Minor party voters more likely to preference Coalition than in 2013 – poll

Those who identify as Greens voters or independents give Coalition a slight boost over 2013 election result

Greens, minor party and independent voters are slightly more likely to direct their preferences to the Coalition now than during the 2013 federal election, new polling has found.

Using an aggregate of all political polling conducted since March, plus its own online polling, company MetaPoll found that the Coalition remained ahead of Labor in both the primary vote and two-party preferred stakes.

The Coalition’s primary vote was 43%, 10 percentage points ahead of Labor. The Greens and independent/other minor parties ranked at about 11% each, the analysis found.

Using preferences allocated according to the 2013 election, the Coalition was up 51.8% to Labor’s 48.2% on a two-party preferred basis.

But the Coalition got a slight boost when third-party voters were asked to direct their own preferences, 52.4% to Labor’s 47.6%.

MetaPoll surveyed 2,000 people on their voting behaviour and used data from Newspoll, Roy Morgan, Essential and Ipsos to reach its conclusions.

The last Newspoll, released earlier this month, had the government and Labor neck and neck on 50-50 of the two-party preferred vote.

The MetaPoll analysis was conducted before Senate voting changes were passed on Friday. Under the changes, voters will be able to vote from 1-6 above the line or 1-12 below the line, essentially allocating their own preferences rather than relying on deals struck between parties. The Coalition teamed up with the Greens and independent senator, Nick Xenophon, to pass the laws.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/21/minor-party-voters-more-li...

One in five of the 830 respondents thought the program should not be taught at all. Another one in four thought it should be taught only from high school, while the remainder – 55% – thought it should be taught from primary school.

Women are more likely than men to support the program, according to the polling.

Turnbull ordered a review of the program last month. On Friday the education minister, Simon Birmingham, responded to the review by recommending a number of wide-ranging changes, including limiting the program to secondary school.

Labor and the Greens have accused conservative members of the government, whose criticism of the program initiated the review in the first place, of being motivated by homophobia and bigotry.

Turnbull probably influences Greens Voter preferences now, compared to the Abbott leadership in 2013.

Politics aside, Turnbull is progressive and articulate ... where as Shorten is a little hum drum and boring.

Bam wrote on Mar 21^st, 2016 at 8:05am:



Turnbull is progressive. He is being held back by the civil war waging and requiring the conservatives not to call a leadership spill.

Post the election, he will either be in a position to swing the liberal party and it's policies back towards the centre, or be overthrown for a conservative replacement.


Shorten, when he is droning on, trying to make jokes, listeners should be warnings to not have sharp instruments within arms length.

The flip side of Shorten being dumped on the other side of the DD, labor has no one of interest to take over the leadership.

Three more years of boring labor leadership. Better in opposition than crashing the economy, no?