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Newspoll has Labor on 55% 2PP (up 1 point, within the MOE). Kevin Rudd is on 62% (up 3) on the PPM to Malcolm Turnbull’s 22% (down 3).
Brendan Nelson peaked at 16%.
The Opposition Organ says:
But it remains substantially higher than his predecessor Brendan Nelson.
How substantial is substantial, I wonder?
I’ve written before about why I think that the “media narrative” masquerading as psephological analysis that there’s some sort of automatic fall in support for state Labor parties because of some putative desire among voters to have different parties governing at different levels. I suspect the proximate origin of this meme is actually the “wall to wall Labor” scare the Liberals ran in last year’s election. As Kim was suggesting the other day, this is a political tactic that normally indicates despair among incumbents, and it’s completely wrong to assume it reflects some sort of psephological law or reality in voting behaviour. Anyone familiar with the political science literature knows that attempts to demonstrate any posited strong correlation between state and federal partisan choices over time falls down very quickly - even in New South Wales where it’s long been political myth that the strongest case can be made. In part that’s because there are two few cases of actual partisan change in elections over much of the postwar period - something that becomes immediately apparent when you think about the fact that the federal government didn’t turn over at all between 1949 and 1972.
There was another outbreak of this guff on Monday in The Australian, apropos of quarterly newspolls in New South Wales and Victoria. There was the usual news story and two op/ed pieces to ram home the point. It was intriguing to see the frame applied to the comments of ABC election analyst Antony Green: Continue reading ‘Labor states on the nose!!!’
It’s hard to ignore resurgence of the ‘Australia shouldn’t do anything until everyone else does’ meme, most recently by the National Party. Dennis provides another variation on the theme, spinning this fair and balanced question in the latest Newspoll:
Currently, the federal government intends to introduce the carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2010. Under the carbon pollution reduction scheme, the price of energy sources, such as petrol, electricity and gas may become more expensive. Do you think the federal government should delay or should not delay the introduction of the carbon pollution reduction scheme beyond 2010 because of the recent financial crisis?
Push poll much?
Climate Denialism is usually shorthand for someone who denies the truth of the basic science of global warming, but I think a more relevant redefinition is Climate Recalcitrant - someone who doesn’t believe that we can get organised to do something about the problem. What the Nationals and Dennis have in common are a desire to trash 15 years of global negotiations, bury their heads in the sand and yell ‘head for the hills (or the barracks)’! Continue reading ‘Climate Denialism whack-a-mole’
The headline numbers of today’s polls are above, and there’s more detail at The Poll Bludger.
For mine, what’s more interesting is some of the questions in the Essential Research poll. In particular, it’s interesting to compare the disapproval ratings of Rudd and Turnbull - 22% (down 8%) and 36%. There’s only a 4 point gap between Turnbull’s disapproval and approval numbers, while Rudd has 44%. That suggests to me - when combined with the 60-19 PPM figure and the 72% approval of the government’s actions in combating the global financial crisis - that Kevin Rudd has occupied the sort of territory John Howard used to - as a strong and safe national leader, but without the negatives. Malcolm Turnbull, by contrast, is dangerously close to numbers which suggest a polarising politics as usual carping oppo leader.
In light of what Mark’s been saying about Turnbull’s strategy on economic management, it’s worth asking if it would have been a much better strategy for the opposition to keep a relatively low profile and stick to the statespersonlike pose thing. Point scoring and politicking are the worst look possible for the Libs at the moment. The problem is they just can’t help themselves.
It might take another election defeat for the primadonnas on the Coalition frontbench to realise they shouldn’t be constantly in the public eye declaiming and condemning. It’s the same thing that benefited Rudd last year - the Howard government providing constant alarums and colour and movement just turned people off - Australians aren’t that interested in the political game and just want the government to govern. Kevin Rudd understands that well. The opposition - and their mates in the meejah - are clueless, and won’t get a clue whilever Malcolm’s ego is on the prowl 24/7.
After a break last Monday for the NSW long weekend, Newspoll is out with a steady 2PP lead for Labor and a jump in Kevin Rudd’s overall standing. Apparently the Preferred Prime Minister measure, which was so crucial in talking down Brendan Nelson’s leadership, is no longer important. At any rate it’s not been reported in the early story in The Australian, which talks up Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating. It might be more to the point to note that Turnbull has had a negligible leadership effect by any historical measure on the Opposition’s voting intention numbers.
Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger.
