My calculations using Newspoll, Nielsen, and the two Morgan phone polls are:
ALP 36.6 L-NP 43.3 GR 11.3 OTH 8.8 TPP ALP 49.7 L-NP 50.3
A uniform 3% swing would see the ALP lose 14 seats to be on 69 seats, giving the L-NP 78 seats and a majority.
A couple to things to note:
Even with the disastrous 36.6% primary vote, the ALP is still at about 50/50 TPP.
In 1995 the L-NP led the ALP consistently all year by as much as 56/44 and in 2007 it was by even a bigger margin to the ALP by 60/40 at times.
In 1998, 2001 and 2004 the ALP had leads of 56/44 and Howard’s approvals were worse then Rudd’s are now and Beazley and Latham had better preferred PM ratings than Abbott. Beazley led Howard and Latham was within a few points.
There’s little doubt that the ALP is under the pump, but it’s a reaction to Rudd and the ALP it’s not an endorsement of Abbott and the L-NP.
You’d really need to see big, consistent leads before you could believe there was going to be a change of govt. What’s going on now is the public are giving Rudd a kick, but until the L-NP starts to get quite big leads, there’s nothing to show they want to kick Rudd out.
36.6% is pretty bad, but still 49.7% TPP is not so bad. I think what’s casuing the most confusion is that Rudd and the ALP had such high figures for so long. Now they’ve come back to the pack.
All good points
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