Oz Politics Blog

Galaxy and ACNielsen both have polls out today. Both have the same headline prediction: a national two-party preferred vote of 42 per cent for the Coalition and 58 per cent for Labor, were an election held last weekend.

In terms of the primary vote, both predict the Coalition would get 37, and Labor would get 50 (ACNielsen) or 49 (Galaxy) per cent.

The ACNielsen poll played a little mischief. It found that Labour would do better in a Rudd v Costello contest (with a prediction of 61 to 39) than it would in a Rudd v Howard contest (58 to 42). It’s a finding that should Araldite the Prime Minister to his seat.

It was honest mischief in the Galaxy poll:

When voters were asked who was more honest, 44 per cent opted for Mr Rudd, while only 23 per cent chose Mr Howard.

Even among Coalition supporters, only 52 per cent backed Mr Howard when asked about honesty. “Perceived honesty is not John Howard’s strong suit and even his own supporters recognise he can be economical with the truth,” Galaxy’s principal David Briggs said.

What happens next

I had a software upgrade go horribly wrong over the weekend, and I lost the last six months of betting and polling data. A real pain! But it forced me to re-examine the previous polls. From an ACNielsen perspective, Labor cannot rest on its laurels. In previous election years, it was roughly at the same place it is now at this point in the cycle. In the last three elections, Labor crashed in the first or second week of September. As they say in the classics, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

It is too early to tell whether today’s TPP movement heralds the beginning of another election year decline for Labor. It may be random noise (with Labor bouncing around in the 58-61 per cent range), or it may be the start of something significant. As always with these things, you want to see a few subsequent data points before coming to a view.

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.

I was surprised … but according to Andrew Leigh …

Overall, our paper estimates that 128-282 lives have been saved every year by the gun buyback. In other words, 1000-2500 Australians who are alive today would not be here if it hadn’t been for the buyback.

The predictions have been released from the latest Morgan poll of 1802 voters over the weekends of 7-8 and 14-15 April. The headline prediction was, were an election held at that time, Labor would have won 59.5 per cent of the national two-party preferred vote. According to my election calculator, Labor would have won around 120 of the 150 seats: a landslide.

Interestingly, while Labor remains ascendant, there has been a slight trending upwards since February in the Coalition’s two party preferred vote prediction. However, the Morgan trend rate is insufficient to project a Coalition victory at year’s end. Furthermore, as the trend is not (yet?) evident in either Newspoll or ACNielsen, it may be nothing more than noise in the Morgan series.

The pollster referred to a special poll on industrial relations, but I could not find the actual poll.

“IR is the sleeper issue of this campaign and, with the ALP releasing their alternate IR policies on Wednesday, it will be interesting to see if they resonate with the public.

“A Special Roy Morgan survey shows that 87% of the one million plus electors on AWAs are satisfied with the way they are employed, which is slightly higher than the 84% of those electors on industrial-based awards, and 85% of those electors who maintain that they are on individual contracts who are satisfied with the way they are employed.”

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.

Sorry there has been no posts for a few days. I have been busy and out of town.

I will post on the latest Morgan poll tomorrow morning.

You can continue political conversations here …

When: Thursday, Apr 26, 2007, 7:00 PM

Where: Arthouse Hotel (275 Pitt St)

What to know more: click here

I think I might just go …