Crikey

Labor has opened an 18 point two-party preferred lead over the government, a special telephone Morgan Poll conducted over the nights of July 4 and 5 has found.

Labor’s primary vote is now 49%, compared to the government’s 35%.

The two-party preferred vote splits 59 to 41% Labor’s way.

Pollster Gary Morgan says:

“On Friday we released our face-to-face Morgan Poll (ALP 59%, LNP 41%). Today we released our telephone Morgan Poll conducted late last week (ALP 59%, LNP 41%).

“Both have the ALP winning and well in front.

“There is no doubt the LNP are in trouble. However, a lot can happen between now and the election. Our surveys show most electors think ‘the country is going in the right direction’ and July Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence is up and very high “126.8 – up 4.5”.

“It is indeed a “strange” situation. If my memory is correct a similar situation as John Major was confronted with in the 1992 UK General Election which he won! In 1992 all major UK polls were very wrong!

“Only in 2001 have we (Roy Morgan) polled just before a UK General Election. We were then most accurate in predicting the Labour lead. The following note on Morgan and Newspoll is well worth reading [Possums Pollytics has the following comment which says it all]:

I find it interesting that for the only poll in the last 5 years for which there is any ‘real’ figure with which to compare, ie the polls immediately before the 2004 election, Morgan (45.5%) was closer to the actual Coalition Primary (46.7%) than Newspoll (45%) or Nielsen (49%), and Morgan (38.5%) was also closer to the ALP actual primary (37.6%) than Newspoll (39%), and only marginally further away than Nielsen (37%). Since we have no idea of how far away the ongoing polls are from ‘reality’ (whatever that means), surely we should just go with what we know, that in the most recent testable case, Morgan was better at forecasting the actual primary vote than Newspoll. On what possible basis should we decide that the Newspoll or Nielsen primary vote estimate is ‘better’ than Morgan’s (comment by Alan H — July 8, 2007 @ 4:43 pm.”

These are the main findings of a Roy Morgan telephone survey conducted on the nights of July 4/5, 2007, with 611 Australian electors.