Labor Leaps Further Ahead in Post-Budget Polls

We had five polls released this week following the May 13
Budget. Below is the table of poll results, which shows Labor gaining
strongly in Newspoll, Nielsen and Morgan. The Coalition’s two strongest
polls were Galaxy and Essential. Essential is well known for its
excessive stability, and the Coalition may have benefited slightly in
Galaxy due to the earlier fieldwork dates. Note that this week’s Morgan
used only one weekend for fieldwork; previous Morgans taken this year
have aggregated two weekends.

Only in Essential does the Coalition primary vote still begin with a
“4”. All polls have Labor’s primary in at least the high 30’s, with the
Greens at about 11%. The Coalition’s primary has dropped into the mid
30’s in Newspoll, Nielsen and Morgan. Palmer United Party (PUP) appears
to have about 7% support. The total Labor/Green vote in four of the
five polls is between 48% and 50.5%, with Nielsen having an outlier
looking Labor/Green vote of 54%. Kevin Bonham’s poll aggregate is now at
54.0 Two Party Preferred (2PP) to Labor, up from 52.6 last week.

Update Thursday morning 22 May: BludgerTrack is at
54.2% 2PP to Labor, up from 52.5% last week. Before the budget leaks,
the polls were at about 51-49 to Labor, so there has been a 3% move to
Labor over the budget process. BludgerTrack primary votes were 39.3%
for Labor, 37.2% for the Coalition, 10.6% for the Greens and 7.0% for
PUP. There are graphs, including leadership ratings graphs, on the
right sidebar of the Poll Bludger. The leaders' ratings show how far Abbott’s ratings have declined.

The figures in the table are based on previous election preferences.
However, Morgan and Nielsen always ask for respondent-allocated
preferences, and this year Labor has generally performed about 1% better
in Morgan’s respondent allocated preferences than using the previous
election. This week, Nielsen’s respondent-allocated preferences were
58-42 to Labor, and Morgan’s 57.5-42.5. The Coalition would be in even
deeper trouble if these preferences were used.

It is clear from these polls that Labor would easily win an election
held now, but governments have recovered from worse polling to win, and
the next election is still well over two years away unless Abbott calls a
double dissolution election, which he is most unlikely to do given
these polls. However, it is clear from the below section that this
budget is the worst perceived budget since 1993. Due to the personal
pain that will be inflicted, the government needed to win the “good for
economy” argument. Their failure to win this argument is likely to lead
to a sustained slump as the spending cuts and tax increases bite. With
non-Left aligned forces such as PUP and the Liberal State Premiers
strongly opposed to some aspects of the budget, selling it becomes even
more difficult.

Perceptions of this Budget Compared with Past Budgets

Newspoll has been asking three standard questions on every budget
since 1986. These questions are: the effect of the budget on the
overall economy, its personal effect, and whether the opposition would
have delivered a better budget. Peter Brent has graphs
of the responses to these questions. In public perceptions, by far the
worst budget was the 1993 “L-A-W” tax cuts budget, when the tax cuts
promised at the ‘93 election failed to materialise. The Coalition would
have hoped that this budget would be perceived like the Howard
government’s first budget in 1996, which rated very well on the overall
economy question despite leaving people worse off.

On the personal income question, this budget was almost as bad as
1993, with just 5% saying the budget made them better off, while 69%
said it made them worse off. On the economy question, this budget
performed much better than the ‘93 Budget, but had a net rating of -9,
with 39% saying the budget was good for the economy and 48% bad. On
this question, the budget is worse than any of Wayne Swan’s six budgets.
Other than 1993, a couple of Labor budgets delivered during the 1990’s
recession were also perceived as worse than this one on the economy.
Labor trailed by 46-39 on the question of whether the opposition would
have delivered a better budget, but this is much better than Labor did
during any of the Howard government’s budgets. The Coalition is
generally perceived as being the better economic manager, so this is a
poor result for them.

If the Coalition’s political aim was to deliver a 1996 style budget,
they failed dismally on all three measures. This budget is the worst
since 1993 on both personal and overall economy measures, and the worst
delivered by a Coalition government on whether the opposition would have
done a better job.

Kevin Bonham and William Bowe have more analysis and graphs of the budget’s political impact.

Notes on this Week’s Polls

Galaxy had 75% saying that the budget was personally bad for
them, while only 11% said it was good for them. On the economy overall,
opinions were more mixed, with 41% saying the budget was good for the
economy, and 46% bad for the economy. Edit 22 May: Galaxy is now supplementing its phone polls with an online panel, increasing its sample sizes from about 1000 to 1400.
Nielsen had Abbott’s approval rating crashing 9% to 34% and his
disapproval up 12% to 62% for a net approval of -28; there were only two
occasions when Julia Gillard had a worse net approval in Nielsen.
Shorten’s approval rate improved to a positive 47-39 split. Nielsen
repeated two budget questions that were previously asked in 1996. In
‘96, voters were satisfied with the budget by a 47-29 margin; this year
they are dissatisfied by 65-33. In '96, voters rated the Budget fair by
54-32; this year’s budget is rated unfair by 63-33. The deficit levy
on those making over $180,000 is supported by a 50-37 margin, but
increasing the petrol excise is opposed by 72-25. Increasing the GST is
opposed by a 66-30 margin. Repealing the carbon tax is supported by a
narrow 49-46 margin, but repealing the mining tax is opposed by 56-37.
Morgan’s weekly consumer confidence rating, based on a separate
survey from his polls, has fallen 14% in the four weeks since the budget
leaks began, and is now at 100.4, well below its long term average of 113.1.
Newspoll had Abbott’s satisfied rating down 5% to 30%, and his
dissatisfied rating up 4% to 60% for a net approval of -30. Bill
Shorten’s net approval rating was +3, with 42% satisfied and 39%
dissatisfied. Abbott’s Newspoll rating is not yet into Gillard
territory; she often had less than 30% satisfied, but it is certainly
not good.
Essential had 52% disapproving of the budget, and 30% approving.
In this poll, budget opinions have improved since last week; a surprise
result was that 40% rate the budget good for the economy overall, and
32% bad, a result out of alignment with other polls. Deregulation of
university fees was opposed by 58-17, and the $7 Medicare co-payment was
opposed 50-29. The 6-month waiting period before those under 30 can
access the dole was only narrowly opposed 41-39. 41% say the budget cut
spending too much, 26% say it cut about the right amount, and 15% say
the budget did not cut spending enough. A total of 56% say there is a
budget emergency, but only 32% say the government’s changes will help
bring the budget back into line.

LIBERALS IN GOVERNMENT

Politics,Climate Change and Sundry issues

Wednesday 21 May 2014