The first day of the 2013 election campaign saw opinion polls that were more favourable to the Coalition than Labor:
- Essential was unchanged at 49-51 in the Coalition’s favour.
- Morgan had moved a point to the Coalition to be 49.5-50.5 in the Coalition’s favour (using the preference flows from the 2010 election).
- Newspoll was unchanged at 48-52 in the Coalition’s favour.
- ReachTEL has moved a point to the Coalition to be 48-52 in the Coalition’s favour.
In aggregate, the polls are suggesting that Labor is at its lowest point since the restoration of Mr Rudd some five weeks ago.
At this point it’s time for a caveat. The zero line in this chart is the average bias across the six polling houses I am tracking. You need to come to a view about where the actual level of systemic bias across the polls actually lies. At the 2010 Election (with a different set of pollsters), the population voting intention was about one percentage point more in the Coalition’s favour than the pollster average (see here).
Unsurprisingly, an aggregated poll of 49.2 per cent TPP (on a universal swing basis) would see a small Coalition win.
However, as the 2010 campaign demonstrated, the opinion polls can move by at least three percentage points over a five week campaign. The 2013 election is still very much a contest.
