AC Nielsen, as reported in the Fairfax papers, shows an increase in the two-party preferred Labor vote from 47 percent to 55 percent. If this is true it contradicts the findings of our qualitative survey reported in The Australian and republished here.

Nielsen also shows support for the Greens plunging from 15 percent to 8 percent. The Liberals have a first preference vote of 42 percent and Labor 47 percent.

On the question of leadership Gillard leads Abbott by 55 points to 34. 56 percent also approve of her as PM, while 30 percent disapprove - a net positive rating of 16 percent. Abbott has a net minus 6 percent approval with 40 approve to 46 percent disapprove.

Our polling had Labor down on their position in April this year and more or less level with their position in January. However our last poll federal poll was just before the reversal of the ETS so didn't capture the dip that occurred after that. Taking that into consideration we're probably picking up a slight increase, but not as large as Nielsen.

There are a few possible reasons for the discrepancy. Our poll is not statistically representative, so movements won't necessarily track what happens in the broader community, although they have so far. Because our panel thinks more about these issues they may have come to different conclusion to the rest of the community. In fact, one of the benefits of our panel is that it does tend to form conclusions before the rest of the community and these conclusions predict where the rest of the community very probably will end up.

Another possibility is that the Nielsen poll may overstate the Labor vote because it was taken on a Thursday and Friday. I'm not sure why, but these are not good days for political polling of the general population and tend to see a bias towards Labor.

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