Oz Politics

The latest Newspoll was in today’s Australian. The national two party preferred vote was 59 per cent for Labor and 41 per cent for the Coalition. The primary vote predictions were 50 per cent for Labor, 36 per cent for the Coalition, and four per cent for the Greens. These results would bring little comfort to the government. And if the party hacks were scouring the data for a glimmer of hope, it is not there.

Labor is now tracking well above its Newspoll performance in previous election years. On this, Denis Shanahan noted, “If there’s no delayed Newspoll bounce or any sign of a Coalition recovery by mid-June, it will be getting too late to engineer the comebacks of 2001 and 2004.”

You may recall that I created some deliberately provocative graphs a weeks or so ago to argue the possibility that there may be a post March 2007 trend back to the government. At the time I conceded the analysis was bollocks, but I thought it was a constructive antidote for hubris or despair. When I plugged in the latest data point for Newspoll, that regression trend line moved against the Government. Now, only the series with two data points — and therefore the most unreliable series for this purpose — suggest the possibility of a post March 2007 linear trend resulting in a 5th Howard government.

Before you pop the Bollinger on ice or look for an unlocked window in a tall building, remember it only takes another data point within the margin of error to shift the Newspoll trend line back to almost the same as the Galaxy blue trend line. If the government got 44 in the Newspoll of 27 May, it would be back on track to victory.

I have said it a few times now, you cannot judge the Budget, or the likelihood of a government victory in November/December on the basis of a single poll result immediately after the Budget. We will need to wait until the end of June before we can say with some confidence that there was or was not a post March trend back to the government.

Having given you the graph that might give some (albeit not much) comfort to the Coalition, it is only fair that I add the graphs that would scare the be-Jesus out of them. Three of the four trend lines show no decline in Labor’s primary vote.

And Kevin Rudd’s popularity shows no sign of declining.

The usual opinion poll graphs are here. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs.