Oz Politics Blog

The Newspoll reported in today’s Australian predicted a national Coalition two party preferred vote of 51 per cent compared with 49 per cent for Labor, were an election held last weekend. Update: full results now available on the Newspoll site.

Newspoll estimated the Coalition’s primary vote would be 44 per cent (up four on the previous Newspoll, and three higher than ACNielsen for essentially the same period).

The estimated Labor primary vote was 38 per cent (down one, and two higher than ACNielsen for essentially the same period).

Unfortunately the Green primary vote prediction was not reported. Update: The estimated Green primary vote was 7 per cent (unchamged, and four points lower than the Green primary vote estimate from ACNielsen for essentially the same period).

What does it mean? It is hard to say. Both Morgan and ACNielsen dipped in late May; both have risen now. That movement could be noise (the more likely explanation), or it could be measuring something real. Interpreting polls is definitely as much art as it is science. The two-point 2PP difference between the two polls for last weekend is within the margin of error, so while it looks like a different result that difference is not statistically significant.

I suspect we can safely say that industrial relations is no longer the vote changing issue it was in the last quarter of 2005. The media may even be right in its assessment that Beazley’s no-AWAs pledge, while playing well to the party faithful, has not impressed the swinging voter.

Although I did not blog on it yesterday, the betting market remained unchanged since early May. For all the huff and puff about industrial relations, perhaps nothing much is currently happening to change voter opinion.

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