Opinion polls: comparison of voting intention, July 2004

Research Note Index

Research Note no. 1 2004–05

Opinion polls: comparison of voting intention, July 2004

Sarah Miskin
Politics and Public Administration Section
Greg Baker
Statistics Section
12 July 2004

This Research Note is one of a series comparing the opinion polls results from June 2001 onwards of the major polling organisations: Newspoll, Roy Morgan Research and ACNielsen. The latter’s political polls are not published as regularly as those of the other two organisations; it is included here because it conducts more polls in an election year and 2004 is expected to be such a year. However, given ACNielsen’s more limited results, there is not enough published data available to make a useful cross-time comparison across all three organisations in all areas. For this reason, only ACNielsen’s ‘primary vote, all parties’ data is included. Newspoll results are published in The Australian and ACNielsen results are published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Morgan results are available at: www.roymorgan.com.au.

For an average of the three polls, see the Reuters Poll Trend at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/stats/reuters-poll-trend.xls. Other opinion poll data can be found at http://libiis1/Library_Services/opinionpolls/index.htm.

The graphs on the following pages show the results of the polls for the primary vote (Figures 1 to 3), a comparison of the Coalition and Labor results of the two major polls (Figures 4 and 5), a comparison of the results for the Democrats and the Greens (Figure 6), and the two-party preferred results for Newspoll and Morgan (Figure 7), using Labor as the indicator (the Coalition’s results being a mirror image of those of Labor). The need for caution in interpreting poll results is outlined in another Research Note, ‘Interpreting opinion polls: some essential details’ (http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2003-04/04rn52.pdf). Note that the graphs in this Note are drawn to different scales to present the clearest picture of the wide range of results across the parties.

This Note is published in conjunction with a Research Note on the results of polls that test the importance of issues to voters and the parties that voters prefer to handle those issues.

Figure 1. Newspoll: primary vote, all parties

Figure 2. Morgan: primary vote, all parties

Figure 3. ACNielsen: primary vote, all parties

Figure 4. Coalition: Newspoll and Morgan

Figure 5. Labor: Newspoll and Morgan

Figure 6. Minor parties: Newspoll and Morgan

Figure 7. Two party preferred: Newspoll and Morgan

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