Update: Possum. OzPolitics notes the large jump in The Greens’ primary vote.
As a bit of an update to my post last night, the Essential Research poll is now out, basically showing no change from last time. Possum has more on all the other questions asked. So, we can now be more confident about suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has yet to really shift any of the trends that were evident under Nelson - this also highlights the vast over-inflation of the importance of Preferred PM and Opposition Leader approval ratings in most of the punditariat’s commentary. It will be very interesting to see what the delayed Newspoll says - since this is apparently the only poll the punditariat focus on. Where to now for the famous “media narrative”?
Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.
I wonder if no Newspoll is bad news for the pollsters and those who own them. This must be the first Monday in living memory (well, since anyone started paying attention to this stuff before last year’s campaign) when there hasn’t been an early release of selected Newspoll numbers. It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it? [Update: Or could it be because NSW had a public holiday yesterday?] After all, last week’s Morgan face to face poll showed a straight swap of primary vote from the Coalition to Labor - 1.5%, with Labor on 57.5% 2PP. And ACNielsen and Newspoll a fortnight ago showed a very poor bounce by historical standards for the Opposition.
No doubt we’ll find out.
Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. Continue reading ‘No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut’
I’m planning at some stage in the reasonably near future to write a longish post about Anna Bligh’s prospects (and I wouldn’t comment on Mike Rann’s, not being a resident of South Australia, and thus I don’t think able to assess them with any authority). But there’s a bit of an indicator of the trend from Newspoll which finds a dead heat in South Australia (50-50 down from 54-46 in the last quarterly poll) and only a slight advantage to Labor in Queensland (51-49 down from 55-45).
However, I don’t buy the whole “balancing state and federal governments” argument. States have political cycles of their own which are substantially independent of federal swings of the pendulum. In Queensland, changes of government are very rare, with only six since 1915. That might give you some idea of why Peter Beattie hung on in 2006 when by rights (and he knew it) he should have lost. And the LNP is still looking quite messy. Aside from the internal shenanigans associated with the Nats takeover, Lawrence Springborg has made a couple of big mistakes by not following up on his teaser campaign with any substantial policy in areas such as infrastructure, health and education and by going relatively silent since his great conservative union was kinda consummated. The Borg is now back in a no policy, carping oppo leader zone - with internal rumblings. So I think 2009 in Queensland is still Labor’s to lose.
Continue reading ‘Labor takes a hit in the polls in Queensland and South Australia’
ACNielsen has Labor behind the Liberals on primaries 42-41, the first time the Libs have been ahead of Labor in the Nielsen poll since September 2006. Labor leads in the 2PP 52-48, and Kevin Rudd leads Malcolm Turnbull on PPM 56-33. Rudd led Brendan Nelson 65-19 in the August poll.
The Liberals have gained 3% on the primary vote and 3% on the 2PP since the August Nielsen poll.
I observed the other day that Possum had calculated opposition leader change bounce averages. It’s for Newspoll, but here it is for purposes of comparison:
…the average Coalition bounce from a leadership change was 5.7% on the primary and 6% on the TPP.
Speaking of Newspoll, The Poll Bludger reports rumours of an early release for the one that normally appears first on Lateline tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, as otherwise the OO will be reduced to writing their new narrative on the basis of a story in The Age. So get in quickly for Possum’s guess the Newspoll bounce competition.
Update: That was quick. Dennis gets to write his story on the basis of the poll he owns. Newspoll has the primaries favouring Labor 42-38 (down 2 and up 1 respectively, and within the MOE as Shanahan notes). The 2PP is 55-45 in Labor’s favour. It was 56-44 last time. Without mentioning the ACNielsen poll, Shanahan has actually written a story that would fit its findings better than Newspoll’s, having to construct his narrative out of the frippery of the PPM where Rudd leads Turnbull 54-24. As The Poll Bludger observes, this matches the Galaxy Poll in the News Limited tabloids on the weekend.
So if we do the comparison with Possum’s calculations, the Turnbull bounce is almost non-existent. Heh.
In reality, we should wait before passing judgement, but it’s fair to say that the previous trend is still very much apparent. Rudd’s losing some of his shine, but Labor’s vote is holding up well.
