis except for the one he carves with massive spending and mounting debt. The alternative, he says, would have seen thousands of Australians die and hundreds of thousands become destitute.

    The Prime Minister has been forced by events to embrace the spending and borrowing he and his government once spurned, but he has brought the zeal of a convert to the task. The JobKeeper wage subsidy has rescued about 3.5 million workers. The boosted JobSeeker payment has helped another 1.6 million.

    Morrison has found a way to outrun the avalanche. Yet the crisis still towers over him, his government and the country.

    …This does not mean Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg are failing. Most acknowledge the success of the stimulus so far, but the debate is only starting on the further measures needed in the October budget.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-has-outrun-the-avalanche-but-crisis-remains-20200724-p55f5t.html

    These are YOUR people. These are YOUR leaders. Get with the program, Taylormade!

  40. lizzie @ #1789 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 9:45 am

    In the specialist’s rooms, I had my temperature taken and was handed a mask. I have concluded that the shape of the nose makes a lot of difference when it comes to fit, and I think our Asian population has an advantage, as they have nice small noses.

    Until I lived in Vietnam it had never been suggested that I had a big nose, but compared to them, I did!

  42. Barney in Tanjung Bunga @ #2040 Sunday, July 26th, 2020 – 12:19 am

    lizzie @ #1789 Saturday, July 25th, 2020 – 9:45 am

    In the specialist’s rooms, I had my temperature taken and was handed a mask. I have concluded that the shape of the nose makes a lot of difference when it comes to fit, and I think our Asian population has an advantage, as they have nice small noses.

    Until I lived in Vietnam it had never been suggested that I had a big nose, but compared to them, I did!

    Hadn’t thought of that. While Asian populations are used to wearing masks due to pollution, generally their fit is going to be better than for most European head shapes. A cheap mask with a bit of wire doing the crouping would never seal on a Charles de Gaulle nose. So besides cultural resistance there is a physical issue. Since the main purpose of the mask is to stop the wearer from spreading virus, maybe wearing it below the nose is an acceptable for Euros

  45. @Taylor Made

    “Give me an example of a problem Daniel Andrews has solved that did not involve throwing a shitload of money at it.”

    No,No,You give us an example of Andrews throwing a shitload of money at a problem.

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