Poll Roundup: Unwanted Records On Both Sides

2PP Aggregate: 52.3 to Labor (last-election preferences) 
51.8 with One Nation adjustment 
Coalition has improved 1.2 points in last eight weeks and now in best position since late 2016
However Labor would still almost certainly win election "held now"

It's been a little while since the last federal poll roundup (highlighting the major issue of Newspoll preferencing changes); I meant to do one in Budget week but was simply too busy with other things.  In the last five weeks the Turnbull government has kept the modest improvements in national polling that it made during April, but there has not been clear evidence of anything more.  Despite a lot of media excitement about the possibility of a quick election off the back of some possible success in the Super Saturday by-elections on July 28, we are so far not seeing anything in aggregated polling to get so excited about.

The recent national polls have been:

* Two Newspolls with headline figures of 51-49 then 52-48 to Labor.  As the previous article notes there has now been official confirmation that Newspoll is using a preference distribution for One Nation that is derived from recent state elections.  My aggregate's headline figure uses last-election preferences, and on that basis I aggregated these at 52.1 and 52.9 to Labor respectively.  The 51-49, as with the previous 51-49, was off primaries that would have normally come out to 52.4 by last-election preferences, but the fact that the published 2PP was 51 again suggested something a bit closer.  (An alternative view is that Newspoll might have changed methods twice, but we can't conclude that reliably off just two polls if so.  Also, this week's difference between the two methods was "only" 0.9).

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: 2015 Budget Polling

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Labor (-0.5 in a week, closest since last October)
Labor would probably win election held "right now", with small majority or in minority

Apologies for the boring heading.  I was going to call this piece "Poll Roundup: Budget Less Than Random Noise" but passing judgement on a week of polling with only four of the six polls released would have been risky, and thus it proved once Morgan came out.  With two polls implying a budget bounce to the Coalition and three implying no change, my aggregate moves to its best position for the government since the week of 20 October last year.

It's possible that there is really no bounce and that the two good polls are just down to sample noise, but the results are consistent with a slight Coalition gain from a budget that has been fairly well received by voters.  Still it is nothing so far as dramatic an impact as the usual storm of Budget-poll-fuelled commentary might suggest.

This isn't unusual at all; last year's shocker was the exception that proves the rule.  Budget polling is a vast source of excitable nonsense but most budgets aren't a big deal immediately to the average voter; see Mark Graph's first and second laws of budget analysis for more of this.

That's not to say that the noises surrounding the Budget are necessarily meaningless in the long term, and this week we did get some insight into possible election strategies concerning economic management.

Poll Roundup: Discordant Polls But No Real Change

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to ALP (+0.1 since last week)
ALP would win election held now with small to moderate majority

As my colleague Mark the Ballot notes, federal polling lately has been decidedly two-tone.  With the exception of Essential (which Mark ignores), once you adjust recent polls for what is known about their house effects, they tend to be either reasonable for the Coalition (the last two Newspolls, the most recent Morgan) or very bad for them (ReachTEL, Ipsos).  Individual poll results that are strong or weak create excited commentary in the media but on average there is not a great deal happening.  Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

There's a weak hint of a slow move to the Coalition over recent weeks, but there's been no significant 2PP change for over a month.  Indeed, because the aggregate had some lag from the Coalition's dire February polling for a few weeks, it may be that nothing has really happened in 2PP voting intention since the beginning of March.

Poll Roundup: Onion Edition

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to ALP (-0.4 in one week, -0.6 in two weeks)
ALP would win an election held "right now" with small to moderate majority

==================================
'"Of course," Cantling said. "The onion had a dual function.  On one level, you did it just to prove how tough you were.  It was something none of the others hanging out at Ricci's could manage.  It gave you a certain status.  But on a deeper level, when you bit into an onion you were making a symbolic statement about your appetite for life, your hunger for it all, the bitter and the sharp parts as well as the sweet."'

For the source of this week's mystery quote, read on ...

Six weeks ago, the Coalition was in all sorts of trouble.  The bizarre decision to knight Prince Philip, the unthinkable loss of the Queensland state election, a leadership spill motion attracting almost 40% support, a regular barrage of leaks and appalling 2PP polling all combined to make it look like Tony Abbott would not be long for the top job.

As last fortnight's edition noted, the polling blowout caused by these events was surprisingly brief, and within a few weeks polling had reverted to modest, 53:47-ish ALP leads. There was some thought that the blowout, rather than the reversion, was the new normal, based on the idea voters were factoring in Malcolm Turnbull becoming PM, but that idea has clearly been refuted.

Poll Reporting Unfair To Hockey

A few knives are out for Treasurer Joe Hockey, who is repeatedly rated one of the government's poorest performers, and whose political fate seems very much tied to a Budget that received the second-worst ratings in the past 29 years. Hockey this week announced revised forecasts with deficits over the next four years nearly two and a half times what was expected little over half a year ago.  Not just his economic competence and consistency (given that in Opposition he railed against Labor's supposed debt addiction but seems powerless to escape it himself any time soon) but also perceptions of the Treasurer as a surly communicator are coming into the spotlight.  Admittedly, he has had a difficult time with many savings measures being blocked by the random rabble of crossbench Senators, but most Senates of times past would have done the same thing.

It may seem difficult to argue then that Hockey deserves much sympathy at all, or that any pain he experiences in the role is anything but self-inflicted.  But today I've got to do it.  This report in the Australian by Troy Bramston declares Hockey is regarded by the public as "the worst Treasurer of the last 40 years".  The poll on which the article is based shows absolutely no such finding.  The sensationalised and fallacious reporting of the poll is quite surprising - Bramston, unlike some at said paper, is far from a serial offender for this sort of thing. It is in no way the pollster's fault - rather it is just a case where a journalist uses a poll to say something it doesn't actually say.