Newspoll quarterly: June 2007
As reported in yesterday’s Australian, Newspoll has released its latest quarterly polling aggregation. This aggregation is most useful, as it allows us to look for differences on geographic, gender and age bases. Overall, the primary vote swing to Labor appeared larger than the swing away from the Coalition. The largest swings have occurred in New South Wales and outside of the capital cities. The smallest swings have occurred in Western Australia, and (in terms of those leaving the Coalition) males and the 35-49 years age group.
The Coalition is behind in all categories except Western Australia.
To see how much things have changed, it’s worth comparing the second quarter in 2007 with the first quarter in 2005.
Side-by-side, the last two graphs look like this. Check out that change in the 18-34 year age cohort and the over 50s.
Now that we have seen the starting point and the end point, it is time to look at the trends over time. We will start with the state-by-state comparisons of the predicted primary vote. I have presented these as both raw percentages and as an index where 100 is the AEC (rather than Newspoll reporting of the) results from the 2004 election.
In all states, there has been a drift from Howard since the last election. However, not all of that sentiment went to Labor. In Victoria, for example, it was only with the ascension of Kevin Rudd that we have seen any significant movement in Labor’s primary vote. A similar, though less marked trend is evident for Labor’s primary vote in New South Wales.
Newspoll’s reporting of two states — Queensland and Western Australia — suggest they had begun to move away from the government as early as Q1 2005. By Q3 2005, all states had demonstrated a significant decline in the Coalition’s primary vote. It was only in Q1 2007 (following Rudd’s appointment as Opposition Leader) that all states were reporting a significant increase in Labor’s primary vote.
The South Australian rebound to Howard over the last quarter looks interesting. It is interesting to speculate whether this rebound reflects Howard’s effort in terms of water policy and the river Murray over recent months. A smaller rebound in Q2 2007 was evident in Western Australia. Partial rebounds may be at work in Victoria (Coalition improving) and Queensland (Labor declining).
The other trend graphs I found particularly interesting were the trends by age group. Here the index graph is aligned to the Newspoll election survey conducted 6-7 October 2004.
Again we see the decline in the Coalition’s primary vote spanning the period since the last election, and Labor’s improvement occurring largely in the post Rudd period. (Although it might be arguable from the second age graph above that Beazley was charming the over fifties but not the under fifties).
If you look at the Coalition index graph by state near the top of the page, there is a marked dip in the Coalition vote at Q4 2005. I suspect this was associated with the introduction of the first round of Work Choices legislation. If you turn now to the age cohort graphs, the age group I would most expect the industrial relations legislation to impact — 18 to 34 year olds — appear to have been least impacted in Q4 2005. This might suggest a political disconnectedness for this cohort.
In the age graphs it is interesting to speculate whether the Q2 2007 rebound to the Coalition among the 35 to 49 year age cohort was driven by an underlying concern about interest rates.
In the next set of graphs we focus on the five big cities.
Again we see the decline in the Coalition’s primary vote spanning the period since the last election, and Labor’s improvement occurring largely in the post Rudd period.
What I found interesting with this set was the size of Rudd’s non-metro appeal. It is also interesting to speculate on whether we are beginning to see an interest rate motivated return to Howard in metro areas.
The final set of graphs are on Gender.
Again we see the decline in the Coalition’s primary vote spanning the period since the last election, and Labor’s improvement occurring largely in the post Rudd period.
In this respect, women have been typically drifting away from Howard at a faster rate across the period since the last election, but theu have only been attracted to Labor in large numbers since Rudd’s ascension.
Update: Possums Pollytics has also unpacked the Newspoll quarterly.