Newspoll Tuesday comes in via The Oz with the primaries running 39 (down 1) /40 (down 1) to the coalition, washing out into a two-party preferred of 53/47 to Labor — a one point gain to Labor since the last Newspoll. The Greens are on 12 (steady), while the broad “Others” are sitting on 9 (down up 2). This comes from a sample of 1151, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.9% mark.
First up, the history of the vote estimates:
The first thing you may notice here is how the primary vote of Labor is and has been much more volatile than the two-party preferred? That’s (mostly) the Greens preferences washing back into the system, stabilising the two-party vote.
What is happening now with these relatively low Labor primaries about 40 of late is the same thing that actually caused Kevin Rudd to overthrow Kim Beazley for the leadership — a weak Labor primary giving an uncertain and soft two-party preferred lead — however, with one key difference; the Green vote today is much higher than in was in late 2006.
Since the last election, the largest shift we’ve seen from voters has been a Liberal to Labor and Labor to Greens, leaving Labor better off on net in the primary vote stakes (from ex-coalition voters) as well as reaping the two-party rewards from their left flank on the Greens as preferences flow back.
With the Tony Abbott leadership, what we’ve seen over the past few months is a hollowing out of that Rudd centre vote — enough to put him equal to the coalition on primaries, but with the strong Green vote still delivering a two-party lead about the same as the last election.
Labor’s positioning this term is why the coalition needs to be about four points ahead of the ALP on the primary vote to be in with a chance of winning.
Rudd’s goal will be to lift the Labor primary back up — but it won’t be by targeting the broad left block of the Greens that already send him prefs, it will be the ex-Liberal voters who have returned to the coalition — so expect to see Labor jump a little to the “urban” right to pick them back up over the next month. We’ll be dealing much more with economic policy matters and clichés in the media over the next six weeks or so than we have been for the past six.
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