Labor seizes 55-45 lead in Ipsos with the Greens at an unrealistic 16%

This week’s Ipsos, conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1400, had Labor leading 55-45, a 4 point gain for Labor since late November. Primary votes were 34% for Labor (up 4), 33% for the Coalition (down 3) and 16% for the Greens (steady). The headline figure in Ipsos uses the last election preferences method; by respondent allocated preferences, it is 56-44 to Labor, a 5 point gain for Labor.

Ipsos’ two polls since the last election have both had the Greens on 16%, while no other poll during that period has had the Greens on more than 11%. In the lead-up to the last election, Ipsos had a strong skew towards the Greens. If anything, that skew appears to have increased.

40% approved of Turnbull’s performance (down 5) and 48% disapproved (up 3), for a net approval of -8. Ipsos has given Turnbull far better ratings than Newspoll. Shorten’s net approval was -18, down 2 points.

Surprisingly, 44% supported reducing company tax rates to 25% over the next ten years, with 39% opposed. Two weeks ago, Essential found that 46% disapproved of the $50 billion in cuts to medium and large business, with 24% approving. Presumably, Ipsos did not mention the cost, or which companies would benefit.

63% thought that more businesses would not open on Sundays and public holidays following the reduction in penalty rates, while 29% thought more businesses would open. A Newspoll question from last week found that 59% thought penalty rates should be higher on Sunday, 29% wanted Sunday penalty rates reduced to Saturday rates, and 10% wanted penalty rates for weekend work abolished.

In Ipsos, 78% thought it should be unlawful to “offend, insult or humiliate” someone on the basis of race or ethnicity, with just 17% for lawful. However, Essential this week found 45% approving of the proposed change to replace “insult, offend or humiliate” with “harass”, with 34% disapproving. Question wording can make a large difference.

With Ipsos at 55-45 to Labor, and Essential at 54-46, it looks as if last week’s Newspoll that showed a 3-point recovery for the Coalition to close to 52-48 may have been an outlier. The next Newspoll will be interesting.

Essential at 54-46 to Labor

This week’s Essential, conducted over the last two weeks from a sample of 1810, was at 54-46 to Labor, a one point gain for the Coalition since last week. Primary votes were 37% Labor, 35% Coalition, 10% Greens, 8% One Nation and 4% Nick Xenophon Team - this is the lowest One Nation support recorded in Essential since January. Additional questions are based on one week’s sample.

40% thought racial discrimination laws were about right, 26% too weak and 16% too strict; these figures are little changed from November.

A question on priorities for the government had 46% nominating health, followed by “ensuring big businesses pay their fair share of tax” at 30% and unemployment at 26%. Cutting company tax was at the bottom, with only 3% nominating it as a priority. Since July 2016, health is down 9 points, education and deficit reduction both down 7 points, renewable energy up 6 and same sex marriage up 4.

41% thought Australia’s relationship with the US was becoming worse, with just 6% for better, presumably due to President Trump. 59% approved of the proposal to expand the Snowy Hydro scheme, with just 12% disapproving.

Newspoll’s additional questions are sometimes skewed to the right

While voting intentions and leaders’ ratings questions are asked in the same format every Newspoll survey, additional questions on the public’s attitude to various issues have sometimes been skewed towards the viewpoint of Newspoll’s publisher, The Australian.

In this article, Kevin Bonham was critical of Newspoll’s question last week on Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Yesterday, we were told that 47% were in favour of a new coal-fired power station, with 40% opposed (paywalled link).

The question is, “Would you be in favour or opposed to the Federal government helping fund the construction of a new coal-fired power station to improve energy security?” It is not established that a new coal-fired power station, which would take years to construct, would improve energy security. Those four last words should have been omitted from the question.

A February Essential found 45% opposed to new coal-fired power stations in Australia, and 31% in favour.

Rebecca White replaces Bryan Green as Tasmania’s Labor leader

Even though the party vote shares indicated a Labor/Greens parliamentary majority, the last EMRS Tasmanian poll had Premier Will Hodgman crushing Labor leader Bryan Green as better Premier 52-20. Partly as a result of this poll, Green resigned from Parliament on 17 March, and Rebecca White was elected unopposed by the Labor caucus. The next Tasmanian election is due early next year.

A November 2016 ReachTEL poll had 31.5% preferring White as Labor leader, followed by Scott Bacon on 19%, Lara Giddings on 15% and the incumbent Green on just 14%. White was ahead in all five electorates, including Green’s electorate of Braddon.

A countback using Green’s votes will be held to decide his parliamentary replacement. Shane Broad and Brenton Best are the contenders, although only Broad has so far announced he will contest. A Best win would be bad for Labor, as he was rebellious in the last Parliament.

Donald Trump’s Obamacare repeal attempt flops

At the 2016 election, Republicans won a 241-194 majority in the US House, and a 52-48 Senate majority. Despite the large House majority, Republicans were unable to pass a bill in that chamber to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to withdraw the repeal bill, and said afterwards that Obamacare would be the law for the “foreseeable future”.

The repeal bill failed because it lost the support of both hard right and more moderate Republicans. Appeasing the hard right Freedom caucus would have lost more support from the more moderate Republicans, and vice versa. Of course, Republicans could have made their bill centrist enough to attract some Democrats, but that would have been unthinkable!

It did not help Republicans that the public was strongly opposed to their Obamacare replacement plan. Midterm elections will be held in November 2018, and some Republicans were afraid that supporting this bill could cost their party many seats.

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website has Trump at 42% approval, 52% disapproval using a poll aggregation method. Over the last few weeks, Trump’s ratings have dropped a net six points, likely due to the health care debate.