Poll Roundup: Newspoll Smells The Coffee

2PP Aggregate: 52.4 to Coalition (-0.1 since last week, +6 since Abbott was PM)
Coalition would easily win election "held now"

There are only two polls to deal with this week so far (for last week's including Friday's ReachTEL see Investments Attack On PM Fails) but one of them is a rare and special case. This week's Newspoll has set not one but two new all-time records!  One of these records is bad for the Shorten-led Labor Opposition (but not as bad as the many comments on Shorten's dire ratings are making out), while the other can be spun almost any way you like.

Over the past few weeks there has been debate about whether the Coalition has a meaningful 2PP lead or whether its lead is barely over 50:50.  With results from Newspoll, Essential, and the very early Galaxy and ReachTEL results falling in the latter category, the sceptics still held out after Ipsos joined Morgan in the former.  Then ReachTEL late last week joined Ipsos on 53:47.  This week Newspoll, which in its new incarnation has been somewhat Labor-friendly, came out at 52:48 to Coalition, meaning that for now at least this debate is over and the Coalition has a solid lead.

Poll Roundup: Investments Attack On PM Fails

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to Coalition (+1.4 in a week*, +6.1 since Abbott)
(Highest value since Turnbull became PM*)
Coalition would comfortably win election held now

(* Changes based on revised figures for previous weeks)

This week we've seen three new regular polls plus a partial result from another, and I've made some new decisions on how to deal with the recent behaviour of Morgan polling, so it's time to update my assessment of how the Turnbull bounce is going again.  This was a week in which new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was attacked over the failure of his large financial investments collection to entirely avoid connection to the Cayman Islands.  It was pointed out (among the fine details of the Cayman situation) that this was also true of investments held by Labor politicians, leaving it unclear what exactly Labor was saying other than that the PM is rich.

Whether it was seen as grubby class warfare as has been widely alleged, whether it was actually paying the PM's economic skills a backhanded compliment, whether no-one can actually follow it all or cares, whether maybe even Labor had some kind of point buried somewhere but the commentariat weren't interested - for whatever reasons the attack has done no immediate polling damage, with no net change in two polls and what looks like an extremely good result in a third.

Poll Roundup: Turnbull Popular, Size Of Lead Less Clear

2PP Aggregate: 51.3 to Coalition (-1 in a week, +4.9 since final under Abbott)
Coalition would easily win election "held now"
(Aggregate updated from 51.5 to 51.3 following Essential)

Four weeks since Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott, it is clear that the change is being well received.  Polls continue to show strong approval for the change, strong personal ratings for Turnbull and massive leads for Turnbull over Shorten as preferred or better Prime Minister.  What is less clear is how voting intention is travelling, and the uncertainty is coming mainly from the strange behaviour of a single pollster (Morgan), together with a shortage of data from others.

Polls over last three weeks

Since the previous roundup (Turnbull Shift Puts Coalition Back In Front) we've seen two weekly Essentials, one Morgan and one Newspoll.  A third Essential will be out tomorrow but because of work commitments I've decided to release the roundup now and update it for Essential sometime tomorrow night.

The two Essentials both had headline rates of 52:48, but for the first one a weekly 2PP of 53.5:46.5 was released, suggesting that last week's sample was probably around 50:50.  The Newspoll this week is at 50:50.  Last week's fortnightly Morgan, however, came out with an off-the-scale result of 55:45 to Coalition by last-election preferences (56:44 respondent-allocated).