A Political Tale of Two Cities

A poll run across Sydney & Melbourne by Nexus Research over the period October 7-17th, 2008 included some questions on current federal voting intentions and economic expectations. The survey was similar to ones run in September 2004 and 2007 enabling some trend comparisons to be drawn.

In all three surveys respondents were asked, if there was a Federal election tomorrow, which party would they vote for? Answers, defined by city, are shown in the following chart.

It can be seen that whilst Melbourne displays increasing support for Federal Labor, Sydney has had a recent swing back towards the Liberals.

Furthermore, the data suggests that at a Federal level, voters claim to be no more interested in the Greens than they were a year ago.

A further question asked respondents whether they expected to be financially worse off, about the same or better off if the next Federal government turned out to be Labor.

As the above chart shows, people tended to say they anticipated being about the same; with marginally more of the remainder being pessimists than optimists. This result broadly holds across both cities

However, when the same question was put to respondents if the next Federal government were Liberal, an increasing proportion of people in Sydney claimed they would be better off (from 12% in 2004 to 27% in 2008).

This result is echoed by the latest survey in Melbourne.

Whilst further points on the graph are needed to confirm the trend, it would seem premature to assume that recent Federal Government initiatives have outshone State problems in Sydney. Currently, it’s more a case of A Tale of Two Cities than Great Expectations.

The detailed data (eg. by age segment, claimed previous vote) can be further interrogated at ..

http://www.nexusresearch.com.au/reports/7130xcp1.htm

Note on Source: All surveys were carried out by computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) using a stratified random sample of 600 people (18+ yrs) selected to represent voters across Sydney and Melbourne. Data is then weighted to known (latest ABS) population totals. The theoretical 95% confidence limits applying to results based on the full sample are about 4% overall and 6% for results based on half the sample, eg. Sydney. However, the real world being less than perfect, wider margins of error should be assumed.