Newspoll: 57 to 43 in Labor’s favour
According to the Australian, last weekend Newspoll examined the Voldemort of workplace reform. In essence, the new fairness test has done little to improve the image of WorkChoices the Dark Lord.
Overwhelmingly, people said the Government’s policy change made “no difference” to them, and in almost every group more people said the change made them less likely to vote Coalition rather than more likely.
While Newspoll did not undertake its full suite of beauty contest polling, it did ask questions on voting intention. The predicted national two-party preferred vote shares were 57 per cent for Labor and 43 per cent for the Coalition. The Coalition’s primary vote was 39 per cent (up three points, and Labor’s primary vote was 49 per cent (down one point).
It appears That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named has polarised voters. The losers in this clash are the Greens (on a low of three per cent, down one point), and others (nine per cent, down one point). The independents and minor parties (including the Greens) have taken a fair pounding on the polls in recent months.
While my highly speculative trend graphs suggest that the government is still in with a chance come December 2007, it looks like the TPP trend to the government has slowed (perhaps flat-lined) since the beginning of April.
The shrinking of the non-major-party-voting-block means that the Coalition will need to do much better than 42 per cent primary vote (my usual rule-of-thumb) in order to win government.
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.