Sat May 14

Labor retains large Newspoll lead but Albanese's ratings fall; special poll gives Labor clear House majority

Written by Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

A Newspoll, conducted May 10-13 from a sample of 1,532, gave Labor a 54-46 lead, unchanged from the previous week’s Newspoll. Primary votes were 38% Labor (down one), 35% Coalition (steady), 11% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (up one), 3% UAP (down one) and 7% all Others (up one).

53% were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance (down two) and 42% were satisfied (up one), for a net approval of -11, up three points. Anthony Albanese’s net approval dropped five points to -11. Morrison led as better PM by 43-42 (44-42 the previous week). Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger ^[1].

This Newspoll will be the second last of the election campaign. The final pre-election Newspoll will be released online next Friday night, the evening before the election, and there are likely to be other national polls released late next week. This Newspoll was released two days earlier than usual.

This poll was taken after the widely criticised leaders’ debate on May 8. The shouting and interrupting appears to have damaged Albanese. It didn’t hurt Morrison as his ratings were already poor, and people had formed an opinion of him.

The leaders’ debate on Wednesday was more civilised. Half the fieldwork in this poll would be after this debate and half before.

Despite Albanese’s ratings slide, Labor retains a large Newspoll lead with just one week remaining before election day. Even if Newspoll is understating the Coalition by three points, as occurred in 2019, Labor would still lead by 51-49 – probably enough to win in a minority government.

If Newspoll and other polls are accurate this time, Labor will win a large majority of House of Representatives seats. I believe high inflation ^[4] (5.1% in the 12 months to March) is a key reason for Labor’s large poll leads.

Economic data out next week includes the March quarter wage price index (to be released Wednesday) that will show how nominal pay has changed, and the April jobs report (out Thursday).

YouGov MRP poll: Labor 80 House seats, Coalition 63, Others eight

The Poll Bludger ^[5] reported Wednesday that YouGov conducted Australia’s first ever MRP poll (multi-level regression with post-stratification) for The Australian. This used a large national sample of almost 19,000, and aims to forecast the results in each electorate using demographic modelling.

The Poll Bludger said this model performed well in the 2017 UK general election, correctly forecasting that the Conservatives would lose their majority. However, it understated the Conservatives at the 2019 UK general election.

Data for this poll was collected ^[6] over three weeks, from April 14 to May 7. The long fieldwork period means this poll could be missing recent gains for Labor.

Results for all seats can be viewed at The Australian ^[7] (no paywall). The overall prediction is that Labor would win 80 of the 151 House of Representatives seats (up 11 from the post-redistribution 2019 results), the Coalition would win 63 (down 13), and there would be eight Others (up two). This would be a Labor majority of nine.

The Poll Bludger ^[9] said that the 11 seats Labor is projected to gain are Bennelong, Lindsay, Reid and Robertson in NSW, Chisholm and Higgins in Victoria, Brisbane in Queensland, Swan and Pearce in WA, Boothby in SA and Bass in Tasmania.

The six existing elected crossbenchers are expected to hold their seats, with Kooyong and Goldstein in Victoria gained by “teal” independents. I don’t count Craig Kelly, as he was elected as a Liberal in Hughes before defecting to the UAP.

A YouGov poll shows Kooyong as a gain by the teal independent and a Liberal loss. AAP/Andrew Henshaw

Some seats are tied at 50-50, and these cases are shaded to indicate which party is ahead. Bennelong and Lindsay are very close for Labor, with Longman (Qld), Ryan (Qld) and Sturt (SA) just remaining with the Coalition, while Corangamite (Vic) is a potential Labor loss.

While the Greens are shown as winning just their one existing seat of Melbourne, they are only one point behind Labor on primary votes in both Brisbane and Ryan. If they passed Labor, they would gain Brisbane on Labor preferences and Ryan would be close.

Last week’s Morgan narrowed due to methods change

A Morgan poll ^[10], conducted May 2-8 from a sample of 1,401, gave Labor a 54.5-45.5 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. However, Morgan switched to using 2019 preference flows instead of respondent preferences as the headline figure.

Had 2019 preferences been used in the previous poll, Labor would have led by 54-46, so this poll was a 0.5-point gain for Labor by that method. By respondent preferences in the current poll, Labor led by 56-44, a 0.5-point gain for Labor.

Primary votes were 35.5% Labor (up 0.5), 34% Coalition (down one), 13% Greens (steady), 4% One Nation (up one), 1% UAP (steady), 8.5% independents (down one) and 4% others (up 0.5).

Seat poll: Kooyong

The ABC’s Raf Epstein ^[11] tweeted Tuesday that a Redbridge poll of Kooyong in May for the campaign of independent Monique Ryan gave current Treasurer Josh Frydenberg 40.5%, Ryan 32.3%, the Greens 8.4%, Labor 6.7% and UAP 5.2%. Ryan’s vote has jumped from 17.5% in March, but at the expense of Labor and the Greens.

Redbridge says Ryan is ahead after preferences, but her lead is within the margin of error. The narrow lead for Ryan in Redbridge contradicts ^[12] a 59-41 lead for her in a uComms poll taken April 12.

NT chief minister resigns

Labor’s NT chief minister Michael Gunner resigned on Tuesday, and was replaced on Friday ^[13] by Natasha Fyles after a meeting of Labor’s NT parliamentary caucus. Fyles was elected unopposed.