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Over the last week there has been a lot of publicity about ACNielsen and Newspoll (both overseas-owned market research companies) telephone polls showing for the first time the ALP is now well in front. The Morgan Poll has had the ALP with a significant lead since Mark Latham was elected in early December, 2003. Following are the two-party preferred Morgan Poll results each based on sample of about 2,000 electors, conducted by personal face-to-face interviews.

The vote can change in a week, as it did in the week prior to the 2002 Federal election when the issue swung from local political issues to the Tampa and “children over-board”.

Any astute political commentator or “poll watcher” must realise that Polls do go up and down, and in some cases can be very wrong, such as predicting the result of the recent Wisconsin Democrat Primary vote in the US.

I have been saying for years that telephone polls are biased towards the party which gets the best publicity and which the people think will win. The ALP is now getting the best publicity (and the electorate is evenly divided on who they think will win — 43% L-NP, 42% ALP), so expect no change in future telephone poll results — they will show the ALP well in front.

The following is what I said in our Morgan Poll release on February 14, 2004:

The Morgan Poll has shown the ALP to be in a winning position since Mr Latham became leader of the Party.

As expected, telephone polls now have Labor in a winning position - two months late!

Telephone polls are biased towards the Party people think will win, a measure the Morgan Poll has found to be slowly but steadily improving for the ALP since Mr Latham took over the Party leadership, up from 22% in November to 36% now. While the majority of Australian electors still expect the Government to win the next election, this has decreased, from 68% in November to 51% now. If this measure continues to move in Labor's direction then telephone polls will show higher support for the ALP than the Morgan Poll.

Since the latest Morgan Poll on Federal Voting Intention was conducted, Australia and the United States have 'signed off' on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) (subject to approval by the Australian Parliament and the US Congress).

While the ALP stays in political point-scoring mode on side issues such as sugar's exclusion from the agreement, they will continue to maintain their clear margin in the published polls.

However, while the latest Morgan Poll shows that Mark Latham will be in a strong position whenever the election is held, if the Senate were to reject any legislation needed to implement the FTA, Mr Howard would have the ideal trigger for a double dissolution. This would enable the L-NP to run the election campaign on the significant advantages Australia would gain from the FTA. This would be the L-NP's strongest ground.

In the January/February The New Investor (P.15), Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan Research, wrote:

“Finally, despite John Howard's belief that ‘the ALP is the most bitterly divided it has been in seven years', a major issue for the Government is the very real possibility that the ALP will unite behind Latham. A united ALP with a reinvigorated position on local and international issues could see a “new” Labour emerge as a real force to be reckoned with.”

This is exactly what has happened!

Our next Morgan Poll on Federal voting intention will be released on the www.roymorgan.com on Friday March 12, 2004.

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