Oz Politics Blog

Morgan has released its poll results from 1033 voters over the weekend of 4-5 February. The headline result is a national predicted two-party preferred vote of 52.5 per cent for Labor and 47.5 for the Coalition. Such a vote would see a Labor Government installed in Canberra.

The primary vote shares are as follows:

• Coalition — 40.5 per cen (down 1.5 points)t
• Labor — 42 per cent (up 4 points)
• Australian Democrats — (down 0.5 points)
• The Greens — 8 per cent (down 0.5 points)
• Family First — 2 per cent (down 0.5 points)
• One Nation — 1 per cent (unchanged)
• Independents/other — 5 per cent (down 1 point)

The pollster’s interpretation:

“The continuing scandal surrounding AWB’s grain deals with Iraq has taken its toll on the L-NP with primary support down 1.5% to 40.5%. A special Morgan Poll to be released tomorrow will show that most people who have an opinion believed the Government did not act ethically. This will not provide happy reading for the Howard Government.

“The infighting between Coalition partners the National Party and Liberal Party has not helped matters. Meanwhile primary support for the ALP has risen sharply up 4% to 42% in a week.

“The ALP would have won an election had it been held last weekend, with the ALP receiving 52.5% of the ‘two-party’ preferred vote if preferences were allocated as they were at the 2004 Federal election.”

I am often at a loss when it comes to commenting on Morgan. I do not believe that voting intention is as volatile as suggested by the polls. And Morgan’s practice of breaking its fortnightly reporting cycle when it gets a significant movement in a week only adds to the volatility in its series.

While I think the AWB saga is a first rate commercial scandal, for me at least, it appears a way off being a political scandal. Hence, I do not believe it would have driven voting intention by as much as reported. My usual fallback in these circumstances is to say lets wait and see what the next poll says — it will be Newspoll on Tuesday.

As foreshadowed in the above quote, Morgan published survey results on the AWB oil-for-food scandal. These results are a little confusing. The tables report 50 per cent believe the AWB acted unethically, 12 per cent believe AWB acted ethically, and 38 per cent are undecided. However, in the text, Morgan said,

Fifty-six percent of Australians think the Government acted unethically in its role in the scandal, 3% more than the 53% who believe AWB Ltd. acted unethically! Opinions matter — the number of people who say AWB Ltd. acted ethically is 13% with 34% undecided.

Regardless of which is the correct statistic, I am little surprised that more people think the Government has acted unethically than think the AWB has. Perhaps we live in a society where it is okay to do wrong, when it is for a good cause (the farmers), and as long as you don’t get caught.

On the Muhammad cartoons, Morgan found 62 per cent of Australians believe the cartoons should not be published in Australia. By some coincidence, the same proportion thought the ‘abortion pill’ RU486 should be made available to Australian women.