Oz Politics Blog

Fairfax has today’s ACNielsen poll (here, here. here, and here, with details here).

The headline prediction was a massacre for the Coalition. Were an election held between Thursday and Saturday just passed, Labor would have got 54 per cent of the national two-party preferred vote. The Coalition, would have got 46 per cent of that vote. On the primary votes, the Coalition scored just 39 per cent (down three points), while Labor got 42 per cent (up three points).

Wow! As one commentator noted this morning, the trend is definitely with Labor. While I do not doubt the overall trend, I have my doubts about the scale of the predicted blood bath.

I particularly found the Iraq commentary implausible. Okay, so ACNielsen asked people their views on Iraq. That does not mean those views drove this month’s movement in the polls. I agree, Iraq is a military quagmire and most Australians want us out of there. But Iraq is not something about which the mug punters are particularly passionate. It is not driving much in the way voting behaviour.

In the electoral sense, Iraq is not another Vietnam. There is no conscription and, apart from the odd random accident, there are no Australian body bags. Looking back over the past two years, the Coalition’s soft under-belly is industrial relations, not Iraq.

I cannot point to any significant political event over the past month to support a three-point jump in the primary votes. I am less concerned with ACNielsen’s prediction for Labor’s primary vote (last month was the aberration and this month is the correction). However, I suspect the Coalition primary vote prediction is one or two points under-sold. And I am inclined to put one or two points of Labor’s 54 per cent down to the random perturbations of statistics as well.

Of note, ACNielsen did not report votes for One Nation. Perhaps this is the last death rattle for Pauline’s once-powerful party: even the pollsters are ignoring it now. In its place, ACNielsen reported primary votes for Family First for the first time.

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