December 6, 2023
This is what a ReachTEL opinion poll robocall sounds like.
The message was received by my mobile phone at 6.01pm tonight.
The first question asked who I would vote for if an election were to be held today. The options were:
Because no answer was provided, the message cuts out.
Frustration over opinion polls and leadership speculation was on display today at the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research.
The Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, was obviously irritated by media questions about the Nielsen poll released today. Almost speechless, Plibersek allowed the Labor member for Parramatta, Julie Owens, to take over and deliver a rebuke to the gathered media about medical research and children’s health.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has doggedly refused to comment on poor opinion poll figures published today.
The Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald shows the ALP primary vote on 30% and the Coalition leading the ALP by 56% to 44% on the two-party-preferred vote.
The Coalition’s primary vote in the Nielsen poll is 47%. Tony Abbott’s approval rating is 42%, compared to Julia Gillard’s 40%.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong,” wrote H.L. Mencken. He might well have said something similar about interpreting Australian elections.
This week the conventional wisdom has turned. Whereas Julia Gillard was losing this time last week, now she is seen as “back on track”, “playing to Labor’s strengths” and “out-performing Tony Abbott”. Add your own cliché. Take your pick and pontificate.
The wisdom is supported by an assortment of events.
Tony Abbott admitted to Kerry O’Brien on Tuesday night that he’s not a “tech head” and doesn’t really understand the technicalities of broadband.
Walk into a pet shop and the resident galah will be talking about microeconomic reform. So said Paul Keating some 20 years ago as the last Labor government went about some significant policy renovation.
In 2010 the galahs instead seem to be interpreting opinion polls. Recent weeks have been especially trying for us simple souls attempting to work out whether Kevin Rudd is a dead duck.
In January, The Australian reported that Newspolls covering October-December 2009 showed the Rudd government in a landslide winning position with 57 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote. The Morgan poll also said Labor was on 57 per cent. An Essential Research poll in January said Labor was ahead of the Coalition by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.
These figures were essentially what we had been reading for over two years. They indicated a newly-elected government coasting to re-election against an Opposition that couldn’t surpass the mid-40s.