Dangers for Shorten as well as Turnbull in the Newspoll and the forthcoming Bennelong by-election

Yet another bad opinion poll for the Prime Minister and his troops will be even more jittery than ever. Another one like this the day before the House of Representatives returns on 27 November and the talk of a leadership change may well become a reality.
Labor's Bill Shorten should be hoping it doesn't. Malcolm Turnbull is the best thing going for him. Another month and another Liberal Leader and we can forget about a two party vote of 56% for Labor being a real indication of future voting intention.
I doubt that it is at the moment actually. Leads of 10 points just don't happen at real elections. Think back to 1972 when William McMahon was Prime Minister. He was every bit as disparaged as PM back then as Turnbull is on Twitter today but ended up only a bit over five points behind.
The table below compares Labor's two party vote 15 months after the previous election with Labor's actual vote at the following five elections
Labor on Newspoll 15 months after an electionLabor vote at next electionDifference in percentage points
5549.35.7
4346.53.5
5850.17.9
4852.74.7
4947.21.8

By-elections can be tricky things too. The average swing against governments is around 4 percentage points and the latest Newspoll suggests that at the moment Labor has picked up about 5.5 point. This is well short of the nine points plus required for the Liberals to lose Bennelong.

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