Newspoll Quarterly Breakdown – 2008 1st Edition

The Newspoll Quarterly aggregation has been released in The Oz, so continuing on from last year, it’s probably about time we updated it. I’ve changed it around from what you might remember seeing last year so that it’s now classified by party rather than by government/opposition to give it some consistency.

First up, primary votes of the ALP and Coalition by State from 1996 through to second quarter 2008.

WA is still holding up as the strongest Coalition State with NSW and SA being the ALPs’ strongest on 49% a pop.

Next up, the two party preferred. Because Newspoll doesn’t have a full series of TPP breakdowns by State, we’ll just do from the beginning of 2004 onward.

What’s notable here is that the Coalition is currently recording its lowest TPP vote since 2004 in WA, while the ALP is recording its highest ever TPP vote in South Australia. Does that hint about the potential results in the Mayo by-election?

Probably not.

Moving right along to demographics, we have primary vote age breakdowns for the ALP and Coalition.

Worth looking at here is the slight erosion in ALP support by the 18-34 cohort over the last 12-18 months, unlike the 50+ group whose support for the ALP has been rock solid around 45% , which is the highest it’s ever been for this age cohort for over 30 years from what I can tell using the old gallup polls.

Also interesting is that the Coalition vote share of the 50+ group is showing a long term decline, consistent with increasing number of boomers moving into that age bracket, and the size of the Coalitions strongest demographic – the pre-boomers- slowly reducing in number through attrition. Big consequences there for the long term vote share of the Coalition, but that’s an argument for another day.

Finally we’ve got primary votes by gender and capital/non-capital city.

There’s something interesting happening with the Coalition non-capital city vote. In 12 years it’s reduced from 55 down to 38, reflecting the rapidly changing demographics of provincial seats, particularly coastal seats and particularly those in Queensland and NSW. Along with age group dynamics, it’s the other nasty long term trend running against the Coalition.

But it’s not all roses for the ALP – their female vote looks a little softish, which surprised me a bit as I thought it would be the other way around. Maybe Nightwatchmans’ Emo Man routine, with his verbal props of Tarago owning families with five kids and a wheelchair in the back, resonates with females more so than males.

Then again, probably not if you take a squiz at the results of the Petrol Price Newspoll.

So folks, any views on why females seem to be a little softish for Labor and why Nelson has been lifting his support there a bit?

Over the weekend I’ll try to update the satisfaction ratings breakdowns and put up a permanent page for the Newpoll Quarterly poll. Also some excellent stuff on Fuelwatch by a prominent economist which also gets into the really important issue of public accessibility to government data if “evidence based policy” is to be anything more than piss and wind in an era when there is more analysis capability outside of the government system than there is in it.

So I’ll be a bit busy over the next few days – I’ve got some Possums Box posts backing up that I probably won’t be able to get to until the weekend (apologies to the authors) and I also have to apologise for being a bit slack on my email this week. Does anyone know where I can buy a few 29 hour days by any chance?

UPDATE 1:

Newspoll quarterly doesnt let us break down the composition of the minor party vote over a long period, so instead all we have is the “Others” vote. This is what their State by STate, age cohort and gender and location breakdown looks like.

UPDATE 2:

Here’s something for the oncer brigade and other MSM peddlers of random bits of stuff plucked from dark orifices to think about. Partisan political support is largely about long term demographic positioning and slow grinding movements. When an election campaign is launched, it can shift a bit of the variability of the vote around a given longer term support level, but the further away from that mean line a campaign tries to shift support in a very short time, the more difficult it becomes. It takes a Tampa type event to move the trend quickly.