Labor leadership ballot - the quants

Thursday, 10 October 2013 11:17 | Written by Graham Young

Albanese's popularity is largely independent of party affiliation with both Liberal and Labor voters approving him to much the same degree. His highest support is amongst Greens voters, and lowest amongst minor party voters, but he still nets out across the population to 74% support.

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Our figures are different from those found by Reachtel and published in today's Sydney Morning Herald. The Reachtel figures appear reasonably robust because their voting intention results are within sampling error of the actual votes in the recent federal election. They show similarly broad support for Albanese, but has Albanese winning 60.9% in NSW and 54% in Victoria against Bill Shorten.

The difference is probably because our respondents regularly think about politics, although most are amateur observers rather than commentators or activists. Reachtel is measuring an uninformed reaction, we are measuring an informed one. Our results are therefore more likely to be predictive of where the actual population will be when they have thought about the issue more deeply, which won't be until after the ballot.

Our sample is also much more likely to be representative of the type of people who will be voting in Labor plebiscites.

We also gave respondents the opportunity to select from a panel of four their preferred choice for leader, and we asked them to rank the potential leaders in order of preference. Albanese was easily the most popular as first choice, but Plibersek rather than Shorten was next most popular.

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The favouritism of Albanese and Shorten was confirmed by second choices.

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Albanese is the first or second choice of 76%, Plibersek of 62%, Shorten of 46%, while Kevin Rudd is first or second choice of only 16% (with more of these being Liberal and minor party voters than Labor or Greens).

There is no doubt that if caucus doesn't vote for Anthony Albanese this afternoon it will be going against a substantial majority electoral position, and an even more substantial position of those electors who pay attention to politics.

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Comments

+1 #1 Sir — Harry Kinkaid 2013-10-11 19:52

I can't believe this data. Surely young Bill will be our next Leader.

+2 #2 Xxx — Rank Frank 2013-10-12 19:21

Two dud candidates.
Whoever wins will not lead Labor to the next Election.
This process has been so slow bit like the Labor Party.

0 #3 RE: Labor leadership ballot - the quants — Graham Young 2013-10-15 10:40

You were right Sir, but not because Bill won the popular vote.

0 #4 RE: Labor leadership ballot - the quants — Kate 2013-10-15 15:35

I believe that Tanya Plibersek would make an outstanding PM but she has a young family and is not ready for sucha heavy commitment at this time. Tanya and Bill Shorten are everything that Abbott is not, ie intelligent, articulate and charismatic!