Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Labor Contesting The Lead

2PP Aggregate 50.1 to ALP (+0.7 in a week)
Coalition would still probably win election "held now" (seat estimate 77 Coalition 69 Labor 4 Others)
First ALP lead on my aggregate since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister

In this issue:
A DD Is The Right Thing To Do
This week's polls
Leaderships
Issue Polls
Fishy Polls Of The Week
Seat Betting

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In another stirring triumph of tipping skills, a plurality of voters on my sidebar Not-A-Poll have correctly predicted that the Labor Opposition would recapture the 2PP lead on this site in March or April.  35.5% picked this, compared to 34.1% for May or June, 18.2% for not at all, and a dribble for various options that depended on a later election date. It's a trivially small lead, it's not an election winning lead, it's not being replicated by other aggregators yet, and it may not even last long enough to survive on the smoothed tracking, but it's still a big improvement on losing 54:46 just three months ago.

There is some rejoicing and a fair bit of schadenfreude on the left about the direction polling has moved in.  Many lefties seem amused that Malcolm Turnbull pulled a constitutional swifty to beef up his argument for a double-dissolution only to find himself in a position where it might not seem like such a great idea anymore.  With the rejection of the ABCC bill at the second reading the government has no obvious plan B; to welsh on the threatened double dissolution on account of indifferent or even bad polling would just make the PM a laughingstock.

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.