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Australians Content with Governing Labor Party
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Most people in Australia would vote to maintain the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in power in the next election, according to a poll by Newspoll published in The Australian. 45 per cent of respondents would support the ALP in the next ballot, down one point since late July.
The opposition Coalition of Liberals and National is behind with 37 per cent, followed by the Australian Greens with 10 per cent. Australia’s preferential voting system—where electors indicate an order of predilection for each contender, and the ballots from smaller parties are re-distributed—gives the ALP a 14-point lead over the Coalition.
Australia held a federal election in November 2007. Final results gave the ALP 85 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives. ALP leader Kevin Rudd was officially sworn in as prime minister in December, bringing an end to the 11-year tenure of Liberal leader John Howard as head of Australia’s government.
Howard failed to retain his seat in the Bennelong constituency and stepped down as Liberal leader. Brendan Nelson—a former defence minister—defeated former environment minister Malcolm Turnbull in an internal leadership ballot by just three votes. In September 2008, Turnbull won a new internal leadership race, edging Nelson by four votes.
On Aug. 4, former Australian treasurer and current Liberal lawmaker Peter Costello criticized Turnbull’s leadership and accused the party of missing an opportunity to rebuild its brand after the defeat in the last legislative election, declaring, "If a football team loses, they sit down, they analyze the reasons for their mistakes. They decide where they need to recruit new talent, they maybe change their game plan. They don’t just sit around and say, we’ll front up again next year with the same line-up and the same tactics and everything unchanged."
Polling Data
If a federal election to the House of Representatives were held today, which one of the following would you vote for? If "Uncommitted", to which one of these do you have a leaning?
|
|
Aug. 9 |
Jul. 26 |
Jul. 12 |
|
Australian Labor Party |
45% |
46% |
43% |
|
Coalition (Liberal / National) |
37% |
38% |
39% |
|
Australian Greens |
10% |
9% |
11% |
|
Others |
8% |
7% |
7% |
Two-Party Preferred Vote
|
|
Aug. 9 |
Jul. 26 |
Jul. 12 |
|
Australian Labor Party |
57% |
57% |
55% |
|
Coalition (Liberal / National) |
43% |
43% |
45% |
Source: Newspoll / The Australian
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,149 Australian voters, conducted from Aug. 7 to Aug. 9, 2009. Margin of error is 3 per cent.