Poll Roundup: The Turnbull Slide Continues

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to ALP (-0.1 since last week)
Labor would probably win election "held now" with a small majority

Almost four months since its re-election, the Turnbull coalition government continues to poll ordinarily.  It has still not led in a single poll by anyone, and only now are there some signs that Labor's lead might be stabilising.  With a new bad news cycle hitting the government, oh, about twice a day on average lately, there might even be relief it is not worse ... yet.  An implicit stoush between PM Turnbull and Tony Abbott over the history of rapid-fire shotgun negotiations might have looked like fodder for further movement, but Newspoll suggests it was seen as just beltway stuff.

Most of our polling still comes just from Essential and Newspoll though this week a third player, Morgan, dipped a very tentative toe in the water with one of its irregular phone polls.  The only voting intention result released was 55:45 to ALP, easily Labor's biggest lead from anyone so far.  Given the small sample size and the lack of adequate documentation of 2PP method or primary votes, this only counted for 10% of a normal poll in my aggregate, but even that made some difference.

Poll Roundup: Bad Start For The Second Turnbull Government

It's early days, but here we go again ...

2PP Aggregate: 51.5 to Labor (+0.6)
Labor has led since aggregate resumed

Welcome back to Poll Roundup, a series which looks at the aggregated state of the federal polls, leadership ratings and polling snippets of interest.  Nearly three months after a narrow victory in the 2016 federal election, the Turnbull government's progress has now been measured in three Newspolls and eleven weekly Essential Research readings.  It's not a great start for the returned regime.  It hasn't been ahead in even one of those, and is now clearly behind.  Indeed, when the primaries from the early polls are converted using 2016 preferences, a case can be made that Labor has been leading in the lot.

If we look at the two-party-preferred votes for the newly returned government, the Newspoll sequence of 50-50-48 is exactly the same as what the Gillard government received in 2010, in its first three polls after an even narrower escape, on its way to three years of generally wretched polling and, eventually, a heavy defeat.