Continue reading ‘Turnbull poll bounce? ACNielsen 52-48, Newspoll 55-45′
Via The Poll Bludger, the same old same old from Newspoll. I think what Rod Cameron had to say on Lateline had a lot of merit - voters will give Kevin Rudd at least another year before making a final judgement. In the meantime, the Liberals probably are wasting their and all of our time with their constant shenanigans. Their best bet would be to lie low and stop making themselves the story. They’re unlikely to, of course. Too much a bunch of prima donnas, plotters and media tarts. And now we’ve got this to look forward to:
But you can be sure that from the end of the next week until at least the end of the following week, it will be all-Costello-all-the-time in the Australian media.
Lord save us.
This question from Essential Research (which incidentally has Labor sitting on a 59/41 2PP split) is a hypothetical, but it’s still an interesting result:
Kevin Rudd is preferred to Peter Costello head-to-head 53 per cent to 27 per cent.
Elsewhere: Possum shows why the Costello dithering is doing a lot of damage to the Libs.
Ok, in the parallel universe that is press reporting of polls, we get this from the West Australian:
Extensive Olympics coverage over the past two weeks may have pushed politics out of the minds of many Australians and be responsible for the minimal changes in the latest Newspoll of voter sentiment and no improvement for the coalition.
Right. Yep. Because the natural order of things is that the Coalition vote should always be rising and its failure to do so is an aberration to be explained away by… stuff that happened in the same fortnight. Whatevs.
Meanwhile, Dennis Shanahan puts it all down to the waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Costello to release his book. Which, by the way, the ABC is giving free publicity to by televising a National Press Club speech by the former Treasurer on the day of its release. What’s with that?
But note the common assumption that the Liberals should be gaining were it not for their leadership woes. Really? How do they know? Because they do. It’s not argued. But it’s there as the background assumption on which all the rest rests.
Elsewhere: For actual commentary on the poll, go visit Possum and the Poll Bludger’s crew in comments. The Poll Bludger also links to the rather interesting Essential Research poll (Labor 58-Coalition 42) which shows that there’s a 7% negative differential between state and federal ALP voting intentions among its sample.
The other day when I was talking about the findings in the Essential Research poll about public attitudes towards banks and passing on Reserve Bank interest rate cuts, I linked to Janet Albrechtsen’s column in which she loudly denounced populist bank bashing and asserted the Government and citizens should all be grateful to the banks:
The bottom line is this. The more the PM and the Treasurer bash the banks, the more they hurts Australian borrowers. Bank-bashing may feel good at the time but the subsequent pain will outweigh – heavily – the momentary pleasure. Anyone who understands the economy should understand that.
Anyone who understands economics? That apparently doesn’t include the Reserve Bank’s Deputy Governor Ric Battelino, who made these remarks to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics yesterday, reinforcing a “detailed case” from Assistant Governor Phil Lowe:
When we look at bank profitability, we find that Australian banks are around the top of the international range. On the surface, this could indicate a lesser degree of competition than elsewhere. But when we look a bit deeper it seems that an important reason for the high profitability of Australian banks is their unusually low bad debt experience.
That’s directly opposed to Planet’s arguments, any disagreement with which she denounced as “hypocrisy” and “ignorance”. Let’s dwell on the first of those nouns. Stephen Mayne revealed on Tuesday that Albrechtsen’s husband John O’Sullivan works in the banking sector, and that their family wealth was enhanced by remuneration including Commonwealth Bank shares worth $5.1 million. O’Sullivan received them as a senior CommBank exec. Does Janet disclose any of this? And this is the mob who have been crusading all week for the public “right to know”?
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B… b… bounce?
Oks, there’s got to be some way to work this into a drinking game. Just to prove that political tragics are rooly cool like the kidz on West Wing and not strange nerds really.
Possum has enabled a feature on his blog where you can guess the size of any Newspoll bounce that might occur now that Malcolm Turnbull is Oppo Leader. Wisdom of crowds and all that. No mention of any prizes (hint! hint!*) - at least you can make a buck from the betting markets…
And I’ve got my own idea for a bit of crowd sourced political commentary. Let’s pretend we’re the press gallery and set a % which, if not met, will be decried as a setback, or completely unrelated and probably because of the current position of the moon in the lunar cycle, depending on what mood Dennis Shanahan et al are in. And then we can set a % sufficient to ensure the production of headlines like “Australian politics has fundamentally changed”, “the honeymoon is now over”, “Turnbull reinvigorates Coalition” etc, etc.
Be your own press gallery. Write your own political narrative.
Ps: If Turnbull can’t get 5% on the 2PP, he’s toast. Peter Costello is willing to be drafted.
*Update: Now there’s a prize!