Oz Politics Blog

… in today’s Age …

Unless it wants to put its faith in last-minute miracles, the Government has to make progress soon. Age/ACNielsen pollster John Stirton says: “In hindsight … Latham’s decline began in June-July 2004 with the two-party vote for Labor being 52 per cent. Support for Labor fell to 50 per cent by early September, at the beginning of the campaign. No two elections are the same. Nevertheless, if Howard is to come back, the improvement has to start soon. The Coalition, now on 42 per cent, is very unlikely to get the 7 points it needs all in one go. (This is assuming 49 per cent would be just enough for Howard to win.)

“In 2004, Howard gained around 3 per cent in two-party terms during the campaign. Assuming a similar large gain in this year’s campaign — although that is probably unlikely in two elections in a row — he’ll need to be averaging about 46 to 47 per cent by the time the election is called,” Mr Stirton says. “This means that if the polling from now until the end of August hasn’t improved … the odds of a late recovery and another ‘come-from-behind’ election will become much more remote.”

Also worth listening to Michelle discuss the latest poll

As noted yesterday, ACNielsen reported much later and more pronounced election-year comebacks than Newspoll. Also, the two pollsters saw the end of 2004 in very different terms.

The latest ACNielsen is on message with an all too familiar story. The headline prediction is a national two party preferred vote of 58 per cent for Labor and 42 per cent for the Coalition. This is pretty well a flat line since April. Of note, Labor is getting around 75 per cent of the preference votes. At recent elections it has been around 60 percent. If we readjust the preference flows, the TPP prediction would be 56 to 44 in Labor’s favour, but there is no significant change to the flat line trend.

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Since last Sunday, there has been a slight movement away from the government among the five bookmakers I am tracking. Three bookmakers have moved in Rudd’s direction just slightly. The other two were unchanged.

Today the average probability for a Coalition win at the 2007 election is 47.6 per cent. Last week it was 48.3 per cent.

The other graphs are here. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs.

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.

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Another Morgan telephone poll. The headline prediction was 57.5 to 42.5 in Labor’s favour.

I really don’t know what to make of the recent Morgan telephone poll series. With a typical sample size on the small side of around 600, this series has expansive error bars; so much so that none of the movement since May (when Morgan began doing these polls with some regularity) has been statistically significant.

Other than confirming that Labor is well ahead, it is difficult to discern any meaningful trend data from this series.

Of interest, Morgan notes the recent discussion on Possums Pollytics regarding Morgan and Newspoll and declares it is well worth reading.