Oz Politics Blog

The headline result from Morgan’s poll of 818 voters over the weekend of 13-14 May was a predicted national, two-party-preferred vote of 51 per cent for Labor and 49 per cent for the Coalition.

Normally Morgan combines its two weekend polls into a single fortnightly prediction. This fortnight the two weekend polls were published separately, suggesting a significant post Budget turn-around for the Government. Morgan’s 6-7 May poll of 1024 voters saw a predicted national, two-party-preferred vote of 53.5 per cent for Labor and 46.5 per cent for the Coalition.

The turn around was even more marked in terms of the two-party preferred prediction based on how people said they would allocate their preferences. Over the week, the Coalition’s vote jumped from 44.5 per cent to 50 per cent. Labor suffered the corresponding 5.5 point decline. (For its headline predictions, Morgan uses the preference flows from the previous election to allocate preferences, rather than the stated preference intentions of its poll respondents).

According to the pollster:

“A pre-budget sharp decline in consumer confidence and L-NP vote after the RBA’s decision to raise interest rates by 0.25% was offset following the release of the budget that delivered tax cuts for all.

“An election would be too close to call if held now. What happens in the economy from now until the election will decide who wins the next Federal election.”

I am not a believer. A two and a half point (or 5.5 point) swing in a week is more likely to be stochastic noise than the measurement of anything meaningful. Budgets and individual Reserve Bank decisions are fairly arcane when it comes to the punters. A sex scandal and resignation might generate that sort of turn around in a week, but not fiscal policy and monetary policy.

Also probably attributable to the random perturbations of this series was the question of who the electorate thinks will win the next Federal election. Seventy per cent (up 9.5 points in a week) think the Coalition will win, 20 per cent (down 8 points in a week) think Labor will win and 10 per cent (down 1.5 points) can’t say.

Anyway, this latest Morgan poll might simply be a correction. Morgan has been travelling significantly to the left of Newspoll and ACNielsen in its prediction of Labor and the Coalition’s primary votes for the last 6 weeks or so. This latest result looks more in step with the other pollsters.

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