Abbott gov's 167th losing poll - Ipsos 54/46 to Labor

In the wake of multiple scandals and failures of the gov's own making (eg. Choppergate, marriage equality, Royal Commission) the polls are firmly heading south for the Lieberals in a big way. The latest poll from Fairfax Ipsos puts Labor at a landslide 54% to a Lieberal wipe out of 46% - two party preferred. This is now the 167th poll over 16 months where the Lieberal/National coalition has been behind Labor.

But even more frightening for the Lieberals are the preferences. This latest Ipsos poll uses preferences as chosen by voters in the 2013 election. This can be quite misleading for polling as the state Queensland election showed; Labor won on preferences. The pollsters got it wrong as they simply used preference distribution from the previous election. Time changed and people preferenced differently, often putting the Lieberals last.

The same thing is now happening federally. Little reported on by pollsters and little used it appears, but times have changed since the 2013 federal election and the Lieberals aren't going to attract anywhere near the preference flows from voters as they did in 2013. 

As shown in this graph from the Pollbludger, showing the collapse in Lieberal preferences since 2013. 

In fact when the latest respondent allocated preferences were applied to this latest Ipsos poll the result is even worse for the Lieberals, coming in at an annihilating 56/44.

The respondent-allocated preferences result records Labor’s lead blowing out all the way to 56-44, after being equal with the headline figure on 53-47 last time. As this scatterplot shows, there has been a strong trend away from the Coalition on preferences in respondent-allocated polling conducted since the 2013 election. Contributing factors include a rise in the Greens’ share of the non-major party vote, and the Palmer United collapse. more