Oz Politics Blog

Today’s Courier Mail, Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph reported a Queensland-wide Galaxy poll of 800 voters last Wednesday and Thursday evening. The detailed poll results are here.

The predicted state-wide two-party preferred vote shares, were an election held last week, were 52 per cent for Labor and 48 per cent for the Coalition. That represents a 3 point movement from the February state-wide poll result of 55 to 45 per cent in Labor’s favour. But it is almost nine percentage points off the mark set at the previous election: 57.1 to 42.9 in the Coalition’s favour.

Update: Darryl Rosin identified an error in the 2004 results from the CM. I have corrected the 2004 election results above to reflect those on the AEC web site. Previously, I had used the figures from the Courier Mail

The Telegraph, the Courier Mail, the Herald Sun and the Tiser reported on a Galaxy poll of over 1000 people from last weekend. The headline prediction was a national two-party preferred vote share of 53 per cent for Labor and 47 per cent for the Coalition.

This looks like a significant movement in the Government’s favour. However, those of you familiar with my rules of thumb for interpreting polls, will know that I typically reject as noise any significant poll movement that can not be attributed to an event that one would reasonably expect to change voting intention. Even if I can point to a plausible explanatory variable, I usually suspend judgment on a single poll result that could mark a discontinuity.

To put it another way: don’t read too much into a single poll result. While it is entirely possible the encore kid is staging another win from behind, I would want just a little bit more data before coming to that conclusion. Furthermore, I would want the story confirmed by more than one pollster.

Just for the fun of it, the next two graphs are my highly speculative chicken entrails analysis, which were designed to identify whether John Howard has a chance of winning from behind in 2007 as he did in 2001 and 2004.

One of these trend lines is not like the others!

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.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Galaxy conducted a poll of 995 voters last weekend. The headline prediction was, were an election held last weekend, Labor would have won 57 percent of the national two-party preferred vote.

Labor’s primary vote was 49 per cent. The Coalition’s primary vote was 39 per cent. The Greens are on 9 per cent. And independents and others got 3 per cent.

Of note:

Just days after Treasurer Peter Costello promised average workers a tax cut of $16 a week, only 16 per cent of those polled said they would be more inclined to vote for the Coalition, while 12 per cent said they were less inclined.

The vast majority of voters (67 per cent) said they would not be influenced either way by the big-spending Budget.

Asked whose industrial relations policies they preferred, 52 per cent endorsed Kevin Rudd while 35 per cent said they liked John Howard’s WorkChoices.

Another 13 per cent were uncommitted.

Both the DT and the Courier Mail have effectively declared it a no budget bounce poll. I just knew this headline going to happen; so I will conclude this post with an alternative interpretation of this Galaxy poll (just to be provocative).

Three weeks ago, the Galaxy TPP figure was 58 to 42 per cent in Labor’s favour. We both know that extrapolating any trend from these two data points is completely spurious. Nonetheless, the hypothetical exercise is instructive as it bodes caution against premature jubilation or despair with a change of government — depending on your political preferences. An average monthly 1.3 percentage point decline in Labor’s vote between now and the election would see the Coalition returned to Government. While a sustained average monthly decline of 1.3 percentage points over the next six months may be less likely than not, it is not implausible.

The Sunday Telegraph has reported a Galaxy poll of 800 voters in the Prime Minister’s seat of Bennelong. The poll was conducted in the two days after the Budget. According to the poll, Labor candidate Maxine McKew would win the seat. John Howard would become the second Prime Minister in Australia’s history to lose his seat at an election.

The predicted two-party preferred vote is 52 per cent for Labor and 48 per cent for the Coalition. The primary vote predictions were 44 per cent for the Coalition and 46 per cent for Labor.

This poll result represents a six per cent swing on the 2004 outcome. A uniform national 6 per cent swing would see Labor win around 53.3 per cent of the national TPP vote share, and Government with around 83 seats.

Hat tip to GOE.

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.