The all-too-brief New Year polling respite has come to an end with the first Morgan face-to-face poll of the year, covering a sample of 934 from the regular weekend survey. It records only minor shifts on the last poll of last year, which combined the results of the weekends of December 10/11 and 17/18: Labor up half a point to 37 per cent, the Coalition up two to 45 per cent and the Greens down 2.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent. Where Labor achieved parity on the previous-election preference method in the last poll, this time the Coalition leads 51.5-48.5. When respondents were asked how they would direct their preferences, the Coalition’s lead was 54-46, up from 53.5-46.5. As always with Morgan over the past year, this result is strangely favourable to the Coalition. One should further query the utility of any poll conducted at this time of year – my intuition is that the absence of holiday-makers from their homes would bias such a poll towards Labor, although I don’t have any actual data to back that up.