Fearless Crikey forges ahead, publishing the lastest poll figures first
(but only for our select subscribers). See how Crikey made sense of the
polls in our subscriber only emails here:

The other big News Corp poll

Subscriber email – 27 September

News Ltd’s Monday night Sky News election program The Gallery has just revealed parts of tomorrow’s Newspoll in The Australian. There
has been very little change from last week as Labor’s 5 point lead on
the 2PP has slipped back to a 4 point lead – 52% to 48%.

John
Howard’s lead on the preferred Prime Minister stakes has also improved
marginally with 48 per cent now nominating the PM, up from 47%
previously. Latham is down from 37% to 35% but this was taken before
John Howard’s $6 billion spending spree early on Sunday afternoon.

Newspoll narrows

Subscriber email – 28 September

Tuesday.
Newspoll. But first, congratulations to Riley, Ace of Moles, who passed
on the correct Newspoll figures before the first sealed section went
out yesterday. Guess which brave, crusading, fearless, cack-handed
pundit was too concerned about, er, accuracy to publish them?

The
two party preferred figures split 52 per cent to the ALP and 48 per
cent to the Government – half a percentage point down for the bruvvers
and half a percentage point up for the lying rodent from last week.

On
the primaries, the Coalition remained on 43 per cent while Labor
dropped one point to 40. Just in case you’re a political illiterate,
it’s all down to preferences – so let’s look at the other parties’
primaries.

The Dems are in margin of error territory (not that
any of our local pollsters admit that such a concept exists), steady on
one per cent – a completely meaningless figure, in other words – while
the Greens have stayed static on seven per cent.

One Nation
polled less than 0.5 per cent – begging the question why Sol even asks
about the nutters – while the “others” are on nine. Four weeks ago, at
the end of the first week of the campaign, the “others” – yes, some of
them are as scary as the Nicole Kidman film – were just polling six per
cent.

This nine per cent could actually be interesting if Sol
asked a few more questions and broke it down a little more. We all know
One Nation provided acres/hours of news in the past – just chose your
medium – but they are gone. My fickle friend, the summer wind, as
Sinatra sang. The Democrat figures are meaningless. Why doesn’t Sol try
to find out what Family First are rating? It would be lovely to see how
the claim that their own internal polling was four per cent stood up.

The
poll doesn’t cover the Prime Minister’s announcement of his
contemptible tax and spend and b*gger the consequences antics on
Sunday, but there’s been some movement in the preferred PM stakes, with
Howard up one, Latham down two. The Prime Minister’s performance rating
– satisfaction rating down one, dissatisfaction rating down three,
undecided up from seven to 11 – is interesting. It’s echoed in Latham’s
own rating – satisfaction down two, dissatisfaction up one, undecided
up one – too.

All up, the figures let yours truly
authoritatively say that he doesn’t have a clue how the election will
go at this stage – but suspects it may come back to Labor’s performance
in Queensland.

And since we were speaking of summer breezes earlier, there’s an interesting whisper on the wind from the West.

The West Australian had an almost completely useless poll yesterday – no link and virtually no detail – that deserves a token examination.

Our friend, the Liberal statesman Ross Lightfoot, was quotes in the SMH
on Friday as saying “the current momentum is maintained, we will pick
up Hasluck, Stirling and Swan”. Westpoll tells a different story.

It
carried a survey putting the vote in Stirling – held by Labor by 1.6
per cent – on 40 per cent for the ALP and 37 for the Libs and 40 per
cent Liberal, 37 pr cent Labor and 10 per cent Green in Hasluck (Labor
1.8 per cent) suggesting the bruvvers will hold both seats. The Liberal
marginal of Kalgoorlie looks as if it will hold.

The polls might be lineball, but if Labor doesn’t bleed in the West it’s some small hope for Latham.

Something for everyone in the polls

By Our Senior Labor Insider

I
can’t for the life of me work out why anyone thinks opinion polls are
unreliable. I mean, just look at the last week for example. No matter
who you support (well, apart from the Democrats), there’s a poll for
you!

Coalition supporter? Then Nielsen is your poll as this SMH piece and this Age piece explain – 54-46 would mean a 40 seat majority for the Coalition and vanquish Labor for a generation!

Labor supporter? Then look no further than this Newspoll in today’s Australian – 52-48
would, admittedly, be a narrow victory of just 4 seats, but after 8 and
a half years any win is a good win, and the Liberals would be out of
power everywhere.

Undecided? Then Morgan
is your poll – 50-50 would probably mean the Coalition sneaks back in,
but it means, like you, the electorate isn’t sure which way to vote.

None
of these polls is a Mickey Mouse poll – all are done by reputable
polling companies and all with decent samples – Nielsen has 1400
people, Morgan 1300 and Newspoll 1700. Morgan is face to face, but the
biggest difference is between Nielsen and Newspoll which are both
telephone polls.

Perhaps the answer is that people are more
likely to vote Coalition Tuesday to Thursday (when Nielsen polls) and
Labor on weekends (when Morgan and Newspoll poll)? Well, it’s as good
an explanation as any!